No matter what subject you teach, there will come a time when you start to feel overwhelmed and ask yourself, “How will I teach it all?”. If you are like me, you might think the answer comes from better planning. You put your teacher hat on, clear your schedule and make a plan. You review what the curriculum states, you understand the content and you know the best way your students will learn it. You design a reasonable scope and sequence for the year, plan engaging lessons, pre-plan appropriate assessment tasks and breathe out a sigh of relief. All will be well.

Is planning enough?

If all was well, I wouldn’t be writing this post though, would I? Good planning IS an important aspect to meeting the requirements of the curriculum. If you do not have an understanding of the steps needed to reach a goal, then you will never be able to reach it. I firmly believe our planning and programs need to be continually reviewed and tweaked to ensure they are robust, relevant and reaching the student outcomes we desire. I also know that we do not teach robots (and we are not robots) and real life will often come and thwart our best plans.

The real-life teaching challenges

I am sure you have come across similar challenges as I have in the classroom:

• Students come to school hungry or sleepy. These needs have to met before you can teach them how to compose a rhythm!
• Students are living with trauma and when they enter your room that day their cortisol levels are sky high and their rational brain is in no place to learn.
• Students have missed prior learning and are not ready to learn today’s content.
• Swimming lessons are on for two weeks and you don’t get to see your classes as regularly.
• Sports carnival puts all of your Friday classes our of sync with with the program as the whole school goes out to participate in the carnival.
• Class excursions or incursions that clash with the specialist timetable.
• Your timetable only allocates music for half of the year. No planning in the world is going to get you to fit the curriculum in.
• Disruptive students who interfere with the flow of the lesson.
• Students with English is their second language will need extra support to understand what you are teaching them.
• Students with additional needs require extra support to access the program.

The list could go on. So, how DO we teach it all?

We don’t.

My current reality

Most students in Western Australia would see their specialist teacher for one hour each week. That works out to be approximately 40 hours per year. Where I teach, the Music and Visual Arts program flip part way through the year. Which means we only see our students for 20 hours per year. This isn’t factoring in any of the other disruptions that may happen during the year, like illness or swimming lessons.

Not only do I simply not have time to cover the whole curriculum, as each year progresses, the students do not have the same prior learning to tackle the next year’s content. It is not ideal but it is an improvement on the former timetable where students did not access the Music curriculum after year 3.

Is there a solution?

I’m not your Principal or your Line Manager. I’m your friendly specialist teacher who is in the same boat as you – so I CAN say this. There will be many times when you can not teach it all and that is ok. This is not a licence to accept defeat and be a lazy teacher. Urgh, no one respects those teachers. It is permission for you to breathe out and know you did well, even if some parts of the curriculum were not reached. If we are not accepting defeat, then what can we do?

There is a quote by C.S. Lewis about living the Christian life (I know, not about music teaching but hang in here with me) that says:

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.

This same notion can be applied to teaching as well. We still need to aim to teach as much of our curriculum as we can. If we have the great plans, programs and step by step lessons clear, then we will ensure that what the students learn is robust, relevant and reaching as many student outcomes that we can. If we are not aiming for that, then I fear very little will be accomplished.

Aim high but keep flexible

Most teachers like perfection. We love our to-do lists and ticking off our accomplishments. So, when we find we can’t fit everything into our program we are twitching in the corner and beating ourselves up thinking we didn’t do a very good job. Or we find ourselves pushing our students way too hard and we lose the true goal of teaching. Of fostering curiosity, instilling a love for learning and enjoying the progress, whether big or small, along the way.

So, if you are reading this today and you are struggling to find the way through. I encourage you to pause, take a breath. Forget the whole overwhelming curriculum and write just one goal you want each of your classes to focus on this week. Start there.

How do you balance curriculum planning and real-life teaching challenges?

I would love to hear how you balance curriculum planning and real-life teaching challenges. Please comment below or join the conversation on my Facebook or Instagram pages.