Teaching Philosophy

Overview

In teaching music, I believe one should teach excellence in all areas of instruction including technique, reading, musicianship, and creativity. Students should be able to display accurate performance rhythmically, melodically, and artistically while using good vocal or instrumental technique to produce sound. Students should excel at a pace that is slow enough to be educationally appropriate so as to build proper technique, yet fast enough to balance the students’ need for motivation. Music teachers also need to address performance issues and can do so by engaging students regularly in all types of performances. Students should perform regularly at their school via large ensembles, small ensembles, solos, and with exposure to other levels of achievement through side-by-side performances with a nearby college or professional ensemble, or through listening to live and recorded performances of professional groups. Students need to be challenged at all levels, and constantly exposed to high levels of musical achievement so that they are aurally and intellectually aware of more than their own abilities. In order to provide this experience for students, music teachers need to be involved in their own district, region, state and national organizations, reading and learning about new ways to approach learning, exploring technology in the classroom, and enriching their own learning experiences to keep the classroom environment fresh, alive, and full of innovation.

What to Teach

In both instrumental and vocal music, technique in relation to sound production should be taught thoroughly, although not overtly, and given constant attention, correction, modification, and evaluation at every lesson. A good teacher should model excellent technique to the best of their ability. Musical reading needs to be done with excellent theoretical, historical, and aural skills as a triangular base for success. Musicianship should be taught by listening to quality music, providing good demonstrations to students portraying excellent musicianship, and also by teaching students how to portray musical concepts on their instrument or voice. Often this topic is reserved for the older student, or is taught after basic concepts are already mastered. I believe that musical ideas and interpretation should be taught during every lesson starting from the beginning stages, particularly because one never knows how much a student absorbs at any given moment. Waiting to incorporate musicianship establishes an association that musicianship is only for advanced or talented students and hinders creativity and musical understanding. Lastly, creativity should be taught in ways that allow small steps of creative choices as well as complex demands of creative energy. This can be done at first by teaching basic rhythmic and melodic phrases and asking students to make their own responding phrase, by making their own choices regarding articulation, dynamics and style, or by giving them a set of parameters and asking them to improvise or create their own written composition. The possibilities are endless and should not be reserved only for the jazz classroom. Creativity and musical response frees the growing musician to be stronger, more confident, to develop a greater understanding of music and a greater understanding of their instrument or voice, all while displaying unique expressive qualities only available through music.

Approach to Teaching

In order to do the above teaching with broad success, teachers need to understand the cognitive development of a child so as to challenge them appropriately, and to understand the numerous intelligences identified by Howard Gardner many years ago. Not only do these intelligences help teachers in general with the overall educational development of a child, but they also help teachers of specific subjects understand and adjust their teaching methods according to the strengths of a particular student. To expand further, the visual, aural and kinesthetic modes of learning come into play here as well. Teachers need to be able to identify when individual students are grasping concepts or not in response to the way they are teaching. For example, a music teacher who teaches rhythm needs to understand that some children will excel by explaining the fractional concepts of beat divisions, while others may need to chant rhythms and identify that rhythm on a page. Still others may need to sway to the beat while tapping a rhythm in order to fully grasp the rhythmic concept. Some children can read explanations from their textbooks, while others need you to read the explanation to them, and yet others need to actually perform the concept in order to understand. Good teachers are able to recognize these intellectual roadblocks, experiment with other instructional means, and capitalize on successes to generate student successes. This is a critical skill for the classroom and private teacher so that learning can happen effectively and efficiently with positive motivational techniques and a successful learning environment.

Evaluation

Evaluation and assessment has become central to the music classroom over the past decade. Over the years, I have incorporated rating scales used by myself and by my students for self-evaluation. These rating scales address melodic accuracy, rhythmic accuracy, technique, expression, creativity and basic skills. I have used these evaluative methods both in formal and informal evaluations, and when creating a student portfolio of their work for the year. Students have performed individually and as an ensemble and completed evaluations accordingly.

Why Music?

Teaching and learning is important because it needs to be a central concept for our social existence. The world, particularly technology, is changing faster than we can stay with it intellectually or socially, and good, yet adaptive, learners are the ones who will be successful in this environment. Music is central to our emotional, physical and social existence; when I think about all of the musical sounds heard every day I remind myself of the importance of constantly keeping music instruction central in our lives. People need constant exposure, enrichment, and practice in musical development in order to maintain the musical understanding of our culture and other cultures of the world. Without education, there will be a vacuum, and the musical piece of our world would change dramatically.

Social Relationships

Most important is to understand and recognize the impact of relationships on our ability to teach and learn. People are naturally social, and good relationships foster trust and therefore learning. Each student comes to the classroom with some sort of family background, circumstances that affect their learning either positively or negatively, and daily distractions that pull their attention from our instruction. It is important to remember as teachers that these issues and distractions are natural; we need to do our best to win their attention through good instruction and a positive atmosphere, and understand that sometimes, despite our best efforts, their circumstances can be extreme. Our overall efforts as teachers to be good at what we do, and as people to be the best role model we can, will have a dramatic impact on our students and their growth as individuals.