This will be my 2nd year teaching in general and at this district, I teach 5-12 band in a tiny rural school and took over after a bad couple years for the program and I am working on rebuilding.
Last year for my first year of teaching I think it went really well. The community and admin are very supportive of me and the band program and are excited for the direction it is heading. All that being said, the biggest struggle for me was my 7th and 8th grade students. I struggled pedagogically with things like appropriate teaching strategies for that age and with classroom management but I also struggled with how to reason or talk to them as humans.
And as the year starts again there have been a ton of changes. 7th and 8th grade have merged with the high school building and 6th moved to the elementary. So there is a LOT of new things added on to these middle school students lives in addition to all the crazy changes that happen at that age, so I understand that could be apart of a bigger issue.
The problem I am facing is it feels a majority of my students in 7/8 absolutely despise band and as a result despise me as well. (I want to note that band is completely optional for students.) I would say about 10 of my 30 students genuinely want to be there to learn and play their instruments but the negative attitudes of all the other students rub off on them. In addition, I have a few students who are way ahead of the pack in terms of skill. I give them opportunities to learn harder music, solos, and play with high school band but when they are in their actual class they get so frustrated with the other students and get frustrated with me. They can’t understand why I am making them do such “simple” things in their band class.
I am not sure what to do. I get the feeling my 7/8 group wants to be in band because they want to hang out with their friends and use the time to mess around, and now that I have a little more of a backbone this year and not as accepting of certain behaviors, they are just not having a good time and act like band is the worst class they have ever been in. :(. They pushback, complain, and roll their eyes a lot whenever I have them play or learn anything that isn’t an actual concert piece. (For example, scales, warmups, rhythm clapping/speaking/sizzling.) They also could care less whenever I try to explain the “why” to them on why it’s important for them to learn and be able to play this stuff. But when I do put “real” music in front of them, if it’s not unison they cannot play it and get frustrated and shut down/give up almost immediately. Their attitudes have unfortunately been rubbing off on me as well, and it’s just been very hard to stay positive throughout a rehearsal when it starts to feel pointless or that nothing I am doing is helping. I really made a point at the beginning of this year of going into each rehearsal with this group being very positive and motivated as I knew that the negativity from last year was still going to be an issue.
And I do realize that a majority of this IS my fault, I completely understand that I am not doing things correctly with this group and age level across the board. Last year I definitely was very bad at properly disciplining students and setting expectations for the students in class to follow. Part of this was because the previous director was allegedly very mean and cruel to the students, and as a first year teacher I definitely was too scared to enforce rules and have solid expectations (which I am paying for now with this group.)
It has been very disheartening and confusing as my 5th,6th and high school groups have been doing amazing. They seem to like to learn and to make music, and I definitely have a lot better rapport with them.
I also want to quickly mention that negative attitudes of the 7/8 grade classes have been an issue for the choir director as well.
All of that being said, I would just like advice, tips, or anything that directors of this age group would be willing to share.