Staff writer
When Marion High School music teacher Adam Johnson was informed that he would be teaching Marion Elementary School students this school year, he was worried about how he would relate to younger students.
He taught fifth-graders at his first job as a choir and band teacher in southwest Kansas but a kindergartner is a completely different story.
“I had been praying about it a lot,” he said. “I’m certified to teach K through 12, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I wanted to.”
During the summer, Johnson prepared for the teaching change. He visited an elementary education professor at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina. She talked to him about changing his teaching approach, simplifying his explanations.
For one of her first lessons, she asked Johnson to define a melody. He churned the question in his brain. A melody is a fundamental part of music; students know what it is when they hear it, which makes it difficult to define.
“It’s something you can sing,” Johnson responded with the simplest definition that came to mind.
She responded, “It’s when the notes go up and the notes go down.”
“The simplicity of explanation is an art,” Johnson said.
With his elementary school classes, he has tried to teach fun lessons.
He showed the class a music video with animal scenes put to classical music. The crash of symbols is simultaneous with rams butting heads; frenetic violins accompany swarms of insects.
The goal of the video is to get the class to listen to the music and pay attention to the thoughts and emotions it provoked. He had to persuade his students to refrain from pointing out the animals as if they were in a zoo.
“I want them to understand the world,” he said. “Music is not just singing and dancing and making noise, it’s listening.”
Johnson said he has sung nursery rhymes with his classes.
In another exercise, he taught them the fundamentals of rhythm. He taught the students a rock clap, added a stomp, and then sang over the beat.
The rhythm exercise was a lesson Johnson transferred to his high school band class. He sped up and complicated the rhythm with more motions for older students. The exercise was an example of brain function and learning by doing. Most of the students could not keep up with the combination of so many actions at one time.
“When you say, ‘I can’t do this,’ you may not be able to yet,” he said. “The more synapses that connect the more you learn. It doesn’t come as naturally for some as it does for others.”
Johnson’s worst fears — of the students not liking him and not learning from him — have proven unwarranted.
“It turns out the kids love me and have a great time in music,” Johnson said he has heard from other teachers.
Johnson was equally apprehensive of his own feelings about teaching elementary school students.
“It’s been better than I thought it would be,” he said.
For now, Johnson will continue to bike back and forth at noon between the two schools. He starts the morning at Marion High School teaching band class and then teaches four hours at the elementary school in the afternoon.
He bought a commuter bike this summer so he does not have to monopolize the one car he and his wife, Laura, share.
“It’s a great break to my day,” he said.