Working with Student Teachers in Distance Learning

I had the opportunity to work with a student teacher this spring during the shutdown, and like many cooperating teachers, I was forced to shift gears essentially overnight. Kayode Gloster was a student … now a graduate … of Rowan University and was one of Dr. Christopher Thomas’ choral students.

Kayode came with a wealth of experience, a thoughtful perspective, and a real joy for music that made my job and the situation easier. They were interested from the start in engaging with me and my students as much as possible. From my vantage/concern point, I wanted to figure out how to best use their time … and not waste it … and give them as valid of an experience as possible.

Nothing that we did comes close to what an in-person placement would look like, and if remote teaching continues into the fall, I think that it’s important that all of us simultaneously try to make the best of the situation while continuing to emphasize the fact … and reminding others and ourselves … that none of this is a replacement for the collaboration and relationships of an in-person choral community. I’m just sharing a few of the things that we did over Kayode’s placement if they might spark an interest with others or dovetail into ideas already in place. I would also welcome other ideas and solutions. I already have a student teacher placement assignment from Rowan for next year and I am currently feeling that combined sense of positive expectation … and internal resignation … over what the actual experience will be like for them. The following is not an exhaustive listing of all activities that I have been doing with my students, just the ones that connected most-directly with Kayode’s placement.

The stuff of our work that we do as choral directors is rehearse/create/discover/reveal/make music in a collaborative, connected process. Kayode and I had no illusions that we would be able to create a live rehearsal experience, so we decided to run sectionals instead, concentrating on part work and musical elements. We held online sectional rehearsals and took questions and offered feedback. I took a public domain piece (the Gloria from the Heligmesse by Haydn) and created a marked-up pdf and broke it down into three short sections, asking students to practice in chunks prior to our sectional work on each portion. Students were asked to record their work and send it in to us and then to offer their own critique on their performance. Kayode was responsible for that procedure … receiving recordings, offering feedback and encouragement and responding to student reflections on their recordings.

We also asked students to continue practicing the music that we were already working on before the shutdown, not knowing at the time whether we might be able to return or not. They kept practice logs and offered reflections on their practice. Kayode worked with those documents and reflections and I encouraged them to give comments that spoke specifically to what the students had shared so that it would not feel as though we were so disconnected by the situation. Specificity/interest opens windows while generalization creates walls … or even a vacuum.

I gave Kayode the chance to coach our students individually in a group-lesson format with their audition preparation for All State Chorus.  Students listened in but only one student and Kayode were unmuted at a time. I felt that this most-closely approximated the kind of vocal pedagogy work that they might be able to engage in in an actual in-person experience. It also gave my students an opportunity to have reinforcement from a different perspective. The attached tile of screenshots is from a session of Kayode working with my students.

Finally, we worked a great deal on choral elements, musical elements and artistic/life/heart/self-reflection elements through listening and response. By assigning everything through Google Classroom, each assignment generated a private document that was only viewable by the student, my student teacher and myself. I felt that this gave Kayode a chance to read and respond to a range of student thoughts/reactions/experiences and interact directly with the students. Many took advantage of this dialogue which gave Kayode a chance to engage vocal/choral/person/caring/teaching chops in an authentic way.