Idalis Irizarry 

December 1, 2019 
Secondary Classroom Methods 
 
Middle and High School Music Classroom Observations 
 
When this course first begun in September, I was set on teaching music at the elementary 

level. My love for young children is so strong; therefore, deep down, I felt that this class was not 

going to be for me. However, after fully immersing myself in our classroom teaching others, 

being taught, and observing full days of middle and high school music classes, my perspective 

has done a complete 180. Making a positive difference in a child’s life through music is a huge 

goal of mine when I become a teacher, and after observing upper level music classes at both the 

Boston Latin School and the Cambridge Upper School, I am more motivated than ever to teach 

middle and high school music.  

On Friday, October 11th, I made my way to the Boston Latin School (BLS), which was 

the first public school created in America in 1635; it holds both middle and high school students 

grades 7-12. As soon as I entered the building, I heard music blaring from a jazz quartet in the 

lobby. It turns out that it was Teacher Appreciation Day, and the school hosted a huge 

celebration with lots of food and musical entertainment put on by four high school senior 

musicians. This immediately gave me a great first impression of the school and it’s appreciation 

and respect for music.  

Before my day of observing got started, Mr. Paul Pitts, director of visual and performing 

arts at BLS led me to his office to hand me a beautiful brochure of every music program offered 

at the school (consisting of about 25 music ensembles) and explained to me how the BLS music 

department operates. Unlike my middle and high school experience, I was informed by Paul that 
there are 10 music teachers employed at BLS (including himself). I was extremely excited to get 

to observe so many different teaching styles in one day. This was also the first time I have met 

someone who administers soley the music department in a public school. Paul’s job interests me 

a lot because leadership is something I am extremely passionate about. I would love to connect 

with him sometime in the near future to further discuss his job role. 

The first class I sat in on was a high school underclassmen Treble Choir directed by Mr. 

Snyder. He also teaches music theory, beginning strings, and percussion classes at BLS. What I 

noticed right away was the high energy that he maintained from the moment his students entered 

the room to the moment they exited. His energy did not necessarily mean loud, but instead 

intense and focused with a few jokes tossed in once in a while. Snyder had his own elevated 

podium set up at the front of the room, a grand piano and accompanist, and risers built into the 

floor with music posture chairs for the choir. This set up seemed to be extremely effective and is 

something I hope to have access to if I teach high school and middle school choir. The class 

schedule and important performance dates were also clearly written up on the white board. 

Whenever the choir did run throughs of their pieces, Snyder took voice memo recordings on his 

cell phone which I found to be very useful. This will help him listen for voice parts that will need 

refinement in upcoming lessons. Another positive was that the repertoire Snyder chose for the 

Treble Choir was varied, with songs including percussive elements to a cappella style vocals. 

One element of the class that I thought could have been improved was the fact that 

students were sitting with really awful posture. Besides being lazy and bringing the sound of 

their group down, this could damage their vocal cords. I believe this should have been addressed 

in some capacity. One other thing I noticed was that that the end of class bell rang while he was 
in the middle of teaching. I can relate to this issue, and am hoping to find strategies to make sure 

running over class time does not happen when I get out into the field.  

The next class I observed that day was Fundamentals of Music taught by Ms. George. 

She teaches general music and vocal music for the middle school level. At the beginning of class, 

students walked in and sat at traditional classroom chairs attached to desks. The class size was 

about 30 7th grade students. Over her boombox speakers as students were entering the room, she 

played music from an artist called Susan Baca (a Peruvian vocalist). This is something I believe 

sets the tone for the class in a positive way. I was also pleased to see that she picked a musician 

from a different country. She made sure to also write the name of the artist on the white board for 

all of the students to see. Once the class was settled in, Ms. George played a trap beat over her 

boombox and sang a welcome song with the class about letting go of stress. In 7th grade, some 

students tend to get off task and try to be class clowns, but the way Ms. George handled a 

situation of a student asking a clearly off topic question was really professional. She made sure 

to not completely shut them down, but rather said “Yes, BUT instead try doing _____.” 

Some notes I took down about things I may want to be careful of is to avoid doing too 

much teacher talk. I found that she was trying to make sure students understood their task for the 

class period, but I could tell that students were getting off task / antsy. This is something that I 

think I may fall into as a teacher if I am not careful, so I made sure to take note of this. As the 

students were working in groups on a project researching musical instruments from other 

cultures, it was clear that some groups were off task and using their phones / electronics to do 

things other than the assigned project until Ms. George came around to their group to check on 

their progress with the project.  

 Even though I observed more than three classes through this school day, I will touch on 

one more class that I observed at BLS. Ms. McKenna taught Instrumental Ensemble class for 

french horn. She also is the director of the concert and symphonic band, and class VI lessons. 

This class was set up in the band room which also had risers built into the floor. The room was 

absolutely enormous! The three students in the class were all 7th graders learning the french horn 

for the first time this year. Ms. McKenna had the students start by buzzing through their 

mouthpiece; she would buzz a rhythmic pattern / pitch pattern, and they would buzz back. 

However, none of the students were producing a clear sound out of their mouth pieces. She gave 

students the advice to keep their lips flat and bring the corners of their mouth back. After this 

warm up, they began reviewing pieces they had to practice for homework in the ​Tradition of 

Excellence​ book. Despite their good behavior and attention to the class, they all struggled 

especially with starting and remaining on the correct partial. One of the students also had a hard 

time playing at the same tempo as the rest of the class. One exercise Ms. McKenna gave her 

students to help with their airflow was to vocalize “tsstsstsstsstsstsstss” without breathing. This 

class was interesting to observe because even though some of these musical elements may seem 

easy to us as musicians, as teachers, we need to learn to have all the patience in the world. We 

also need to learn how to explain concepts in more than one way to students.  

The second and last teacher I observed on both Friday, November 1st and Monday, 

November 25th at the Cambridge Upper School was Ms. Ariel Carmichael. Ariel is the general 

music teacher and chorus teacher for grades 6-8. The first day that I observed in her classroom, I 

quickly noticed that all three of the grade levels were learning and taking tests on the exact same 

beginner level music theory / music concepts. This shocked me at first, but after speaking with 
Ariel about this during a break period, she told me that this is her second year at the school and a 

lot of these students did not get brought up through the school system with a good music 

program. Therefore, she is starting from a basic level with all of the grade levels, and is trying to 

ease them into harder musical concepts such as reading sheet music.  

The diversity among the student body and faculty in this school made me extremely 

happy because growing up, my public school system was 80% white. I loved to see children of 

all races and cultures come together in a safe and uplifting classroom community. This is exactly 

the type of environment I hope to foster one day in my own classroom.  

Aside from musical content, the way Ariel had to deal with classroom management was a 

bit non-traditional. Students were not sent to the office after their first warning. They were not 

screamed at harshly for not listening. Rather, they were told they were loved, told to go take a 

walk, asked to play an instrument to keep them busy, or were told to talk to Ariel after class. I 

only witnessed one student sent to the office the entire observation. I believe that in extreme 

cases this is necessary, but for the most part disciplinary matters should be handled within my 

own classroom. In some ways I see how this style is useful. If students are sent to the office 

every single time they talk out of turn or disturb the class, their motivation for doing well and 

believing they can do well diminishes. My goal in life is to turn a child’s life around. I want to 

get students passionate about learning and the power music has to change the world. If students 

are constantly sitting in the office, how will I ever be able to accomplish this?  

Aural learning in chorus class is the primary way students in all three grade levels learned 

music. They listened to recordings of the original songs, and also learned by rote. Sheet music 

was distributed, but mainly for students to refer to the lyrics. It made me feel a bit sad to know 
that majority of these students struggled with reading sheet music at their age. I know that in 

middle school, I was reading sheet music in band very well. I hope to get my future students 

(especially vocalists) to this level, too. It will just take patience. One other idea I liked was that 

Ariel had her students do “in-formances” meaning performances in the classroom on the risers 

that are video recorded. Ariel displayed the grading rubric for each singer on the smart board, 

and then was able to watch the video back and give individual students a graded assessment on 

their performance.  

One last thing that I took away from this observation was the fact that Ariel was 

extremely culturally accepting and aware. When I first introduced myself to her as “eye-dah-lis”, 

she said, “really? Are you sure it’s not ‘ee-dah-lees’?” I was shocked because this was the first 

time in my life that someone has wanted to pronounce my name the correct way. When I told her 

my last name, she did the same thing and pronounced it correctly in spanish, “ee-ree-zah-zee”. 

This meant so much to me, and inspired me to make sure I learn how to say student’s names 

correctly in my classroom. This is such a huge part of personal identity, and is also a first step to 

really getting to know individual students and their cultures. Overall, these observations 

positively changed my outlook on music education and the path I plan to take. I am more excited 

than ever to become a culturally aware, patient, and creative public school music teacher.