About Me

August 7, 2018

Dear Parents and Students,

I am looking forward to another great year at Desert View Intermediate! This letter will help you to understand what is expected for you to succeed in music class.

Learning in music class this year:

• Music is an academic subject and will continue to be taught as an academic subject at Desert View.
• To foster musical creativity and critical thinking skills in the students. This may include improvisation and even composing.
• Music homework lessons can be found on the following page: spencerkimball.name/Homework.html  

Students are expected to come to class ready to learn and therefore requested to remember the following three things:

1. Enter the room quietly.
2. Second, make sure you find your correct seat.
3. Third, please remain quiet and respectful while your teacher calls roll.

Grading Guidelines:

• The average student who has good attendance and makes a good faith effort to participate in music class can expect music instruction that will help that student meet the minimum requirements and achieve a mark of "satisfactory" on their report card.
• Full participation and attention is required of all students in classes and performances for students wishing to receive full credit in their grade. Report card marks are as follows: Excellent, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement and Unsatisfactory.
• Students must attend music class regularly and be fully engaged in order to expect to receive a mark of “Satisfactory” on their report cards.
• In a typical school year, students with 100% attendance might experience up to 25 hours of music instruction during the school year. This past school year we have also seen an increase of students who have attended less than 10 hours of music class during the entire school year. It is simply not possible for students with such infrequent attendance to be adequately prepared for a musical performance. For this reason and in fairness to the majority of students who are adequately attending music class practices, I reserve the right to restrict music performances to those students who have attended class and are therefore prepared for their grade level performance.
• Students who are withheld from performances can appeal their music report card by passing a test of selected items from the website spencerkimball.name.
• In order to receive a mark higher than satisfactory on the report card, performance attendance is required.
• Every effort has been made by the music teacher to ensure the best performance possible, but in the event there is excessive missed practice or class time by a student, the teacher reserves the right to withdraw students from performances who, due to missing class, are not adequately prepared to perform. Special case extra credit opportunities for a missed performance will be rare, granted in very limited cases such as religious beliefs.

Class Guidelines:

• For reasons such as student safety and protecting the musical instruments, no gum, food or drinks are allowed.
• Playing a musical instrument is a privilege, treat the instrument with great care and PRIDE Expectations.
• Trips to the restroom should be rare and are granted on an emergency basis and leaving classroom. The signal to get the teacher’s attention is to hold up two semi-crossed fingers.

We are in for another exciting year!

Spencer Kimball, Desert View Music Teacher