Reflective Essay 

Makayla Beason

MUS 664

Dr. Reschke-Hernandez

05/04/2022

Service-Learning Reflective Essay-Blog

For this service-learning project, I chose to work with my middle school band program from Sevierville, Tennessee. There are a handful of 8th grade band students at this school that are performing beyond their grade level in this area. Because they are seen as gifted, they are not being provided with extra lessons to expand and improve their abilities. This project focused on teaching these students the musical scales and rhythms that they will be required to know by memory if they choose to continue with band into high school. This project also allowed these students to be challenge by new material that had not been covered in class yet, as well as expand their knowledge and abilities on their individual instruments.

Before beginning this project, I had assumed that it was going to take up a lot of time that I honestly did not have. However, I quickly learned that was not the case. What time I did spend on this project was well spent and has allowed me to grow as an educator and musician. I was originally afraid of failure because I had never attempted to tach these activities to a group before. Luckily, these fears were nothing I should have been worried about.

Upon completion of this project, my students were able to learn all twelve of their major scales using multiple different rhythmic combinations and tempos. I was surprised to see that I was rather good at teaching this subject, considering I had never done it before. However, I also learned that I was not the best at providing clear instruction sometimes. Luckily, my students were polite and more than willing to let me know how I could better explain things to them. They taught me that I should have been demonstrating what I wanted rather than just telling them. In doing so, they gained a better understanding of what their scales and rhythms should have sounded like on their instruments. This is a skill that I will be able to take away from this project and use in my further teachings. Overall, I believe that I was very effective in my work with my community partner. This thought is based on the fact that all of my students have officially signed up for high school band next year and plan to continue through high school!

Before beginning this project, I assumed that the community band parents would not be heavily involved in the program or in their children’s progress. However, I was quickly proven wrong. Each parent that I interacted with was more than willing to give me feedback and ensure that their child was practicing and studying what they needed. They were also incredibly eager to help me when help was needed. This aspect was helpful when it came to planning activities. By being able to ask the parents what their student was liking or struggling with, I was able to adapt my activities to aid the struggles while keeping class interesting and fun for each student. Because I was able to adapt to this feedback, I think that the activities proved to be effective. If I were to do it again, I would add in accidentals such as minor scales to help aid with more difficult key signatures or random accidentals found in harder pieces.

Though I knew a lot on about the subjects covered, I believe that there were a few gaps in my knowledge. The most major gap was on how to teach the concepts. Because I was unsure, I chose to teach in the way that I learned best. Though this concept worked well, I quickly learned that I had to adapt my teaching methods to include demonstration for better understanding. Despite being successful, I do hope to gain more strategies for teaching these concepts. I believe that the more strategies I have, the better I can teach and aid my students successfully. Although I definitely have a lot to learn, I was able to find a strategy that myself and the students seemed to enjoy the most. This strategy involved playing along with the students and turning their lessons into games. Once each student proved that they could successfully play each scale by memory, we began to play speed games. In these games, I would begin by playing the scale at a slow tempo and they would try to play it faster. I would then play faster than them and the cycle would repeat until one of us messed up because we could not play it fast enough. I believe that this was the most fun teaching strategy to try in this experience, especially when the kids were able to beat me at my own game.

Through this project, I was able to learn a lot about the world around me. It taught me that one cannot always judge a book by its cover. Though I like to live by this belief, I found myself doing the exact opposite. I started this project with the idea that the community would not care about their students’ musical progress. I subconsciously created this belief based on the fact that most of the community is financially struggling. I should have known better. I grew up in a poor household, but my parents were always incredibly involved in my activities. Despite growing up in with a similar background, I still formed this incorrect thought and I still do not know where it came from or why I thought it. I believe that this is the most important lesson that I learned from this project. I think that teachers often make assumptions about their students or the parents before ever getting to know them. This can often lead to issues further down the road. Now that I have been able to personally experience this and be humbled by the parent interaction, I believe that I will be able to judge communities less, if not at all, when I begin my own program.

Now what, you may ask. Luckily, I will be continuing my work with this community partner through the summer until these students begin band camp at the local high school. During this time, I plan to work with the students on their marching band warm-up routines and music, which I have graciously received from the high school band director. I am committed to ensuring that my students are able to mark time and play their music, without having “wobbly” sound, before they begin camp.

Because my efforts have proven to be successfully, I have suggested that the band director continue with these activities for years to come. Before I began this project, high school lessons were not offered to the 8th grade students. However, there is now talk about allowing the 8th graders to apply for private lessons through the high school. If the schools are able to work this out and work with the 8th graders that are over performing, I think that they will be able to see a huge improvement in 8th grade band dropout. I cannot ensure that the rate will go to zero, but I do believe that it will be drastically improved.

Overall, this project has allowed me to make progress towards developing professional skills. Throughout this course, I have been able to develop my leadership skills as well as my information gathering and communication skills. I was able to develop both my leadership and communication skills through the individual lessons with my students and through feedback conversations with the classroom instructor and band parents. By teaching these students something they had never learned before, I had to be able to step up and lead them through the process. I could not rely on anyone else to fill in my gaps. This concept forced me to come out of my shell and embrace the things that I do not know. On top of this, my lack of knowledge allowed me to develop my information gathering skills. Though I knew a lot about the subject, I began the semester unsure of how to begin teaching it. This allowed me to reach out to fellow colleagues for aid. By asking each reference how they would go about each lesson, I was able to gather a rather large toolbox of strategies, but I still believe that I can continue to fill my teacher toolbox.

I believe that this project allowed me to explore my interests along with aid a school in need. These students taught me that it is okay not to know the answer right away, which is something that I thought I would be teaching them instead. It allowed me to grow both personally and professionally though community work and conversation. It has enabled me to build strong musical and professional connections while enhancing the musical knowledge of a handful of amazingly talented and kind students. This is an activity that I would highly recommend any future educator to participate in.