Context

My name is Kayleigh Griffith and I have been in the education field for 6 years! I am a certified K-12 music teacher, receiving my bachelors degree at Rocky Mountain College in Billings in 2018, and my masters degree in music education from MSU in Bozeman in 2024. I started my teaching career in music, teaching in Belgrade, MT K-4 music for 5 years. I am now teaching PreK-8th Grade music in Montana City, outside of Helena. 

My school community in Montana City is a semi-rural PreK-8th Grade school. A majority of the students are middle to high socio-economic status and the community plays a huge role in our school. Our mission statement is to be Above the Line by Design in everything we do! We also have five core values which are: Positive Energy, Purpose and Vision, A Little Bit of Lagniappe, Relationships and Commitment, and The Little Things Matter. 

When teaching in Belgrade, I was very involved in my Association at the local level. I was the building representative for my local, served on the negotiations team, and served on a grievance committee. I have also attended the state MFPE conference several times. With being new to Montana City, I am being as involved in my local as I can! I have also joined the Rapid Response Team and I hope to continue to go to the state MFPE annual conference. 

How does awareness of your own biases, experiences of privilege, and personal values inform your chosen Capstone Project?

I am a white female who has experienced privilage in many ways. I think of myself as a young teacher, and I am often look to other teachers for what to do and for advice. I tend to have imposter syndrome about being a leader or if I can use my voice to make a change. 

When beginning this project, I wasn't really aware of how many implicit biases there are and how they really do come into play all the time. It really made me take a step back and look at the whole picture.  My awareness of my own biases, privilege, and personal values help me reflect and look at situations differently with more understanding and compassion for others. 

Being a music teacher, there are inequities when it comes to professional development. Many times, music teachers are forgotten about when it comes to relevant professional development and end up being in workshops that really do not pertain to their subject area. Knowing that professional development for music teachers in Montana is lacking was my main motivation for this project. The goal was to start creating equity in relevant and meaningful professional development for different types of teachers, music teachers specifically. 

At the beginning of the TLI program, at which level (emerging, developing, performing, or transforming) in the progressions did you place yourself for each of your four chosen competencies?  Provide a rationale for each claim. 

Below are my overarching competencies that I picked at the beginning of my capstone project. 

Overarching Competency #1: Communication: Emerging

Communication is key for getting more educators involved with the music curriculum Kodály and for providing quality professional development for music educators.  Without communication, music teachers would not be aware of the relevant professional development we are trying to provide, and I would not be given feedback on how my team and I could better the needs of music teachers in Montana. Since Montana is such a big state, I know I was going to have to be creative with how I communicated and reached the music teachers around the state. At the beginning of the project, I was in the emerging stage, because I was just beginning to figure out what ways of communication would work best to reach the most teachers. 

Overarching Competency #2: Continuing Learning and Education: Developing

I picked this competency because I wanted to share and teach other music teachers about the amazing benefits of the Kodály music curriculum and provide them relevant professional development. When starting this project, my team and I were just beginning to start the process of running professional development workshops for music teachers.  We had completed one professional development workshop and were working on creating more for the music teachers in Montana. 

Foundational Competency: Explore and Challenge Inequity: Emerging

I chose this competency because I wanted to be able to provide relevant professional development for music teachers all around the state! It doesn’t matter if you teach in a small school or big school, rural or urban, or if you have a team of music teachers or you are the only music teacher in the district, I wanted to have relevant professional development for all music teachers.  I was in the emerging stage here because I didn't have a huge attendance from all around Montana at our first workshop which makes me think that we were just beginning to challenge inequity for music teachers. My goal was to try and get in touch with other teachers in the more rural parts of Montana to have them informed about the professional development that I was trying to provide.

Specific Leadership Pathway Competency: Instructional Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring: Emerging

I decided to do coaching and mentoring because my project was all about developing relevant professional development for music teachers in Montana to help them continue their educational journey in a meaningful way. Not only does it provide new learning for teachers, the workshops connected teachers provided a support/mentor system they can reach out to in the future. Since I have been working on developing professional development with Big Sky Kodály for a year, I feel as though I am in the emerging stage. We had just started running and developing workshops for music teachers around the state and we were learning as we went along!

Describe your work with diverse stakeholders, shared learning experiences, and how you anticipate your leadership pathway mindset might evolve during the TLI process. 

To create professional development for music teachers in Montana, we have created a professionally diverse board of music educators for Big Sky Kodály with teachers who teach PreK to Post Secondary levels. I  have gathered information from Montana Music Educators Association's conference, where teachers travel from across the state to attend.  I have also gathered information from other professional devleopment sessions in Montana and communicated with Montana music teaches about what kind of professional development they would be interested in and what it means to them. Our BSK board is diverse in music curriculum training; we have people with both Orff, Music Learning Theory, and Kodály training. 

Describe how your awareness of those from different cultures, experiences, and backgrounds inform your chosen project. 

It has been interesting to figure out my awareness of diversity of others in my project. In general, music teachers in Montana are not very diverse in the most common ways one thinks of when thinking of diversity. I chose to dig deeper and thought about how we as music teachers around Montana are diverse. We are diverse in school size/population, what level of music education we teach, what our educational backgroud is in, where we teach throughout the state, and what our music teacher team looks like in our district. Knowing the diversity and being aware helped in planning and making professional development for music teachers around Montana beneficial.