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Richard Sorey Posts: 3
5/22/2018
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In my first-year teaching high school music I had the pleasure of teaching two visually impaired students. After speaking with both students about their musical goals I made an accommodation plan for each student. Student A was going to have to learn to read braille music; which was a new concept for her. Student B would be performing in a typical band class and therefore would not be able to receive visual cues from a conductor.
Student A was eager to learn to read music and we spoke with the school vision teacher to have the piano text book brailed for her. Student A did great with understanding the content but would need physical guidance on hand placement at the piano, hand shape, and finger patterns. Student A did really well with these accommodations and excelled at the piano.
Student B was in my percussion class. Student B did not know how to read braille music and was not interested in having the music brailed for him. With Student B we did a lot of audible testing (checking understanding of terms, listening and describing), and echo teaching. Often, a peer or myself would play a rudiment for him and he would echo it back to us. We would describe the technique, physically guide hand shape and stick grip, and coach through the learning process. He would regularly perform with the schools Wind Ensemble after learning his part through coaching completely by memory and with subtle cues from his peers.
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Andrew Dubbert Posts: 4
6/3/2018
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A few years ago I had a student with a viisual impairment. He could read music but it was too small for him to see. We enlarged all of his music on the copier, and used a glue stick to put it on cardboard. Sometimes he needed another music stand, but he was able to perform with the band just fine after the music was twice the size.
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Madison Ickes Posts: 2
6/5/2018
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In my area, it seems that E/BD students are very common. These students can become disruptive, enraged, and very hard to manage. These students are also written off halfway through the year by other teachers. I often have administrators try to help me by removing the students from my class because they will yell that they hate me and hate my class, but this is just a part of their EBD. Most of them time they apologize and beg to stay in band. Instruments are a great way for them to feel successful, especially if they are not doing well in other classes. I come up with ways for students to excuse themselves when they feel angry or overwhelmed. Sometimes that just means making eye contact and they excuse themselves to sit in a practice room where I can watch them but none of the other students can bother them. The most important thing is to show the students that you understand and that you are fighting for them, and not to take it personally when they go off. I wait patiently, and once they calm down I explain firmly that what they said was unacceptable and how it made me feel. Most of the time this works, and we can move on without further incident. If I get angry or raise my voice, it only escalates the situation. This has been a hard lesson to learn, to stay calm in the face of an angry student.
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Gregory Harris Posts: 3
6/7/2018
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One student that sticks out in my mind is a student who was in my Music Theory class. They were very much "with it" and a wonderful student. Had no prior music experience before, but was such a great student, took wonderful notes and did well on the assessments. One day they came in (after being absent for a few days...which was red flag number 1) and was very distant...almost looked lost. After class, I called them over and they became very agitated and confused. I could tell immediately something wasn't right. The student luckily confided in me that they had been involved in a car accident a few days prior and was still recuperating. I knew immediately that this was definitely a case of Traumatic Brain Injury. The student went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Acute Amnesia, but they thought that the return to school would help "jog their memory" and help it return. The reason the student was confused.....they had no idea where they were or who I was.
A little tricky, because their short-term memory was in tack, but they could no longer retain information over 24 hours. So, with the help of the administration, guidance counselors, school nurse, the ESE Department my colleagues and some creativity, we came up with some ways to assess her. "Exit Tickets" were used to count as an assessment, more time given on assignments, and a host of other things. Luckily, their memory came back in the following days (10 days I believe), but it was definitely something I hadn't encountered before and one I will never forget.
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Jeffrey Clayton Posts: 3
6/20/2018
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I have had several visually impaired students in my choral classes. Besides the normal assistance by their para-professional, I would always provide the accommodation of a peer tutor [usually a student with excellent reading and piano skills] for learning their vocal lines. The student would be allowed to record students near them in rehearsal for use later in home study. The student was encouraged to seek more feedback than normal from me through voice memos that demonstrated their progress or merely asked questions that could be answered at any time and when they needed it.
I have also had a student with Tourette's Syndrome that possessed a very large voice and was extremely self-conscious of her ticks. Many times it caused students around her to be uncomfortable. Through her IEP and work with the parents we were able to adjust her seating assignment so her voice would find a place that complimented the ensemble sound and a place where she felt she was not providing as much of a distraction to her peers.
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Jeffrey Clayton
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Richard Estes Posts: 3
6/20/2018
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I had a student this year in my ACCESS music class with an Orthopedic Impairment. He was wheelchair bound. We would often do activities that would involve class movement. Due to his lack of mobility, this had the potential of him missing out on participation in the various activities. To make sure that the student had access to the activity, I (unless unavailable) or Para- Professional or would move the student around so that they could feel part of the group during the activity.
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Daniel Lloyd Posts: 1
6/20/2018
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Last year I had a student with severe visual impairment in chorus. She used a cane to walk around and got around fairly well on her own. She had a Broadway scene in our last concert from "Heathers" that she could sing and act fairly well, but had trouble learning some minimal choreography. I reached out to her mother who sent her older sister to assist her during learning and helped to reshape the choreography so it was easier for her to learn and remember. In my experiences in working with ESE students of most any type, using staff and family as resources has been invaluable in helping students to learn and fit in within a mainstreamed environment.
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Jillian Savia Posts: 9
6/21/2018
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My first year of teaching I taught a music class to all of the self contained ESE students at my school. One student in particular with Autism and a severe speech impairment had been struggling with several of the musical activities I was planning at the time. Her speech impairment made it difficult for her to succeed in activities where she needed to "describe or name" what she as hearing. Her hand flapping and trouble focusing made activities that used coloring, singing lyrics, and trying most instruments difficult as well. One day, I decided to experiment with bucket drums and teaching notation/rhythm by using food associated words that fit the syllables of the rhythms. An example of this would be using the word "pear" for 1 quarter note, the word "Apple" for 2 eighth notes and the word "Watermelon" for 4 sixteenth notes. The same day, this same student, who had struggled with so many other aspects of music, played all of the rhythms perfectly on the bucket drums with drum sticks. I put up various rhythms for her and she continued to get them all right when other students would struggle. That day we found what she excelled at and her main teachers as well as parents were informed so that they could begin incorporating rhythm into other aspects of her learning.
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Kristen Franzen Posts: 3
6/21/2018
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I had a student with cerebral palsy in my chorus class. She did not have any difficulty intellectually. However, her body position due to her condition, as well as limited movement within her wheel chair, made good posture quite difficult. This led to difficulty with breath support. We worked to have her push up with her elbows on the wheel chair arms to lift her ribs as much as possible. This resulted in a well produced sound. She could not increase volume the way other students could, but she was able to sing in tune. Her physical impairment also made jaw movement more difficult. The need for a dropped jaw actually reiforced exercise that were being done by her therapist and, therefore, supported an IEP goal.
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Ian Black Posts: 3
7/11/2018
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One summer, a rising junior brought in his little brother to meet me. His brother had not been in band before, and the purpose of meeting was to find where he would be a good fit in our program. What I did not know until several weeks later was that his younger brother was had an intellectual disability after we already decided that since he liked french horn, he would play that and march mellophone.
I was a relatively new teacher at the time, so I wasn't really sure how to handle the difficulties brought on by engaging in learning an instrument AND moving around. Over time, I worked with ESE staff to find ways to keep this young man involved in marching band while making it more approachable and achievable for him. The easiest answer was to limit his movement responsibilities, but it was my goal to make his involvement meaningful. He ended up having a solo of sorts (unleashing a sail from a giant "boat") that was at the climactic finale of the show. The night of our last performance, however, the knot holding the sail was tied far too tight by an overzealous band parent.
As the boat raced across the field, I watched from the sidelines as he struggled to untie the knot. When it became clear that he could not untie it, he surprised me in the most amazing way possible: He simply turned around and saluted the audience as if he were captain of the ship. We had not rehearsed this possibility. We had not talked of this possibility. He came to that solution on his own. I could not have been more proud of him.
Over the next few years, we transitioned him off of French Horn into Percussion. He continued to have difficulty reading music, so we devised alternate notation for him. He learned all of his 12 major scales on mallets by ear, and was able to approach most percussion instruments with proper technique if he had repeated exposure and hand-over-hand instruction.
The best things about this young man were his attitude and his passion for making music. His ESE teachers consistently told me that he would mention band constantly, and that his behavior was never an issue ("because he knows that if he got in trouble here, he'd be in trouble with you!").
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Melanie Harris Posts: 3
7/20/2018
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During the 17-18 school year, I had a student that was autistic. He had a beautiful voice, was extremely intelligent, but he struggled to stay seated. He wanted to pace or walk in circles during chorus class. I created a secret code for him to let me know when he was losing focus. I imbedded opportunities for the class to stand, to walk to the rhythm of the music, or to stand in a circle with your voice part. If he was still struggling, i told him to take a walk down the hall and in one minute be back in his seat. He loved it. He would return with renewed focus, and a thumbs up from him let me know he was ready to go back to work. Vocal warm-ups included body movements. I shared this information with the 9th grade team who were struggling to find ways to help him focus.
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Deborah Shenning Posts: 3
7/20/2018
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"Autumn" became a part of our chorus program as a 7th grader. She loved music and the other kids but her intellectual and physical disabilities posed a challenge. Reading music was out of the question so I printed out the words and enlarged them so that she could follow along with us. This also helped her aide : ) Autumn could sing but only in a limited range. She sang very quietly so it wasn't a big problem when she couldn't reach all of the notes. She was so nervous and excited at her first concert she was in tears. She performed with us and had a great time. I also need to brag on the class she was a part of. They welcomed and included her in every way.
The next year Autumn was back in my class with more confidence and the same big smile. I was determined extend her range and we worked together all year. During warm ups I would stand near Autumn, sing softly in her ear and tug it gently upward. This technique works with any singer struggling to match pitch. It took Autumn a few times to get used to it but once she started really singing on pitch she was hooked. Autumn could not climb up on the risers so we just always had a row on the floor in front of the risers that she was a part of. Luckily she was not very tall!
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Cathy Lee Posts: 1
7/24/2018
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During the past school year, I had multiple students who had learning disabilities in my chorus classes. For my beginning chorus students, I gave them a photocopy of their original copy so they could highlight their part and cover the accompaniment and other voice parts which reduced the amount of stimuli on the page for the students to process. In order to not single out any particular student, this option is available to all students. I also implemented Kagan structures to help reinforce review topics that would reduce time writing and increase collaboration. Since my students had trouble processing, using structures that broke down the work into doable chunks with peers coaching helped solidify concepts. For example, instead of having each student write a paragraph about a recording, students would be placed in groups of three with only one paper and one pencil. One at a time, each student would write one sentence with coaching from their peers and then pass it to the next person for the next sentence.
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matt stott Posts: 3
7/27/2018
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A student with a traumatic brain injury was a joy to have but required many modifications. He was significantly behind in technical and reading skills. I found volunteer tutors from the community to come in to work with him regularly. He did better in a small group environment as opposed to the large ensemble, so a peer tutor was also helpful. We chose a selection of solos that he could listen to recordings of and practice with confidence and created alternate assessments.
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Ray Freire Posts: 3
7/27/2018
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A few years ago, I had a student with visual impairment. I used other students to have him learn by ear and then kept the "follow the conductor moments" to a minimum and was very rehearsed so that timing was expected.
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Oscar Vinson Posts: 3
8/2/2018
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I've had many students with varying levels of disability. One noteworthy example is of a student I had a few years ago who was highly functioning autistic. He is brilliant. His driving focus was guitar, and in my guitar class he was the most productive student I had that year. I had to convince him that reading music would speed up his ability to communicate with guitarists he wished to learn from. When he bought in, the sky was the limit. As a result, he would come to me on a weekly basis to show me his independent studies ranging from classical pieces to rock songs.
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Nicole Matson Posts: 3
8/15/2018
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I have a student who is vision impaired. She has a hard time getting around in a classroom with so many opportunities to fall or run into something. For this reason, we have a clear path that she knows each day. She sits up front and is paired with an assistant on her instrument to help her get her instrument out, get seated, and play. She is unable to view music as written from the book or sheet music so we blow up her music to a larger size for her.
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Douglas Moser Posts: 3
9/4/2018
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As a percussion teacher, I have had to accommodate many students who wanted to be in band, but could not physically perform a wind instrument. I had the pleasure of teaching one of these students for all four years of her time in high school. She had a severe Orthopedic Disability, but never let it stop her once. Though she moved around school in a wheelchair, she had the ability to stand for several minutes at a time. She auditioned and made a vibraphone spot in our competitive marching band. She had a very out-going personality, and found it very easy to make friends, despite her very serious condition. She was very adamant about not letting her disability interrupt her learning. I made some accommodations - such as writing her a 2-mallet part because she was not able to hold four mallets, and allowing her to rest during rehearsal as needed. Her parents were extremely supportive, and made it a point to be at every single trip so that could assist her however needed. She truly was an inspiration to the whole band, and is now excelling in college!
edited by Douglas Moser on 9/4/2018
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Brigitte Emenheiser Posts: 3
9/7/2018
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I teach choir, keyboard and AP Music Theory. I had a student in choir who was partially deaf and she loved singing in choir. Intonation, vowel formation, balance/blend and tone quality were challenging topics for her because of her inability to hear herself or others around her. She worked very hard with me throughout the year to find different ways to engage in the choral classroom. Visual cues, physical adaptations and peer section leaders helped her find her voice in choir.
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mark sanders Posts: 3
9/13/2018
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Years ago teaching high school instrumental music, I had a student with a profound speech impairment. Communicating with him in the regular instructional environment proved to be very challenging despite his exceptional ability to play percussion. Writing short responses to me in class and using visual signage was helpful but time consuming in rehearsals. One day, I over heard him singing with remarkable phrasing and fluency and absolutely no stuttering. From then on, we used singing to communicate. Being a music class, it was all the more appropriate! It worked beautifully. Today, this man holds a doctorate in percussion performance and is a highly successful classroom teacher. He is easily one of the highlights of my career.
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