Getting your first teaching job is so exciting! If you’re anything like me you had 1,001 thoughts running in your head about all the things you needed and you didn’t know where to start.
Pause, take a breath and breathe deeply. If you’ve finished a degree program then there really isn’t a whole lot that you NEED. I’m assuming at this time that you’re reading because you are teaching middle school band, choir, or general music. I am teaching elementary music now, but I have not started creating content for elementary music teachers.
If you are teaching middle school band, choir, or general then you truly do not need a ton. Your school will already have school owned instruments and the like. You might have a set of risers (I had to purchase mine). General music peeps, you could have instruments or you could have nothing. I had nothing. I promise I’m trying to get resources out to you.
Here is the very short list of things that you NEED as a first year middle school music teacher.
Office Supplies
You only need the bare bones things to truly get started. Please do not go crazy at Target and buy tons of stuff you don’t need. In fact, this list is probably at your house right now. Really quickly, all the general office supplies you need.
Planner
Scissors
Tape
Pens
Sticky notes
A notebook
Some extra nice things you may want
Rhythm flashcards
Solfege flashcards (if you teach with solfege)
Note Name flashcards
A baton (if that’s your style)
Truthfully you may want to wait on the general office supplies until you get into your classroom to see what the school will provide to you. At my first school there was just a closet of all kinds of basic office supplies and teacher things like whiteboard cleaner. The front office also had a cricut, poster maker, bulletin board paper, and borders. So seriously, you don’t need to buy a lot of that stuff right off the bat.
I would focus on the planner and the specific things you will need as a music teacher. You’ll have your entire career to build a collection of stuff.
A Good Mentor or Teacher Friend
I didn’t have a great teacher friend until years two and three. But having great teacher friends truly makes a world of difference. Please do not just hide in your room and isolate yourself. Teaching, especially teaching music, can be isolating enough. You do not need to add to that yourself.
Having a good teacher friend helps because they are with you in the trenches and probably have a lot of the same frustrations as you. I still talk to my teacher friends from my old school and I try to meet up with them once or twice a year. If I lived closer I would try for at least once a month, but I live about two hours away now.
My point is, you need someone who understands and who you can commiserate with. Make sure you don’t pick someone super negative, but maybe someone who is a bit real.
Quality Resources
I really struggled with this one my first year. All I had was a band method book and about one or two of each student book to go with it. But I hated this book series. I made it work until we got new books (thank god for ESSER funds).
My school also had a lot of requirements of us teachers in regard to bellwork, formative assessments, summative assessments and the like. So I had to make all of those because I couldn’t find what would make my school district happy.
I am currently working on getting all of those resources uploaded to Tpt so that you can have them too. I have pre-tests, post-tests, quizzes, playing test forms and anything else you might need. It’s just taking me a while to get it all uploaded because now I teach elementary music and I am trying to get my life together for my new job.
The list isn’t that long, so that’s good! Your room won’t be Pinterest perfect the first year and that’s ok. Focus on building relationships with the students and focus on bettering yourself each year.
Displaced Pedagogy 