Music Education- From a Personal Point of View.

Below is a list of why this approach is important to me as a music educator:

~ In my opinion, too many directors choose repertoire beyond the average skill level of their students. This leads to unsuccessful performances and actually inhibits growth for our students as musicians. Unfortunately, there is a common misconception that the difficulty of the music they perform proves how advanced the music program is in comparison to other schools. I have come to learn that this mindset is educationally flawed. No one is impressed by failed attempts to perform outside of your student’s skillsets. It is similar to having a middle school football team play against a varsity high school team. Each group will display fundamentals of the sport. However, the team with developmentally scaffolded educational experiences, will always win.

~ Through many years as a private music instructor, I learned in order to be successful in this profession you have to do the following things:

· Create a personal bond with your students, by understanding their needs, hobbies and future goals as performers.

· Display continued growth and improvements to their parents. They are paying for my services and expect to get a return on their financial investment in their child.

· Be likable and have the ability to keep my students engaged during our lessons.

· Provide them with achievable goals which encourage practice at home.

~ I treat all of my music students and performing groups as private lessons. I feel the same responsibilities towards my students and their parents as listed above.

~ My future goals in music education and (Feed-Forward) formative assessments are as follows:

· Use a larger sample of differentiated assessments to promote learning opportunities in non-traditional formats.

· Maybe we could play a game like charades to allow students to model strong or weak examples.

· How would drawing a picture add to their understand of my learning targets?

· Can writing in other mediums, like creating a story or comic-strip, be better suited for certain students?

· Seeking peer guidance on what assessment types they feel benefited their students the most.

· Seeking out academic research into the benefits of new teaching practices being used in classroom instruction, culturally diverse instruction/assessment methods, and the benefits of using technology to enhance student learning.

I believe working to these goals will increase my effectiveness as a teacher in the following ways:

· By offering non-traditional teaching formats, I hope to create a continual engagement with learning in offering them fun and less stressful way to interact with content knowledge.

· Using alternative forms of instruction and assessments will give them the chance to view their learning goals for a different perspective.

· Working with peer music educators can expose me to learning and assessment tools I never considered.

· Using academic research can keep me informed on the current teaching practices being used in modern music classrooms, how culturally diverse teaching approaches can better serve minorities groups in my classes, and how technology is changing the landscape of education in America by providing instructional tools far beyond the limitations of education in the past.

Picture taken at Midwest International Band Directors Clinic in Chicago. December 18- 21, 2019