2022-2023 Goals

This year, my goals are centered around opportunities for students, as well as coherency among the Performing Arts staff. This includes: 1) Explore and implement more opportunities for technology development in the classroom; 2) Foster clear and coherent understanding of the new MYP Arts Guide strands with the Performing Arts team.

1) Explore and implement more opportunities for technology development in the classroom

I explored various technology devices that could be applied to student work and came up with a few options seen below. The reason for choosing this goal is because the DP Music course includes the Area of Inquiry 4 - Music for technology in the digital age, which centers around technology being used in creating and performing. This is an area that I am least familiar regarding the Areas of Inquiry, and I believe this is the next logical step towards enhancing the quality and relevance of the DP Music Course.

a) Microfreak by Arturia is a hybrid-synthesizer which allows the ability to blend wavetable and digital oscillators with analog filters.

Application: This device can be added to the DP Course for the Technology and Digital Age Unit. This can be used for Exploring and/or Experimenting music, such as various EDM genres that focuses on oscillator modes, sequences, timbres, etc. This will be a great step into understanding the process of Sound Engineering.

b). RC-600 Loop Station by BOSS is a device that records through instrumental input as well as microphones and has up to 6 lines for looping.

Application: This Loop Station can be added to both Grade 10 and DP courses. It can be used in individual or group projects that focus on live-performance. This is a great addition to the AOI4 unit for DP Music. This unit is easy to integrate technology in composition, but this device fills that gap for technology in performance. The students can choose a song that has up to 6 sections of chord repetitions, and include multiple instruments or voices. An example of this was used as an exemplar for the Experimenting With Music component.

c). 25 Midi USB keyboard by Nektar is a compact and portable keyboard with simple student-friendly features for beginners.

Application: This is already being used in Grade 9 music classes as a virtual instrument. Once the students have a solid understanding of how to use this with their DAW system, such as GaragaBand, then I would like to have the students explore audio sampling using non-musical objects. This idea is inspired by Charlie Puth’s interview on The Jimmy Fallon Show.

2) Foster clear and coherent understanding of the new MYP Arts Guide strands with the Performing Arts team.

This year, a new edition of the MYP Arts Guide has been published and implemented, featuring several changes including specific criteria and requirements. Consequently, our team has recognized the need for a clear understanding of the expectations across Year 1 to Year 5 MYP arts classes. To achieve this, we have dedicated our scheduled MYP Performing Arts meetings to addressing specific criterion strands. During these meetings, we have engaged in a series of discussions aimed at clarifying important questions, such as:

What does the terminology mean?
How is this criteria scaffolded across the five-year curriculum
Expectations from students for each year level?
What does this look like in assessment?

Below is an example from one of our meetings with a focus on Criterion Aii. This particular discussion proved beneficial because we became aware that not everyone had the same idea of what should be included in a critique, and what the main difference was between a critique and an analysis. We came to the conclusion that a critique should be based on personal perspective, which they should be able to reach by the time they are in grade 10 (year 5).

To further ensure that the Performing Arts team was aligning our assessments with the new guide and meeting the minimal requirements, I introduced the Arts Criterion Mapping document to keep track of our use of criterion strands.

2021-2022 Goals

This year I created two goals for myself, according to the needs in the ISNS Strategic Plan. These goals are: 1) Foster the development of globally-minded students; 2) Ensure to include a writing aim for my units.

As I conclude the final weeks of the school year, I want to reflect on my successes and failures in achieving these two goals.

1) Foster the development of globally-minded students

I completed an IB Professional Development workshop titled IBED Living and learning globally Cat 3. In this workshop I was able to explicitly identify global mindedness and what that looks like from a students perspective. This was the inspiration for my first goal of the year. To accomplish this I re-structured my Grade 10 World Music unit to include various provocations that pushed the ideas that our students had about music from other countries. They were able to explore music of various cultures, and learn about artistic norms that they never would have encountered on their own. The Summative Assessment allowed the students to explore and experience a specific style of music of their choosing from another country they were not familiar with. They had to use their creative thinking skills to explicitly, and implicitly, demonstrate their knowledge of the culture and context of that music and apply that to their work, either by creating or performing. Along the way, the students posed several inquiry questions about the new cultures to gain an understanding of the people and the purpose of their music. Several good conversations arose, particularly about cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation. Overall, I felt this was a successful unit, and I plan to keep improving the lessons in the future.

2) Ensure to include a writing aim for my units

Before our school was locked down due to covid, I began working with my grade 6’s in their understanding about adding detail to their reflections. This is in line with one of the six Traits of Writing in the Grade 6 curriculum. This trait is listed as Content/Ideas, and the appropriate achievement we focused on is “support/develop the ideas by including relevant details”. We worked on examples of empty statements and students developed questions for further details. This was completed in groups. Once the students created their list of questions, they then took the empty statement and developed a paragraph of information to further describe and explain the given statement. The purpose of this task was to provide students with the expectations for their own reflections. So, instead of writing a reflection like “I learned about thinking skills”, we asked further questions such as:

What activity did you complete about thinking skills?
How did this activity aid or change your understanding about thinking skills?
What did you like about thinking skills?
In what situations could you use your thinking skills?
Why are thinking skills important?
Etc.

As our Arts classes require students to consistently reflect on their learning, artistic decisions, and growth as an artist, this was a necessary skill for students to develop in MYP. Throughout the semester, the grade 6 students were continuously reminded about developing questions and answering them in their reflections. Their Summative Assessment included a reflection section where they had to provide a daily reflection during their progress of their work and providing explanations in their statements. Although I feel like Online learning has stalled some growth, I do see some improvement in how students respond to their own learning. One thing I wish I did was collaborate further with our Grade 6 English teachers to use similar strategies that they use so the students will consistently see similar strategies across multiple subjects.

In Grade 8, I worked with the students to gain a clear understanding about how to reflect on their process work. From previous year, students would often provide a superficial description of their process that demonstrated minimal depth into their thinking. Each day students had to write a reflection for work they did in class that day, and include clear evidence, identification application, and a written explanation of what they did, why they did it, and how they did it. This enabled students to not only show their process, but to show additional information about their artistic decisions. After a while, the students were able to recognize the details that needed to be included to fully justify their artistic decisions.

Overall, I think this was successful, but as always, this will be a continuous development goal in my teaching.

As the Head of Performing Arts, my goals are focused on building leadership skills. These skills include, but not limited to:

Communication - Presenting/ public speaking
- Being vocal in the school community is an important aspect promoting the Performing Arts
Motivation - Providing awards and recognition
- The performing Arts team provides extra hours of dedication to their activities, and so it is important they know their work is much appreciated
Delegation - Setting Expectations and delegating tasks to team members
- It is important for a team to work together towards a common goal rather than one person
Positivity - Conflict Management
- Being able to resolve conflicts is key to maintaining a happy environment
Feedback - Coaching and providing frequent feedback
- Lead the team with guidance on how to improve effectively

This year, my personal goal is to build a caring relationship with the students. I am usually a quiet introvert which can often come off as “not approachable”. I want the students to enjoy interacting with me and understand that I have their full interest in mind. Some things that I plan to do this year is to:

Greet students with a smile always
Communicate with them about time-management challenges
Do not let their academic failures hinder the personal relationship
Talk to students about what they are experiencing and create a plan, keeping in mind their own personal struggles