would you have a problem with an unqualified person teaching music in your school?

[goonIcantakeit]

question to both parents and teachers.

I shall be teaching classroom music next term. I'm very excited, but want to be prepared for any ill-feeling/doubts there may be about having an unqualified person teaching. It's during the teachers' PPA time.

I have a track recorder at the school in that I run an ensemble there, so I am not an unknown quantity and it is on merit.

I've name changed (though rather ineffectively so will do so again after this thread).

It seems to be that the word "qualified" is unhelpful. It makes it sound as if I don't know what I'm doing at all.
Now, of course I know less than I will, but I also know more than 99.99999% of the population about what to do with 60 kids on 18 instruments.
I have clocked up more learning/training hours over the past four years than I imagine is allowed to any teachers, but they are all ines I've chosen.
Maybe next year year I should say I'm self taught or say that I have learned on the job. And to show respect to my teacher colleagues, I can just say I don't have QTS.
So thanks to all again, this thread is helping me work out how to present myself.

Sorry, ipad errors.

It seems that the word "unqualified" is unhelpful.

DS1 has been teaching kids for the last 4 years out of school and in school for the last year. No qualifications but has got one up to Grade 6 at a fraction of the cost of a qualified teacher. I know where I'd go.

Another thing this is helping me with is to think about what "qualifications" actually help you teach children classroom music.

ABRSM grades are a route towards playing in an orchestra and seem designed to unteach basic skills such as what to do for kids who prefer not to read.

There isn't a formal qualification that I have found yet that I would to take. That's the problem. PGCE would show me how to teach maths and English with five hours on music and I don't want to teach those. CME is about assessing you in the setting where you already work and our head does that. Grade 8 violin would be a distraction from teaching and from my own violin lessons. A Masters is only as good as the person supervising your dissertation and I'm nowhere near the centres where the three people I would want to study with work. There's nothing really.

DS1 has been teaching kids for the last 4 years out of school and in school for the last year. No qualifications but has got one up to Grade 6 at a fraction of the cost of a qualified teacher. I know where I'd go.

Wow! Guitar? My own Ds1 just started with his first guitar pupil.

Potato, there will be a couple of kids like yours. I am thinking hard about them.

Thanks for saying what you did about:
"OP my dd is a gifted musician and attended school until the end of y3.
Because of the provision for music at schools and the curriculum it is hardly quality even with the best teacher.I would have been far happier to have you teach my dd when she was at school than a teacher following the curriculum, planning etc. You sound like you will inspire children to want to play music and that is what it should be about. The ones who are serious will be having instrumental lessons outside ".

I have found that the gifted ones I meet early will solo, improvise and harmonise with gusto with increasing levels of independence, and seem to like exploring alternatives to their instrument lessons and exploring the relationship between the styles. The problem is with children who like to learn in one particular way (understandably - they are only little) and have already absorbed the notion that playing with sheet music is right, playing without it or going "off-page" is wrong......

What would you have liked me to do for your gifted child in year 3in a whole school situation?

Weneed totalk

Both Trinity Guidhall & PAA (part if Rockschool) offer teaching diplomas designed for those teaching in a group setting. You can choose drama or music for both options I think.

weneedtotalk

You can't worry about the odd one like my dd, I would never expect a teacher in a school setting to be able to teach her at the level she works, she's scarily freaky.
I think the children who don't get the benefit of out of school tuition need to be encouraged and enthused during primary years. Then maybe with somebody like yourself they will continue into secondary.
You would be doing enough for my child because you would be encouraging others in a less than stuffy way her school teacher did.
One day she singled dd out and when she answered a question about Rhythm and pulse said she had confused them both. She most certainly hadn't, the teacher had. There was never an apology or any recognition of her ability until she left, when teacher said they would lose one of G&T list.
The dc in schools around here would welcome you with open arms and I wish you the best of luck

thanks pictures, will follow up on that.

Potato - interesting! I will have a lad who is a bit freaky (of course we can't compare....). I kind of see my mission with the exceptionally able as helping them learn how to join in with all sorts of other musicians of very varying ability. I think it's not necessarily easy to join in boisterous joyful playing if your ear and technique are very sophisticated, but that socially it's great to be able to find a way in.

What instruments/voice work was your dd focussed on at that age?

If you want to use Youtube, have you checked that you actually can access it and upload to it from school?

Many schools block it or use the youtube Edu version, which can be a bit flaky when it comes to uploading.

A PGCe in Music teaching. That is the course which you need to do. Hundreds of people every year graduate from this course in the UK and they are the people who are qualified to teach music to children in schools. HTH. Sorry but I really am so frustrated with your attitude to this.

As a minimum, go and observe and talk to someone who has recently completed a PGCE in Music and learn exactly what it is that you are missing. This stabbing in the dark and asking MNers how you should do it is beyond insulting to the many qualified music teachers reading this.

Of course you wouldn't just do a primary PGCE, that's a ridiculous idea. I'd like a chat with your head teacher, frankly, you seem to have convinced him that music can be taught effectively by someone who has neither the musical ability or teaching training to do so.

Note that to be accepted on to a PGCE Music course, you also need a Music degree.

You say you are better qualified than 99.9999% of others, but there are so, so many talented and hardworking graduates of music colleges across the UK, many of whom have also completed the PGCE. Why are you better than them? A gut feeling about what you are doing is not enough. You sound almost religious about your ability to do it, and not questioning yourself at all, which I find most odd.

weneed

Your nn is getting shorter by the post

I think my dd would have been happy to have an alternative to very structured lessons that she had at that age. Iirc she was only doing violin and singing at that age, she isn't the learn a few songs and take the exam type, although she does do exams sometimes.
I think that you are right with the playing together aspect, even dd only had one little ensemble to join at this age and it is great experience for the future, playing with different abilities. I think improvisation may be the way forward for those who like their music and of course teaching that very good musicians focus on the conductor and quite often play from a mixture of ear and learning the music.
I would like to say I'm surprised by some of the comments you have received but alas I can't.
It makes me realise how fortunate dd is not to have to go to school anymore.

Can your first job be ripping down the posters that state a crochet counts one please? This is the main thing that winds my dh up when visiting a music dept.

"Can your first job be ripping down the posters that state a crochet counts one please? grin This is the main thing that winds my dh up when visiting a music dept."

Yes! I think you and I have a lot in common :)

thank you for the information about the PGCE music course.

Music in primary schools is hardly ever taught by a specialist unless parents pay for private lessons from a peripatetic visiting tutor. The same goes for art, PE, French etc!. Primary teachers teach 12+ subjects and they can not be specialists in them all! What they are experts at it teaching and they apply those skills to deliver a curriculum from schemes of work and resources they spend creatively inventing lessons to engage pupils with. Primary music is very basic, uses lots of singing and encourages an interest rather than refining high achieving talent. I'd say so long as the "teacher" in charge can do what they are being paid to do and is under supervision and suing a scripted lesson plan made by themselves or from a scheme or other teacher then good luck! They shouldn't be making it up as they go along and any adult used to primary education knows that would spell a disaster lesson.

If you pay school fees as I do you get proper music teachers in private primaries - yet another reason women should try to pick careers which enable them to pay school fees where they can.

......jane....I just spat out my drink....

You know that private schools don't need to have qualified teachers don't you? Any old sod can teach music in those....and they do!

To be fair it's true, most independent preps will have a music specialist. And ime they are generally well qualified and experienced because it's a cushy number

Jane

The same teachers teach locally here as teach in the jd conservatoires, they are just cheaper because half of what we pay doesn't go towards school building. There are lots of music teachers teaching privately who teach both private and state sector my dds violin teacher does.

I totally agree with Jane btw- as I said upthread, my children, in two separate schools, have qualified (i.e. Primary QTS on top of multiple instruments to grade 8, trinity/guildhall degree) specialist music teachers, teaching music in whole-class situations throughout the school. Neither does any individual tuition of instruments- that is all done by peris. Perhaps it is a 'cushy number' but it's what parents want.

In the secondary school where I work, I am saddened by the standard of music in the ensembles. They are all so keen to learn though. We have pupils in Y10 who have just started (i.e. prep test level) who obviously want to learn (because, let's face it- they're putting in the practice on top of all their GCSE work) but haven't been offered the opportunities other children have. We have the mc, had lessons since 7 children too, but they are thin on the ground, and I think many give up their instruments in Y7/Y8 despite having got to grade 4 or so.

I personally believe whole-class singing is essential to producing well-rounded children. Singing is good for the body, and soul (recent studies have shown it can combat depression effectively), teaches people to listen, and hear (!), teaches them to read music, improves their memory- the benefits are underestimated by many I think. How many of us on MN still fondly remember the 'Singing Together' programme that ran in English schools in our childhoods? (frequent long threads, reminiscing about the various songs included in the programme) The problem is that so few primary teachers these days know traditional, easy-to-sing songs that they can sing with their classes, if indeed they themselves have the confidence to stand in front of their class and sing!

I used to regularly sing/play on singing together (and time and tune, which was the primary school equivalent) when I was young. :)

Ooh, did you? Do you remember the "Wee Cooper o' Fife?"

"Early one morning just as the sun was rising, I heard a maiden singing in the valley below"

"As sweet Polly Oliver was walking one day......."

"There was a man in our town, in our town, in our town- there was a man in our town and his name was Aikin Drum"

And so on and so on.

We used to do the shows at least once a term. Sometimes more often. I can't remember most of the songs though. The only one I can remember really well was one where I had a solo and the rest of the choir had to copy me - call and response style. And being in a lift at broadcasting house with Cliff Richard. That was very weird. We used to record in the basement studios then have lunch in the famous BBC canteen before getting the coach back to where we lived. Lots of London schools were involved though, they had quite a large roster, I think. Although I think there were only two involved from our borough.