Forest Hills Northern High School is a freshman year through senior year, 9-12 grade

public school. The school is made up mainly out of students who do not have free or reduced

lunches. Out of 1,125 students in the 2014-2015 academic school year, there are 22 students who

were eligible for reduced lunch, and 110 students who were eligible for free lunch. A majority of

students are seniors in high school, though there is hardly a difference of enrollment numbers

between each grade level. The school is primarily white, with 885 out of 1,125 students being

white, 95 students Asian or Pacific Islander, 68 Black students, 41 Hispanic students, and 34

students who identify as being biracial or mixed race. The Forest Hills Northern High School

uses the MMEA Michigan Music Standards as a basis of their curriculum. The main curriculum

that they go over is rehearsing and performing, sight-reading and tonal skills, and there will be a

unit on music history coming up so that the students will understand the context of the different

pieces that they are performing. (Demographics found from

https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?

Search=1&InstName=Northern+High+School&State=26&SchoolType=1&SchoolType=2&Scho

olType=3&SchoolType=4&SpecificSchlTypes=all&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-

1&ID=261461005158).

Students who go to this school are from the region of the school. Forest Hills Northern

High School is approximately ten minutes away from Calvin Colleges campus. The area around

this school contains nice suburban houses that look generally large and well-kept. There is a

large mall near the school, with a movie theater, a P.F. Changs, and a Jimmy Johns. Its mainly

a rural region with a mix of suburban houses. Forest Hills Northern High School is located next

to Northern Trails fifth and sixth grade, which feeds into the high school next door to that, which

feeds into Forest Hills Northern. A lot of the concerts that this high school performs in are with
the Northern Trails fifth and sixth grade and the junior high nearby. When they perform in these

concerts, they perform at the Forest Hills Performing Arts Center which is right down the road

from the Northern Trails fifth and sixth grade. This performing arts center has a much larger

auditorium than the high school has, which works well with the fact that there needs to be a stage

large enough to accommodate ensembles from all three schools.

In my classroom, there are four first violins, four second violins, three violas (not

including me, since I play in the viola section when I come to school on most days), ten cellos,

and two bassists. In total, there are 23 students in this orchestra. Students are ranged from ages

14-18. There are aged from freshmen in high school to seniors in high school. There are more

boys than girls in this class. There are only two female cellists and one female violist. The

majority of girls in this class are violin players. The musicians are primarily white. There are two

students in this class that are not white. There is one student in this classroom that has an IEP,

and there are 10 students in this orchestra that are multilingual.

In this classroom, the teacher is rather relaxed. They get through a lot of material in an

hours time, though individual private practice is heavily relied upon rather than rehearsal. It is

believed that individual practice time is meant to be spent to get ones own individual part down,

but rehearsal time is best spent putting all the parts together. This is the lowest level orchestra, so

sometimes I feel like the students dont try as hard or practice as much as they should because

they know they are the lowest level orchestra, and therefore dont feel motivated. Students also

do not take private lessons, so this orchestra is their only musical outlet during the day. There are

some students in the front that are really good at playing the music and get bored with it, whereas

the students in the back tend to struggle a lot more with the music.
 This orchestra classroom is also unique because the teacher did not specialize in orchestra

conducting in college, but in fact specialized in band. He is the director of four other high school

bands as well as this orchestra that is the first-level orchestra. I feel like sometimes, since he has

been trained in trumpet, he doesnt correct problems with posture that is unique to playing strings

because he doesnt know the absolutely correct string posture, since he specializes in band.