Justine Dolorfino

The New Teacher Chronicles: Entry #1

Posted by Justine on October 20, 2011 No comments

I’m quickly approaching the two month mark at my first teaching job and I’ve barely said anything about it here. The fact of the matter is I’ve been distracted with, you know, 1) preparing for teaching, 2) actual teaching, 3) my other job in social media for Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy (and I am not about to resist a shameless plug– Facebook / Twitter / Blog), 4) eating, breathing, and sleeping. But I know I ought to get something down about the experience, because I’ll never have another first year of teaching again.

Do I like teaching? Yes. It’s classroom managing that I’m not as fond of, probably because when I walked in on my first day I had absolutely no idea how to actually do it, had never actually really had to handle it in my student teaching experience and during my time teaching extracurricular summer camp music, and had completely underestimated the value of it. It was never really discussed in the online PLN, either, nor at grad school, though I’d had my fill of conversation everywhere about philosophy, practice, ideas for lessons, ways to integrate technology into the classroom, etc. It’s not that it’s other people’s jobs to watch out for me. It just completely slipped my mind and it was never truly made important to me.

(I’m wondering, too, while I write this, why we don’t talk about classroom management. Is it the new Fight Club?)

Reflecting back on my own time as a middle schooler, it didn’t really seem as though classroom management came into play then. Of course, though, that just means that my teachers’ strategies and plans for organization and effective classroom routines were just that — effective.

Now that I am the teacher, instead of the student, I realize now that I should have thought about more than just what I would teach during my summer planning for this year. I needed a consistent, clear, and organized strategy for my classroom in order to begin to work, from day one, to get my students to a place where they could work with me on all of the things I want to teach. Structure is in place, but it’s been more like something that’s grown organically over September and October rather than laid out neatly in place at the start of the school year.

Of course, there are really great experiences I’m having for the first time, like when I see the students understanding whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes and holding up their dictations to me on the Doodle Buddy app on their iPads. Those moments where I hear improvements in only half an hour’s worth of time. They’re learning, just like I’m learning. And really, even if I had prepared more in terms of clear classroom structure and organization, I still would have felt like a fish out of water during my first days of school as a teacher. My goal is to make every day better than the days that came before it, and even if that doesn’t happen, to keep that same goal constant in my mind as I prepare for the next day.

Confessions of a Napster Kid: Why I Love Spotify

Posted by Justine on July 22, 2011 5 comments

Warning: This may kind of read like a complete advertisement, but I tend to get excited when I recommend things I like.

–

When I was in middle school, Napster came out and, along with other filesharing devices (and believe me, I’ve tried them all), helped to change the recording music industry from what it was then to what it was today. As a twelve year old kid in band, with very little spending money and an insatiable appetite for new music, the idea of being able to just get music for free (as opposed to, you know, the $15-17 for a CD) was incredibly appealing. I still remember waiting 20 minutes or so for a 3MB MP3 file to download… that was the life.

Fast forward ten years and as a pre-service music educator, I’ve been going legal with my music consumption to the best of my ability. I understand the appeal of getting everything you want for free (I mean, it’s free!) but, at the same time, understand that, you know, it’s kind of really illegal. And I get why people do that whole pirating thing, especially kids with limited income.

Now that Spotify has finally landed in the US, though, I think that it’s never been so easy to digitally consume music responsibly and legally. This service, which gives you (with a free subscription) a limited amount of hours to listen to its extensive music catalog from a computer, has a $10/month premium subscription service that allows unlimited listening and offline sync/download capabilities for your mobile devices (hello, favorite playlists on the subway!). In fact, I’m listening to Spotify (Mae, if you were wondering) on my iPad right now. Imagine a catalogue kind of comparable to iTunes (though, of course, it’s still missing certain labels/songs/etc…), but without the 30-second preview limitation.

At first, I thought the whole $10/month fee was pretty steep, before I realized that I routinely spend at least that much on music per month, anyway. So why not just subscribe and get a whole lot more? Yes, you don’t ‘own’ the music, but you can still take it with you on a mobile device, so if you’ve got one of those, you’re set. Stocking up on music to use in the classroom just got a whole lot cheaper, and now I don’t know if I see as much of a point to satellite radio when you can hook up a mobile device with Spotify to your car’s sound system. Plus, the whole collaborative playlists feature is fun; I’ve already got a 90s/early-00s playlist in the works with friends.

It’s still invite-only, unfortunately, but once it starts widening its user base I’m sure it’ll take off. I’ll definitely be recommending it to students as an alternative instead of pirating or even buying digital music.

Do you have Spotify? Let me know what you think!

Harry Potter: It’s Not the End

Posted by Justine on July 15, 2011 4 comments

I feel like by now, hopefully people have read the books and don’t need a spoiler warning, but here it is, just in case…

I’ve been putting off trying to process exactly how I feel about the end of the Harry Potter saga for quite some time. I was asked to contribute to a few online blogs or projects and share my feelings, but besides the fact that I really didn’t have the time to do that, there was also a part of me that really didn’t want to have to think hard about what the end of this series meant for me. Yes, the seventh book came out in 2007 and it’s been ‘over’ ever since, but we still had the movies… Well, we did, anyway.

Last night (or, perhaps, earlier this morning?), I watched the 12:03am showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. While I’m never going to be 100% happy with all of the random changes they make for dramatic and cinematic effect, I had a great time and really enjoyed the experience. I found myself getting emotional, though, during the climactic battle scenes at Hogwarts, and suddenly it hit me: this book series, for me, isn’t about one boy’s journey through adolescence with some tough demons to fight off, or archetypal themes of good versus evil, or a grand parable about the evils of discrimination and the need for unity, better communications, and understanding.

For me, this series is all about a school, and the central, pivotal role this school played in the development of an entire society as well as the lives of some really important characters.

When I first picked up a Harry Potter book in 1998, I was just starting the 6th grade. I identified so much with Harry, feeling like since I was also going on 11 at the time, I was a first year too. During the early days of middle school, I often wished I went to Hogwarts instead. Hogwarts was truly a magical place, literally and figuratively. It was a place where the youth of British wizarding society went to find themselves, explore magic, make lifelong connections, and gain the knowledge and tools they’d use throughout the rest of their lives. I longed to be able to go to a school where I’d learn the things I wanted to learn and could use forever, with teachers just as awesome as Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall.

As the series continued and I grew up, I transitioned from middle to high school, from high school to college, until the last book was published when I was 19 going on 20. Just when I was finally starting to feel as though I kind of knew what I wanted to do with my life, Harry Potter was fulfilling his destiny. (I couldn’t help but feel slightly unaccomplished, in comparison.) As I read about a battle taking place on the school grounds that had educated all of the soldiers involved in the fight, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would defend my school like that, too.

Of course, Hogwarts had its bad sides as well as its good, and for this I thank J. K. Rowling for showing a multidimensional, realistic portrayal of a school. You had the authoritarian types (Umbridge), the ones who really should have spent more time in a teacher preparation program (Hagrid), the boring teachers (Binns), the fluff classes (Divination), that one teacher everyone says to avoid (Snape)… There was an almost questionable bias against an entire group of students, based on stereotype and hearsay, and I’m still not over the fact that at the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, they let the Slytherins think they won the House Cup for a long while before going, “Oops, just kidding! Gryffindor won!” And all of the assumptions that the Slytherins were all just going to go evil… no wonder so many did join up with Voldemort, when those expectations are all you hear for a majority of your formative youth. Despite all that, though, Hogwarts remained a place I wanted to return to, time and time again.

I now firmly believe that the Harry Potter books made me dream about a better place to learn, one where students are motivated to get the knowledge they need due to sheer interest and passion. I wanted a school where the teachers have most of the answers, but let the students experience the process for themselves. A place that, often, felt more like home than home itself, would always keep its students safe, and would always give you help whenever you asked for it. A school where the teachers knew the students had the answers too, as long as they knew how to ask the right questions. A school that commanded loyalty and respect from its teachers and students in its time of need. And, frankly, a school where I could fly around on a broomstick looking for a tiny gold, and also-flying ball.

So, thank you, J. K. Rowling, for the stories you told, and the lessons I learned about what education could be. And thank you, Harry Potter, for being there for me when I needed you. It’s not the end, not when I have teaching of my own to do, books to reread, and movies to rewatch. It will never be the end, not as far as I’m concerned.

Questioning My Creativity with Reason & Pro Tools

Posted by Justine on May 10, 2011 2 comments

As the semester comes to a close at Teachers College, it is time for me to share my beautiful and, in the future, I’m sure, award-winning compositions (the Pro Tools one, after all, is a riff on “… Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears) that I made for Jim Frankel‘s Intermediate/Advanced Applications of Music Technology course. We were able to explore Reason, Ableton Live, and Pro Tools in this course, and I was surprised when I realized that throughout the semester, I felt completely humbled by these software programs.

It isn’t so much that I was intimidated by the challenge of learning to use a new software program, though the tools we were using were quite complex, had a lot (x 2) of different ways in which you could customize the sounds you were working with, and were programs I had never seen before. Rather, though, the projects that we had frightened me. I no longer could rely on premade loops to create and, instead, needed to make choices about what I wanted.

What I liked so much about how the projects were organized was that by requiring us to have specific kinds of tracks and instruments (among other requirements), we were able to engage in purposeful exploration. We knew what we needed to have so we could use that as a jumping off point. Part of what was so overwhelming about these programs, for me at least, was how many sounds we could use to create. Being able to have our timbres and instruments pre-determined for us (though there was still a lot of customization we could do, of course, within that) lessened the amount of time I just sat staring at the computer, trying to figure out where to begin.

That said, though, once I picked the sounds I wanted to create, figuring out how to actually go about creating musical ideas was just another hill I had to climb. It was here that I really felt momentarily lost. Everything I played back seemed rhythmically imprecise, boring, clichéd… I was at 0% again, wondering how to get started once more.

Here’s where it really hit me: what had I actually learned throughout my substantial time spent in K-12, college, and graduate-level music programs? Sure, I can play, read, and analyze music, but I am at a complete loss when it came to composing. I am honestly hard pressed to remember having to engage in composition (besides one very memorable Jazz class in college, but the composition projects in that class were very structured and revolved around working from standards) in any form.

This all makes me wonder how many people who have experienced music education programs would describe themselves in this way, as having little to no experience or comfort with the idea of composition. Perhaps more importantly, how many find this to be a lapse in their education? Creative experiences and composition will never be prioritized in the classroom until they are given importance, and recognizing this own gap in my music education solely just makes me more determined to find a way to incorporate this kind of musical knowledge in my future classrooms.

Reason project: Download here!
Pro Tools project: Download here!

Losing Control of your Digital Footprint

Posted by Justine on April 19, 2011 2 comments

One of the first things I learned in Jim Frankel‘s intro-to-tech course back in Fall 2009 is that in this day of age of information sharing and search engines, you need to understand the risks that come along with the benefits of being a fully participatory member of Web 2.0. At the time, I thought I fully understood the point and was under the impression that maintaining your digital footprint is all about a careful management of what you put on the internet. Now, though, I know that part of it is also watching out for things that may be written about you too, especially if the things being said are erroneous.

Because of my visiting a blog written by a woman who “is the co-founder of Feminist Coming Out Day, the Health, Sex, & Relationships expert for gURL.com and the host of Sex Really With Lena Chen, a webcast for the National Campaign To Prevent Teen & Unplanned Pregnancy,” my name has been added to a list of people who have commented on her blog and put on a messageboard dedicated to slamming the author (read the original post, in which she became aware of the situation, right here). The site currently shows up in my search results when you search for me on Google, (important: don’t click on it if you do so because that will just strengthen the search association!) so of course I’m certainly concerned about what this will mean for my job search this spring. That said, though: do I feel as though I should apologize for being someone who is a firm supporter of women’s rights and health? Absolutely not.

Of course, there’s a teachable moment here. One of the greatest things about Web 2.0 is the ability of anyone to publish, share, and discuss information, usually for free. What happens, though, when someone decides to get on that digital soapbox to spread lies and hate? It seems our responsibility as educators to teach our students about how to not only use the internet safely but also responsibly. While this situation might make some want to never connect to the internet ever again (or, more realistically, block Web 2.0 technologies from classrooms), these technologies are increasingly becoming a for-granted aspect of society. It’s a given that students will be accessing these sites and services outside of the classroom, and many will be doing so without the knowledge they need to do so responsibly. I am now, more than ever, more convinced that it is time for for schools to ensure that their students learn how to be good citizens both offline and on.

Operation Job Hunt, 2011: Where Do We Go Now?

Posted by Justine on April 18, 2011 No comments

I find it incredibly hard to believe that April 2011 is almost over. With that comes May 2011 and though I don’t finish all of my coursework unti August 2011, it’s becoming more and more apparent that my time in graduate school is beginning to draw to a close. Student teaching and my graduation portfolios will be taken care of by midway through next month, and I’ve spent the last week or so applying for jobs.

Because of this, I’ve been wondering more and more lately what music education has become over the years. Now that I’m about to (hopefully) enter into the profession, where do I fit in? What good can I do in the name of music education? We addressed this a little in the first edition of Leading Notes, but while I contributed an article for the issue myself, I spent less time considering my own potential contributions and more time trying to sketch out how I viewed the profession as a whole.

Despite the inevitable stress of beginning to job hunt, sending in applications, and waiting to hear back from schools, I find myself almost excited about all of the possibilities. I’ve spent the last two years thinking about music education, observing teachers around New York City, engaging in experiential, creative activities, and beginning to get my feet wet during student teaching. I’ve done the certification exams, started the lesson videotaping for my portfolios, and tacked on additional courses in communications and educational technology. I’ve felt increasingly more antsy as the days and weeks go on. I want to be out there, with my own classroom or ensemble, taking on the opportunity to prove that I’ve put all of my learning to good use.

It seems as though there couldn’t be a better, more exciting time to enter the field. Music education seems poised on the cusp of a great transition, with pedagogy, teachers, programming, and the contents of the curriculum (just to name a few) evolving to suit the needs of today’s students. The preconceived notions of what musicmaking consists of and who a musician is strongly need to be reexamined, and I am excited to be able to get to know my students and tailor my teaching to best serve their needs. How do we reach the students whose musical needs aren’t fulfilled by the traditional band, orchestra, or choir? I’ve learned how to write a lesson plan, write a unit, use a variety of digital technologies, help select music for a program… can I help with the challenges that our field is currently facing? Where do I fit in?

Thinking back on the last two years, I remember one of my first homework assignments. We had to pick a ‘found sound’ instrument and create a composition using nontraditional musical notation, and my first reaction was to panic. How could I make music without an instrument I already knew how to play, let alone one that didn’t make any fixed pitches? How could I remember what I had come up with without notes on a staff? Now, though, two years later, I look back on this with a lot of fond amusement. Of course I’d be able to find a way; isn’t that just part of what we do? Figure out the issue or problem, assess it, think about everything you’ve learned before, and then use your creativity to find a solution.

So, you know… maybe this isn’t the best time for a graduating class to enter the job market. Maybe there is a funding crisis for education, let along music education. Maybe the job vacancies are sparser than I’d like, and maybe I’ll have to wait until I can find an opportunity of which I can take advantage. But who knows what the future will bring, or what it’ll look like. I’ll find my place and once I get there, I’ll solve whatever problems that come up for me to face.

Announcing the Leading Notes Summer 2011 Issue

Posted by Justine on April 15, 2011 No comments

(It’s very hard to publicize without Facebook and Twitter… this kind of goes without saying, but I just thought I’d make a special note of this fact. Thanks, Nick, for doing some of it. I’ll help out after Easter!)

It’s around that time again and Nick Jaworski and I are very excited to announce the theme for our Summer 2011 issue of Leading Notes: Connections.

For our Summer 2011 issue, we are looking to investigate the multiple levels of connections that can be made through music education. This can be an investigation into how music programs can connect to their communities, how the music we teach connects to our culture, how your lesson plans connect to larger curricular goals, an investigation into the unique ways that music teachers connect with their students, or anything in between. In an era of budget cuts, it is important that we find ways to document the connections we make and to investigate how those connections come about. It is our hope that this issue of Leading Notes can give you some new ideas and also help you see your own teaching in a new light.

Submissions are due May 31, 2011 and if you have an idea you’d like to pursue, please email me!

–

I’m really excited about this issue and hope that you can find some way to get involved, whether it’s by retweeting us, submitting an article for consideration, getting involved at the Music PLN, or even just visiting and checking out what we have to say this summer. We’re always looking to hear from those who don’t usually get their voices heard in the online medium, as well, so please spread the word to teachers, students, and anyone in between.

Social Media Detox

Posted by Justine on April 4, 2011 3 comments

There are 20 days left in my quest for a social media-free Lent 2011 and I think I’ve actually been doing a pretty good job at holding up. I’ve done this before and the first few days are always really difficult, especially when you have some free time and a lot of homework you’d like to put off. However, I feel like I’m living a much more carefree and happy life. I’m not constantly glued to a screen, don’t feel stressed about having to come up with a perfect witty status message/tweet every day, and no longer feel as though my self-worth is based on how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers I have. Then again, though, I also have this feeling of isolation and loneliness going on and no longer feel as though I know anything about what is going on in the world.

Okay, so maybe I’m being a little dramatic.

As with everything, though, giving up social media for 40+ days has been a bit of a double edged sword. I really do feel disconnected from a lot of things– family, friends, news, etc.– but at the same time, it’s nice to not be constantly connected and always feeling like I had to check Twitter in order to keep up with the people I’m following. I did have the slightly awkward realization, though, that most of my social communications with people truly do take place via Facebook and Twitter. I live alone, currently, away from where I grew up and went to college, and only one of my friends in New York lives nearby. It’s a little harder to get in touch and arrange social outings with friends without Facebook and Twitter, I’ve found. Thank goodness for text messages; phone calls just seem so formal and intrusive these days.

At least one of my friends is also giving up social media this Lent, and I’ve had other friends do this in the past. I actually did this last year, too. It was harder getting into a social media-free lifestyle this year than it was previously, though, and I 100% chalk this up to my involvement in the music education online community that exists on social media. I read Twitter not just to see what my friends are up to or send them 140-character messages to say hi, but also to get good ideas for teaching from peers, brainstorm deep philosophical questions, trade music recommendations, commiserate about those crazy things students say, and also to sometimes tell people about how much food I had for lunch. I now have a much better idea of what it’s like to be involved in the field without a constantly new and evolving (let alone free!) professional development tool at my disposal. I’ve barely had any inspiration to write in this blog these days, too, and I definitely believe that this is because it’s been hard to find a starting point without engaging in frequent and thoughtful (and, because this is Twitter we’re talking about, concise!) discourse with peers in the field. I barely even know when people are updating their blogs with long-form content because I mostly keep up with that medium by clicking on their Twitter links!

(That said; I hope some people stop by to say hi after this gets pushed to my Twitter. I miss the community!)

I’ll try to write more about my thoughts as Easter approaches; I wanted to do more posts about the process last year, but that kind of failed and I’d like to have a better go at it this year (though I also failed at announcing I was doing this here, so maybe I should just quit while I’m still ahead…). I don’t think I’ll ever be able to completely give up Facebook and Twitter, though, for the reasons I’ve already stated above.

Is this sad? Has technology really changed the way I behave and interact with people to this degree? The other day I found myself thinking about who I could text about a peanut butter cookie (from Bouchon– my favorite in the city!) I was excited about buying, and thinking it’d be so much better if I could just push it to Twitter and Facebook and reach everyone that way. So… yes, I guess I’ve definitely let my use of the technology change the way I behave. And am I better for it?

I suppose that what this has taught me, first and foremost, is that technology is just a tool. Having Facebook and Twitter in my life didn’t automatically change the way that I thought and behaved; my use of them did. I’d also like to think that I have the sensibility and the knowledge to use these tools appropriately. Ultimately, I think that this is the real takeaway message from this, especially for those involved in education– how do we teach our students to use digital tools responsibly? What are the consequences and repercussions of having these technologies be so prominent in our society? Can teachers utilize them in the classroom in order to not only ‘practice what they preach’ but also to facilitate their teaching and keep their practices fresh? I know I’ll be pondering this for the next 20 days…

March 2011 Music Education Blog Carnival

Posted by Justine on March 1, 2011 2 comments

Welcome to the March 2011 edition of the Music Education Blog Carnival! Here’s an assortment of music education articles from across the blogosphere in a variety of topics. Happy reading!