Practical classroom and maintenance tasks

As a resource-intensive learning area, music activity in schools generates a range of supporting materials which need to be organised and stored. The term ‘resources’ incorporates materials that are distributed to all schools through the Ministry of

Education’s resource development programme as well as those purchased or otherwise acquired by schools and teachers. These resources can be further classified in terms of musical instruments, both classroom and specialist; audio visual and technical materials and equipment; and curriculum documents and written materials. In recent years the latter category has expanded in scope to include increasing quantities of electronic resources as well as electronic storage and retrieval processes. For some participants, organising resources was the first ‘learning point’ in their role, and all participants were well-placed to speak about the myriad tasks that contributed to music resources being available and easily accessible for busy classroom teachers.

In Sue’s first teaching position she inherited systems for organising resources and learnt to use them with support from other teachers and the school’s resource person. This experience gave her confidence to reorganise the resources in her new school:

You can spend hours tidying them up, especially when people just go and bung them back in the room and don’t look for the boxes or look for where you keep them. I mean we used to have a huge number of percussion instruments so what I did a few years ago was I decided that nobody was really coming and getting them so I got those big white plastic containers and made up percussion kits for each age level. The year ones have got their own percussion kit, so have the year twos and year threes and year fours.

Int: For the year levels, and just one kit then?

One kit which they have to share between three classes, which isn’t totally satisfactory but at least they know it’s there and it’s being used a lot more than when there was just a box of triangles and a box of guiros and a box of wood blocks and there were always loads of triangles and hardly anything else. (S Int1:8)

Embedded in this account were hints of the knowledge, thinking and decision-making that informed Sue’s resource organisation including awareness of what was available

and its current use, and ideas about what would make resources more accessible to other classroom teachers and therefore better utilised.

Almost all participants in the study were responsible for ensuring the maintenance of resources, for ordering replacement or new resources, and for collating and distributing new resources issued from the Ministry of Education. As well as caring for music resources, incidental resource tasks frequently become part of the primary school music leader’s ‘portfolio’. For example, Leanne talked about her choir’s upcoming

community performance and the distribution of choir uniforms:

We gave those out yesterday and it was a huge job because they’re all different sizes. We had to try on a shirt and if it wasn’t right come back and then a skirt or whatever, and they’ve got numbers.

Int: And so you have to record those?

Yes, each one of those, and have named bags, and we are going to have a dress rehearsal tomorrow. And I’m hoping everyone will bring those things because you send the notices out and you find a few left in the hall! So we’ll just see. (L Int1:7)

The specifics of resource development varied according to the particular school context. For example, when Will and some of his colleagues checked the instruments in their school they found that nothing needed to be replaced “which in some ways is because they haven’t been used very often. Often when they have been used it’s because I’ve got them out. That’s the downside of that - some of these things could be used more often” (W Int1:20). In contrast, other participants found themselves responsible for resources that had not been well cared for, in Rosie’s case “basically a very ratty tatty box of broken down instruments” (R Int1:5). Like David and Leanne, Rosie had

systematically set out to expand the classroom instrument resources in her school in the light of teachers’ possible use of the instruments in their classroom programmes. She described how she and another teacher shared responsibility for resourcing the school for music, a task which involved working to a budget and making decisions about the purchase of equipment and materials. In response to a question about whether this was time-consuming, she replied:

No, no! The exciting thing about it is that you get sent brochures in the mail and information packages about music, so you can invest in buying neat stuff, neat

percussion instruments and in the last two years we’ve been building up a nice supply to provide everyone, at least, with an instrument if we’re all studying music together. That’s really neat to have that opportunity, because, that’s important. (R Int1:4)

One interesting aspect of many of the interviews was the frequency with which the subject matter turned towards specific music or resource needs. For example, Ian and I discussed possible repertoire for his specialist chorale, and Sue and I had an extended exchange about the challenge of finding appropriate music listening material to develop into user-friendly units of work for less confident teachers. We weighed up the merits of particular packaged listening programmes and discussed the potential of specific pieces of music for classroom use.

The provision of musical resources is not something that occurs at the whim of the primary school music leader but must be accomplished in line with each school’s budgetary systems. Will described how his current principal responded to requests for new resources by opening up the whole budget and providing the larger context for spending in the school:

If you can justify things to him then he’ll go out of his way to find the money to buy the resource you need. If you say that you need it he’ll say ‘yes’. It’s

amazing – ‘I will find you the money to do that because I can see…’ We’ve just replaced all the stereos in the classrooms with ones like that. Nice, big powerful ones rather than the little dinky ones that we had before that were tinny. So the kids will hear good quality music in the classroom. Or, if you want to take it outside, because you want to do dance on the courts or whatever, they can hear it…

(W Int1:21)

In Will’s opinion, the principal’s willingness to resource music in his school stemmed directly from his interest in classroom programmes.

He knows what’s happening which is good, but it doesn’t always happen that way. You can be doing these quality things in your classroom that people don’t know about. And I guess, also, when you say you need such-and-such a resource or something like that, and they haven’t seen what you have been doing, they can’t see the importance of it. (W Int1:1)

Resource development extended to structural systems not only for the storage of materials but also as a means to encourage music activity itself. Participants were aware that their own resources, in terms of both materials and professional support, could be made available to their colleagues. For Rosie, organising her personal collection of resources had been helpful:

You can revisit and go back. That is the beauty of having a good little system set up like that and you can show, people come in and ask you ‘can you help with this?’ and it’s at your fingertips. (R Int1:11)

In Rosie’s school, a new building for multi-class and specialist curriculum activities was being completed at the time of my visit. This had motivated a revamp of resources associated with establishing:

a musical resource area which we are developing and putting you know, stations up for instruments and that will be ongoing for a little while yet. We wanted to make sure there was the resource base for people to access. (R Int1:5)

Sue also addressed the need to support other teachers to familiarise themselves with new music resources. She identified the difference between her previous school in which, at the request of staff, work around new resources took place at dedicated full staff meetings, and her current position where it occurred in a much more fragmented way, mostly with her own junior school (Year 1 & 2) team. Sue described how the teachers experimented with the resources, listening to the songs that appealed and discussing how they might work with them:

Sometimes instead of playing around with the songs we say okay, let’s look at how you would introduce a unit on beat or how would you look at rhythm or how would you look at pitch? So we look at the different elements and quite often I will write a unit at the beginning of the term and I will share that unit and then say ‘right, here’s the new resource, and here’s how you can use it.’ And we’ll actually try out some of the ideas together.

Int: And have you found you’ve got a good response from teachers?

The junior school is excellent. They get on board and have a go. Some of them will only stick to ones that I’ve actually workshopped and use those ideas

they’re comfortable with, whereas others will come and get the resource from me and try other things as well. (S Int1:5)

Aside from taking responsibility for the material resources that support the regular music programme in schools, a number of participants were very conscious of the professional development support they could offer to their colleagues. For example, in her current position as a member of a large junior school team, Sue had put in place a roster for team singing. She had set up a file that contained overhead projector transparencies and accompanying tapes and CDs so that teachers could just pull out what they required for team singing. There was also a notebook to record the songs used in order to avoid overusing particular material, and she took responsibility for introducing new repertoire:

I make sure that there are new resources coming into the school every year so we’ve got a sort of turnover of songs. There are some old favourites though that we get every year. And that’s quite good because the kids from the previous year like to revisit. (S Int1:2)