JOBS!

I have used student jobs for over a decade now. I decided to create them in order to give my students some ownership of the Music class thereby hoping to have the kids more invested in my class. And...it worked!

I will tell you up front that initially this is an investment of time on the teacher's part. Because special area teachers rotate through TONS of classes, selecting students to fill the jobs can take a bit of time.

In my room, every class has a brain hook-up leader who begins each class. After that the computer operator goes to the laptop and scrolls through a powerpoint of the lyrics of the day's song along with the iPod person who starts and stops the song.(At least I'm no longer using cd's.) Next the rhythm master leads the students in clapping a written rhythm on the smartboard screen. As you can see, the kids have many leadership roles.

Choosing jobs can take a long time if you choose the kids themselves based on cooperation, good behavior, etc. I have done that. I have also pulled sticks out of the can (popsicle sticks with chair numbers on them) and let fate decide. Sometimes that makes me very nervous but I have found that kids really step up and generally do a better job than I expected. Win-win!

How many jobs you choose is of course up to you. I try to involve as many kids as possible so if I can, I have a job for everyone. That doesn't always work though. Currently I have up to 30 students per class so my solution is to switch jobs at the end of the quarter or semester. That way EVERYONE has a job sometime during the year.

Here is the template that I use. Yes, I update it all the time - adding jobs that I think would work well and taking off ones that don't get used much.

job template (word)      or      job template (PDF)

Do your students have jobs within your classroom? How you decide who gets which job?