The process of keeping a blog this semester has led to some of my views changing regarding the future use of technology, social media, and popular culture in my classroom. In general, I think I have a better idea as to its uses and value as a means of communication, approachability, and finding new ways to cover old ideas.

Certainly in the future I mean to use social media and technology to better facilitate communication with my students and parents. I think maintaining a website would be very useful in order to keep all relevant information in an easily accessible place. In addition, social media pages not only provide a good method for providing updates to students, but also meet them in the middle in terms of utilizing popular platforms instead of demonizing them.

I have mixed feelings about the blogging process. On one hand, I enjoy how writing helps me organize my thoughts and I feel that the blog provides a structured way to sort of force me to think about topics and take a stance. On the other, I think it’s important to be selective about what you share, particularly online, so the blog feels a little too public for me at times, especially on more controversial issues where it is easy to be misconstrued. So, the jury is out for me on whether I will continue to blog, only time and further reflection will tell.

As far as my students, I think it is a useful exercise but impractical for my particular field. After all, if I am going to ask for a significant time commitment devoted to attending rehearsals and practicing their instruments, is it really fair to ask anything more? My answer to that question at this point of time is no. However, I really do see the usefulness in general of the exercise, and encourage all who are interested to give it a try. I myself have found it surprisingly enlightening, and very well might continue on with it in the future.

 

My feelings regarding standardized testing have changed over the years. As a child, I remember my first standardized test as being rather exciting. I was an extremely eager student, and treated the whole thing as some challenging game to show off all I learned. I was lucky to have had a parent at home who taught me to read at an early age, and pushed the importance of school.  I easily excelled at that first test, and throughout my education I never really had any trouble with things until I got to high school and the SAT.

The SAT was a whole other animal, because suddenly the stakes on the results seemed immediately and painfully high. How could it be that one score could determine what colleges I got into, what financial aid I could get, and in general, my entire immediate future? I ended up doing decently on the SAT, with high scores in some areas (800 on reading!) but unexpectedly low scores on others (my lowest score was a 560 in writing).

I struggled throughout high school with the high pressure brought upon by this endless standardized testing, and I know I was far from alone. Today, there is so much riding on the results of these tests, whether it be college admissions, advancement to the next grade, teacher job security, etc, and it is having a negative impact on our students, teachers, and administrators. What’s worse, it is having a negative effect on education itself, as the curriculum becomes more and more centered on teaching to the test, rather than teaching students lasting concepts, or relevant information that is not tested on.

To fix it, I think we need to cut back severely on the number of standardized tests we require of students, in favor of letting teachers monitor their own students, and create their own assessments to best suit those students’ needs. In addition, I think that the whole concept of “teacher pay revolving around test results” needs to be nipped in the bud. Plainly speaking, perfect test results are just not attainable in every situation, for every group of students, and teachers should not be penalized for not meeting impossible expectations. Rather, there should be an emphasis on growth, meeting the students where they are, and helping them to improve as much as they reasonably can.

Schools and teachers should be held accountable for giving their students a quality education. That being said, I think standardized test results are a lousy way to judge student learning. Assessments on the curriculum and the quality of the instruction need to be flexible, and suited for the particularly demographics and environment of each school. Teachers and schools should still be responsible for student learning, but the logistics for monitoring that should be much more personalized, and local in nature.

In my future career, I will have to deal with music’s own version of standardized testing: band contest. Although I disagree with the overly competitive influence that this brings to my field, I will do my best to help my student achieve excellent performances and ratings. However, I will not have it be the focus of my curriculum. I believe in creating a great student experience, and teaching them how to be thoughtful, expressive musicians is much more important to me than contest results ever could be. Once I get into the field, I hope that I will stick to my stance, however idealistic it may be.

 

In my public school experience, I have had limited but impactful experiences with special education students. For the vast majority of the school day, kids with special needs would mostly be in their own classes, with little to no contact with the rest of the student body. However, there were a few special needs students that I came to know while participating in the band.

One of these students was the daughter of the high school principal, and the self-appointed marching band’s biggest fan. She would visit our rehearsals every once and a while, and would be so excited to hear us play, even in practice. During football game performances, our director would include her in the show announcement, right alongside himself, and the drum majors. This was a tradition that had started years ago, and continues to this day.

To this day, this has affected my attitudes towards special education, and inclusion for those students. I think it is crucially important to provide a quality, well-rounded education for all students, and that includes music.

As a future educator, I hope to be able to accommodate students with special needs and learning disabilities in my classes. How this will be achieved will vary depending on what grade levels I end up with. For example, in the case of elementary music, accommodations in the activities themselves can make it so students of all abilities can enjoy and participate in the lesson to some degree. In my class observations as part of my music education degree, I have seen teachers adjust dances to facilitate inclusion of students who were less mobile or wheel-chair bound, and provide students with opportunities to play important roles, such as percussion instruments if they were unable to sing. Things like that, while simple, go a long way towards including kids in the musical experience.

My biggest fear is that I am afraid I will not do enough to include students with special needs, and that they will feel ostracized, left out, and not welcome by me, or in my classroom. The workload of a music teacher is very heavy, and many teachers in the profession are simply overwhelmed, and feel that they have no energy or time to make inclusion a priority, which is a feeling I’m afraid I’ll experience one day. However, my greatest hope is that I’ll be able to avoid that attitude, and be able to have a strong program where everyone feels welcome and able to participate, special needs or not. In the future, I hope to be able to not only maintain those ideals, but actually implement them in my day to day teaching.

 

The classes I have been lucky enough to take here at UNT have shaped my views about education in a multitude of ways. Though each professor has offered a diverse perspective, all have provided much need guidance and insight into the educational process.

In my music education classes in particular, they have brought to light the many difficulties facing new music educators today. Professors have covered the importance of recruitment and music advocacy, because music programs all over the country are in danger of being cut due to funding. Another issue that expanded my perspective was learning about strategies for inclusion in music education, particularly to those with disabilities in various forms.

So far at UNT, I have only taken two general education courses. In my “Professional Issues in Teaching” course, some of the concepts that have been covered include learning about the history of education, and the main educational theories. I had not heard this information before, and it really adds context to everything else I had learned in previous courses. In Child Development, I learned about typical mental and physical capabilities of children as they grow up, which will be invaluable knowledge towards creating realistic goals for my future students.

However, there are some things that I feel haven’t been covered quite as well from my education coursework. Classroom management, for one, has been an area in which I have received little to no instruction. There seems to be an unspoken expectation, at least in the music education circles, that one will learn such skills on the job, and as a result, will either sink or swim. I think that attitude is slightly ridiculous, as how on earth are we supposed to be successful in managing a classroom when we haven’t been taught strategies to try? This I think is a crucial given the large class sizes for instrumental music teachers.

In general, I feel my education courses and professors are doing their best to provide a solid foundation on which to build our teaching careers. Although there are areas that I think they could use more time on, both my music ed and general education classes have expanded my perspective in various ways, and gave me knowledge that will surely help me in my future classroom.

One of the most impactful lessons I had during my education was in my senior year English class. This course was taught by Mr. Buckridge, a late 20-somethings man who was very much a different sort of person from who you normally encountered in my high school. He was young, had multiple tattoos and piercings, liked very eccentric music, and had an approach to teaching English that I will forever appreciate. The class had an emphasis on critical thought, expanding perspectives, and the discovery of ourselves and our beliefs through writing and defending our positions.

One of the most memorable class periods, we had a discussion about a controversial and highly relevant topic at the time: gay marriage. This was around the time when the issue was going to the Supreme Court, and positions among the students in the class were extremely divided. However, the discussion itself was remarkably civil, and I think everyone got a lot from it. For myself personally, I had a startling new realization of the diversity of opinions, even within my own friend group and classmates, and I better understood my own beliefs in relation to them. In addition, I was elected representative of my particular side, and had provide arguments for our position in front of the class. This was difficult, as I was anxious about discussing a controversial subject in front of others, and even more so when it became apparent that the student presenting the other side was one of my good friends. However, I learned a valuable lesson from that day about how one should formulate and sometimes change their own beliefs, the value of civil discussion, and the realization that you can disagree with someone and still value their friendship regardless.

This sort of lesson is something that I would dearly love to be able to impart on my future students; I feel that it is just important to build a student’s character and foster their growth as person as it is to teach them academic material.

In music education today, there is a somewhat disturbing lack of exploration into music outside of the traditional classical canon. In my classes, I want to teach music and styles from many different places and time periods, and I want to provide historical and cultural context for the students. I want to show them how political and historical events shaped the styles and genres of music we have today, and how these factors affected the great composers and their most famous works.  I will do my best to challenge their perspectives on what “good” music is, and help them to learn how to justify their opinions with critical reasoning. The expansion of perspectives and the development of critical thought, in my opinion, should be taught by all educators, not merely relegated to the English classroom alone. By teaching a more comprehensive and inclusive repertoire of music with my students, I hope to develop their musicianship and open their minds at the same time.

I was extraordinarily lucky as student, in my personal opinion. In my educational experience, I have had more than my fair share of excellent teachers who shared their passion for their discipline and positively effected my life as a result. However, when faced with the question on who was my primary role model and inspiration for going into teaching, I have only one person in mind: my high school band director Mr. Hoesing.

When I think of qualities of good teacher, I think of things such as dedication, empathy and compassion, creative, dynamic, and an excellent communicator. These were all present in my high school director, but I think more than that was his consistent willingness to interact with students, and to provide each one with opportunities to grow, regardless of their current level of achievement. For me personally, he fully supported my exploration into music, and provided many opportunities to keep myself and other students challenged, beyond what we were doing in class. However, I also saw him give up much of his personal time to help those that were struggling as well. He was always willing to give anyone a private lesson who asked for it, and I saw him get to school early, and stay late in order to follow through with that.

What was perhaps more important though, was how he always took such an interest and provided support for his students in their lives outside band. He was active in the school community and genuinely supported everyone in their activities. He showed up to drama and choir performances, sport matches and games, and cheered on his students in all their endeavors, music or not. At the beginning of class, he would often make announcements and recognize achievements of his students, which was very encouraging to everyone, and helped foster a very positive environment. And for more personal struggles, he was always there to listen and provide help if need be. I think he did a really good job in balancing being kind and empathetic, and being there for his students, while remaining professional and knowing when to escalate or lead the students to the appropriate resources and specialists. This is a hard line to balance I think, and in my opinion he had done well with his approach.

I think I was pretty open with how I felt about him as a teacher and important role model in my life. At my high school graduation, I was valedictorian and had the opportunity to speak, as is tradition. In my speech, I made a point to publicly and directly thank him for what he was doing and his impact on my education, as well as that of others. I thought about just writing a private letter, but in the end I wanted everyone else to know the difference he was making, as he was not the type to actively seek recognition or praise. I really hope that it got across my gratitude for his work ethic and kindness. I like to think that it did, and I would do the same thing in a heartbeat; teachers like him deserve all the recognition in the world.

I think as far as philosophies in education go, he was definitely student centered, and in opinion incorporated a good deal of progressivist philosophies. For example, in his teaching, he made it a point to cater his instruction to the needs of the students, and adjust if need be. He thought that merely learning theoretical aspects of music was not enough, and instead incorporated learning through performance, and was constantly finding new opportunities for his students to perform. In my time in the band program, he organized many gigs for the various ensembles, which increased the presence in the community and provided real world experience. For the jazz bands, there were opportunities to travel and explore the world, which greatly expanded our perspectives.

I hope to incorporate many of these characteristics and approaches into my own teaching, particularly the student centered aspects. I hope to be supportive and a positive influence to my students as well, and I will do my best to stay involved in the broader school community. One thing I might do differently is how I balance my time during school, and maintain work life balance. From an outsider looking in, it was pretty clear that my band director spent a huge amount of time at work. While the results were clearly good, I think I might try a slightly different, more focused approach to better maintain work life balance. Perhaps fewer ensembles but the same focused, student catered approach. In any case, that balance is something I hope to better figure out for myself as I gain more experience in education, and my own career.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of school is a rather loaded question that has been difficult for me to fully unpack for a long time. So much of what I had been taught during my own education seemed to be the only possible way to do things, and I think that was because it was likely purposefully presented as the only clear option.

My views now are mixed. I do ascribe a certain loyalty to the way in which I was educated, which looking back on it now was mainly based on essentialist and progressivist philosophies.. I believe a rigorous academic curriculum that pushes students to their full potential is extremely valuable in today’s competitive society, and that part of essentialist philosophy makes a great deal of sense to me. However, I also believe that a great deal of things are best learned through direct, hands-on experience, not from endless book study or lecture. An ideal environment would take the best parts from both disciplines to create a curriculum that challenges students, while presenting the information in varying methods to suit student’s diverse learning needs.

I believe schools today have mostly the right ideas and intentions, but they are greatly held back because of standardized testing, which limits the amount of time and focus they can spend on material not covered by those things. In the future, we would need a massive movement to shift our schooling system’s focus from standardized testing, but I think it remains possible, although unlikely right now. All I feel I can do for the meantime is share my views, and hopefully influence others to talk about the issue as well.

People in the field of education have argued for decades over the role of schools in a student’s moral, social, and patriotic development. In our readings, several authors argued over the scope of such responsibilities, and if they should even be education’s responsibility at all. I think the same sort of questions remain today, and I honestly feel that they may never get completely resolved. However, if communication exists between all parties, we might come to a better middle ground consensus in our communities.