At least once in everyone’s life they have been a part of a discourse community. Discourse communities are a group of people who share a set of goals in order to understand basic values, assumptions and ways of communication. The discourse community I was involved in high school was the marching band community. Within band I have learned valuable skills that will help me become a SPED teacher. While both of these communities are completely different, they have a lot more in common than you would think. Within these two communities they share having strong communication skills and being able to read people based on their feelings. 

Marching band has had a big influence in my life. My freshman year of high school I was a marcher in the Forney Espirit De Corpse Marching Band. During this time, I learned a different, yet simpler way to communicate with others. For example, covering down is when you file behind a person when marching sideways. We use this term when lines need to be cleaned up within the show. Also, our drum majors had a special way to communicate when they needed to switch podiums. It was a special hand movement they did when conducting. They then had to teach the band this movement, so we knew to “find our eyes” to another conductor. With all of our hard work and communication skills people still didn’t consider marching as a “sport”. They don’t believe it should be, but everyone who has marched consistently would like to disagree. Parents included, believed with our hard work and dedication, our many contests we place first in, and our different ways of communication has improved the way we are in today’s society. We have a better connection with how music is laid out and with the how we have a stricter way of acting. Marching band acted like a military base way of training. We run .5 miles within our twelve-hour week. That’s why we, in the marching community, believe it’s a sport because of how we use our hard work and dedication fight for what we want. 

From the different skills that I have learned within the marching discourse community, I will be able to communicate and interact with special needs kids. In the course of my life, special needs kids have played a big part in becoming who I am. My senior year of high school I shadowed a special needs teacher at Johnson Elementary that taught me how to have a better understanding behind what autism really is. She told me, “Everyone’s the same in my eyes no matter the mental capacity. They each have different personalities but bounce off one another in amazing ways. Autism isn’t a bad thing, It’s honestly a good thing.” That has stayed with me ever since and personally, I believe it. I will be working my way to be a SPED teacher throughout my college career because of how this teacher impacted me. Throughout the SPED program, I will be majorly improving my communication skills and learning how to conform to different kinds of personalities.  Over at Johnson my patience was tested to my limits, but I wouldn’t have traded the opportunity to be with those kids in a heartbeat. Being able to learn with them and teach them how to do simple tasks in life like counting and what the different colors were warmed my heart. Going into this course I will need a background of education and special education. I will have to learn have to do child assessments, educational psychology, behavior support, communication techniques and disabled student instruction to understand the different students. In college, I will have to start preparing with instructional strategy, classroom management, social-emotional learning, and assessments. 

Marching band and SPED are alike in many different ways. If my body language is dull then my part in the show will look like I am unprepared, and the march is completely forced. Being in marching band allowed me to learn how to read other people based off their body language and adapt to the situation. While being a SPED teacher I will have to read the child’s attitude and how they react to certain situations. For example, when a SPED kid has a bad attitude, an unexpected situation can lead to a detrimental reaction to and they can lash out. A SPED teacher needs to be able to tell when their child is going to have a bad day so they can readjust what is planned throughout the day for them. Having a strong voice in both communities is a major aspect because when in band, I had to state where I was having struggles and being able to keep count throughout the show to help others to remember where we are. Becoming a SPED teacher, having a stern voice to calm the students down and helping to fix where they are struggling is a major part of teaching the kids to learn from their mistakes. 

All of the differences in SPED and marching band come together to make a big discourse community based off of the ways they are similar. Fighting for a position in band to be a marcher and putting on a show within the community is just like fighting for a SPED spot at a school. Having to learn different types of body language, having a stern voice but knowing when to be silly, and being able to push for hard work and dedication shows that I am willing to do what it takes.