Kristin is a Music Teacher with MCS Northside Middle School in Indiana. With dual responsibilities to teach general music classes and direct the school choir, Kristin shares a glimpse into her busy schedule. Between in-class instruction, lesson planning, and evening performances, Kristin works close to 15 hours per day to ensure her students are receiving the best possible education. She explains how being a successful educator goes far beyond teaching a lesson plan and includes classroom behavior management as well as administrative navigation.
Transcript
My name is Kristin Caviani. I teach middle school general music and choir at Northside Middle. I teach kids how to match pitch. I teach them how to sing in parts. I teach them how music connects to other subjects that they're learning in school and other areas of life such as teamwork and critical thinking. In general music we do a lot of the same things without specifically teaching them how to sing. So they are just experiencing music from different parts of the world and from different time periods as well as learning to sing a little bit and playing a variety of different instruments. We do a lot of drumming and playing ukulele. They love that. I don't work eight hours a day. I work about 15 hours a day. I am lucky enough to have a planning period, so one of my periods in the day I get solely just to plan for the coming days. And then I do a lot of stuff at home as well. You have to learn about your kids. You have to know your kids so that you know what they're going to respond to and what they are going to like and what is going to help grow them and help them grow as musicians and as humans. Being in a classroom and teaching a lesson is as much about being able to manage everything else that's going on in your room as giving them the information. So I constantly have to know what's going on in everyone's conversations and on everyone's computers. And so it's a lot of immediate problem solving. It's a lot of behavior and time management. And also, you don't learn about this in college, but there's a lot that goes into a school at the administrative level. You have to do a lot of paperwork. You have to get ready for field trips. You have to send home permission slips and send home school-wide fundraisers and program fundraisers and everything. And some days I just want one week where all I do is teach music, and you don't always really get that. When we have a concert, we rehearse. I don't have after-school rehearsals with my kids because I recognize that they do other things. They have homework. They have other classes. They play sports. They do other things, so I choose to use class time to rehearse for those performances. But the performance still has to be at night. So then I choose to stay after school because I have a lot of students that ride the bus or walk to school. And if they are unable to come for the performance, and the only thing keeping them back is that they have no transportation, stay after school with me. That's fine. I love being there for my kids if I can be, but that makes performance days, I'm at school from 7:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m. And that's just at school doing work. And then I have to go home and do lesson plans for the next week. So busy weeks are very busy. You eat a lot of meals at school.
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