Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is so effortlessly integrated into the ensemble classroom we sometimes don’t even know we are encouraging those connections. Just by students’ placement in the orchestra, students get to know those around them. I play viola in one orchestra and violin in another, and I noticed that I socialize differently in each orchestra. When I’m playing viola, I socialize with friends on viola, cello, bass as well as oboe, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, and tuba. In the orchestra where I play violin, I socialize with friends on violin, flute, and percussion. Certainly, not exclusively, but I did notice a trend.
This is one reason I don’t do chair auditions but change the seating arrangement of my school orchestras every 4-6 weeks. I often view it as a social experiment and separate the talkers and try to find friends for my quiet students. I’ve been trying more and more to find moments in the classroom to have stand partners interact productively - and socially. But now there’s a pandemic, and all of those classroom strategies are out the window. I have a unique teaching situation. My district is on a hybrid plan with A and B groups attending alternate days, and I have included what I call “double Zoom” with the students whose parents have chosen full distance learning. The extra catch is that I am teaching remotely. I am Zooming into the classroom with a substitute teacher in person. I have two large TVs fed through an iPad, and I can see the classroom via two iPads and a camera on the classroom computer. Yes, this is a ton of equipment and fortunately, most of it was in place before the pandemic hit. I also have a lot of equipment at home, including a 2008 computer and the brand-spanking-new computer I bought myself before I knew I would be able to teach remotely. Back to SEL. Not knowing what teaching and learning format our school board would choose this summer, I began dreaming of ideas to keep the students connected. Our Zoom lessons and use of TEAMS worked okay in the spring but didn’t seem to reach out and grab all of the students. My mind went to work. My big idea was to create Harry Potter inspired houses. I didn’t want to copy the Hogwarts houses because 75% of kids are labeled Gryffindor, and I didn’t want an “evil” house like Slytherin. So, I came up with four house names based on composers from around a thousand years ago (similar to Harry Potter). I wanted two female composers and two male founders (like Harry Potter), and I wanted to avoid composers with steamy histories. The chosen composers are Iseut de Capio, Hildegard of Bingen, Jaufre Rudel, and Bernart de Ventadorn. Through what could only be a dash of dyslexia, I re-named two houses Caprio and Bingham. It was too late when I noticed my mistake and had to incorporate the changed name into the backstory for those two composers. At the beginning of the school year, I changed my mind and realized the house idea wasn’t going to work. The eighth-graders showed obvious signs of apathy and attitude. No way was a goofy idea like houses going to work for SEL. But then, they started coming around. I could see them interacting and I could see them slowly changing their attitude and approach to class. It was then, I decided to go for it. The first step was setting up a website for the “castle.” All summer long, I struggled to find a name for the castle and ultimately settled on our school mascot. You can see the website here: www.bighorncastle.com. There are some password-protected pages because those pages include student names. Each house has a motto which vaguely indicates the characteristics of the students in the house. All are very positive and hopefully will inspire the students to emulate those qualities. Then, I set up a house sorting quiz for the students to divide them into houses. Well, this didn’t work very well because most of the students had scores in a similar range. I took the answer to the question, “What is your best quality or characteristic?”, to sort the students as best I could. I also paid attention to having a relatively equal number of girls and boys and grade levels on each team. We’ve had a lot of smoke from the California fires in Reno, so we had a “Smoke Day” distance learning day for all students. I set up a Zoom meeting to reveal houses that ended up being a lot of fun. We had the house reveal in class for those students who couldn’t or didn’t come to that Zoom meeting. A few students didn’t take the quiz due to tech limitations, and I had a few new students. Those students took the house quiz on the classroom computer (with sanitizing before and after!) I did the house reveal right after they took the test. Next, I set up TEAMS for each house and created websites for each house. I paid for the websites so that I could have password-protected areas, but you can do this on a budget with free website hosting through Weebly and others. The kids like the passwords because it is similar to having a password for the houses at Hogwarts. I bought a ridiculous trophy as the house cup, and I think I will buy the winning house members little trophies for the end of the year. I’m tallying points on the main page and giving points for participation. Like Harry Potter, I am giving points rather randomly, but the general theme is participation points. We just got through with elections for house leadership, which included 8th-grade students as head girl and boy and 7th grade as prefect. 6th graders weren’t eligible because I wanted them to have something to look forward to. I want to keep student engagement going, so I’m trying to unveil my ideas weekly or bi-weekly. With the house leaders' addition, I hope these students will have ideas to keep engagement throughout the school year. I plan to write an article for ASTA on student engagement and SEL. If you have interesting or unique ideas, please send those ideas to cliffviewmusic@gmail.com. Cheers! Caryn
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