Lexington High School
Meet the School!
Lexington High School, based in Lexington, MA, is a large High School that has a historically successful music and performing arts program. Entering this school, you quickly become aware of the size, traditions, and intensity of the program. Between its three Bands, Orchestras, and Choirs, as well as its Jazz ensembles/classes, working at Lexington requires co-curricular teamwork. The school itself has formed a tight-knit community between students, teachers, and staff under the leadership of the Department Head: Jared Cassedy. Despite its size, the emphasis in each class about building community and learning together with the students. The program may feel traditional, but the way we teach is student-centered and differentiated. The main Band music teacher and my supervising practitioner for this placement, Justin Aramati, has been teaching at this school for 18 years before I was placed into his classroom as a student teacher.
Lesson Plans, Videos, and Resources
Here are some resources, clips, and full lessons from the time I taught at Lexington High School. Through these videos you can see me teaching their Symphonic Band, and their Intro to Jazz Improvisation Class. Through these resources you I demonstrate my differentiation of education, individualized feedback, facilitation of discussion, and rapport with students.
Skills Developed
One of the most prominent skills I worked on was engaging students through meaningful discussion in class. When a class can communicate meaningful and accurate information to each other, it will elevate the content you can cover in your class. This also individualizes the content for your class, and allows your classroom community to grow. In our Intro to Jazz Improvisation class, each lesson begins with a listening session to a song that demonstrates the topic of the lesson. Afterward, I have learned to create guiding questions and facilitate student discussion that lead toward the topic we should work on that day. I’ve learned to apply these skills to large ensembles: facilitating discussion about intonation, rehearsal techniques, and technique within their sections.
Another skill I developed was increasing both the aim and the quality of my individualized feedback. I worked on using feedback to progress the lesson both through positive affirmations and common misconceptions between the classes performance. By giving small groups of students or individual students direct feedback, I can apply that to other students or use them as an example to progress the content of the lesson. This creates a cohesion and momentum to the lesson that allows to students to understand the content deeper.
Developing community is a strength I have, and coming into a program as large as this one I knew there would be a pre-existing friendships and rapport with both the teacher and their classmates. I feel I developed my rapport with students, as well as explored how to navigate both allowing students to grow as friends and a community and staying focused/on task. I think there is room for both in a classroom, and this was the perfect time to find the right combination of the two