All summer, in spite of your best efforts, you’ve been thinking about all the obstacles you and your students face this year. Many of them may even seem insurmountable. And yet I bet you’ve come up with a lot of creative solutions for meeting many of your students’ academic needs this year, because that’s what educators do.
There are a ton of the platforms and apps that are out there help us facilitate a lot of the challenges that could otherwise seem insurmountable.
But there’s really no effective app that addresses your students’ social and emotional needs. YOU are the one who does that. You are the one who has to know her students well enough to figure out what their needs are before you can begin to help them with the struggles they face.
Do you have a plan for quickly and effectively identifying the challenges that will make it difficult for your students to be successful, especially in a virtual, hybrid, or way-different-than-normal-in-person teaching situation? How are you going to get them to truly think about and articulate their obstacles so you can use that information to drive your instruction and help them be successful?
And what are you going to do once you understand their obstacles? Do you have proven ideas for navigating this kind of situation with so many students and families who are experiencing so many hardships while trying to manage school and jobs and life during a pandemic?
This is all I’ve thought about and it’s my mission to help students become the best version of themselves through the magic of music education. When the rest of their world seems to be falling apart, we music teachers can help them make sense of it. We can give them the tools they need to manage their emotions, express themselves, and learn so much more than just how to play a few songs. But first we must meet them where they are.
If you know this is true but just don’t know where to start, I invite you to watch this short training I did that gives an idea of what you could do in the beginning of the year to get to know your students so you can better serve them. Starting with this step will save you a LOT of time and effort down the line.
The training is free. I hope you find it helpful. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.
With you on this journey –
Lesley
