MUSIC EDUCATION PHILOSOPHY

 

Core Beliefs:

Ever since my sophomore year of high school, my passion for music education, and the enrichment it brings to the life of a student, have been ever present in my mind. Knowing that upon arriving to school in the morning you'd be met with a culture of camaraderie, and that even if times were tough you had people in your corner going through those same hardships, growing as not just musicians, but people as well. It’s experiences like these that I find most important about what an educator brings to their classroom. It’s one thing to strive for top of the line performance, and win top awards at every competition entered, but without the intrinsic culture that students and their teachers can create through an encouraging, loving, and person-first mindset, have the students been served in a way that prepares them for real-life, or have they just been used to gain trophies? This is why I am pursuing a career in music education, to give students a well rounded music education that not only fuels their creativity and grows their musicianship but also nurtures the personal skills needed when they leave my classroom. 

Anyone can be a musician. Be it a toddler or an adult who has never touched an instrument, the concept of gatekeeping the title of musician helps no one, and only serves to discourage a would-be learner. Music is an intrinsic part of humanity, so if you’re human you can be a musician (Malloch & Trevarthen, 2018). Within the context of a classroom setting, there should be a drive for excellence, but the achievement of said excellence should not be what gives students the right to consider themselves musicians, but rather the effort itself (O’Neill, 2002). At what point does the music that students create become “good music”? In my opinion, any music that enriches the soul of the listener/performer, is good music. Considering only a select set of genres or even skill levels of music performance to be “good music” is just another form of gatekeeping access to music as the intrinsic creative outlet that it is. We can only grow and learn when we accept music as the enormously wide ranging creative expression of humanity that it is, by rooting out unhealthy and unnecessary gatekeeping of what a “musician” is or what “good music” is.

 

Educational Goals:

Going forward in my time as an educator, I will strive to create a positive and structured environment in my music classroom, with behavioral goals that prioritize respect, collaboration, and active participation. Students should feel ownership of their learning space through clear expectations and shared norms, while positive reinforcement from me as the educator will continue to foster their creativity and focus. While my success as an educator does not rely on the awards received by my students, developing technical and artistic skills is still essential; I aim to build foundational musicianship through age-appropriate activities while gradually introducing complex concepts throughout their progress. Additionally, fostering the critical thinking and creativity of my students is key, not only for their musicianship but also their personhood; I will encourage students to analyze music’s cultural, historical, and emotional contexts and provide opportunities for them to compose, improvise, and express themselves freely. My ultimate goal is for students to leave my classroom not only as skilled musicians but also as thoughtful, creative individuals who see music as a lifelong source of inspiration and connection.

Skills Learned in the field in 110B:

• Prioritizing having students physically interact with material, rather than talking at them

• Integrating multiple means of representation in every lesson, in order to maximize student engagement and learning

• Engaging in culturally responsive teaching, to create empathetic worldly students while striving for the utmost respect and appreciation when discussing cultures outside of my own

• Restructuring a lesson plan for a different age group; how to meet them on their level to help set the expectations to a place where they can succeed

• Motivating students through their inherent love of music and creativity

 

Teaching Strategies:

During my time in 110B and C, my concepts of how to implement essential teaching strategies have begun to clarify. In the modern world, where our students already have their attention pulled in a million directions, it is our job as educators to engage them, center them, and meet them on their level to raise them up to be the best that they can be. A concept that is very important to me in this regard is Student Centered Learning. Ways to incorporate this into the classroom night entail: including students in the conversation about repertoire choices, programming pieces by composer of groups that you’re student body makes up (intentionally and respectfully), giving students the space to make creative choices about the music that they play (i.e. dynamics, phrasing). As music educators an easy pitfall to land in is that of a rehearsal-only class, which is solved by considering how to engage our students through Active Learning. This could look like something as simple as including Think-Pair-Share in your lessons, but more substantively could look like having class periods with space for critical discussion about the repertoire, or even the use of technology with simple DAWs like BandLab or GarageBand for students to take a more active approach in the creative process.

Just as important to education as getting our students engaged with the material, is making sure that they are adequately able to understand and perform said material. Assessment in a music education context is a tricky subject, because it would be easy to say that all we need to know is whether or not they can play their parts in time together, but if we plan to foster not only good musicians, but good humans, so much more is necessary. Assessing their critical thinking and engagement with the material, their ability to practice efficiently, their creative decisions regarding the music they interact with are just a few to name. In terms of ways to actually facilitate these assessments, technology can come greatly in handy through programs like MakeMusicCloud (formerly SmartMusic), SightReadingFactory, and Musictheory.net to give students a way to practice efficiently outside of rehearsal. In terms of assessing critical thinking, having students work on projects, like slideshow presentations or open-ended creative outlets can get students to engage with the material in a way that isn’t just perfecting the performance of a set of pieces.

 

Works Cited:

 

O’Neill, S. A. (2002). 5 - The Self-Identity of Young Musicians. In MacDonald R. A. R. , Hargreaves D. J. & Miell D. (Eds.), Musical Identities (pp. 79–96). Oxford University Press.

Malloch, S., & Trevarthen, C. (2018). The Human Nature of Music. Frontiers in Psychology, 9:1680. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01680