Over the past semester, I have been engaging with a variety of reading materials such as books and state and national music standards, as well as interacting with guest music education speakers. My engagement with these different ideas has challenged me to ask difficult questions about music and acknowledge that the answers to these questions are not black and white. It makes me a little nervous to pursue licensure in K-12 music education because I will not have all the answers, but it also makes me excited because I get to work and discuss my thoughts with my peers and professors and begin developing my own beliefs about what it means to be a music teacher and what music education should be.
Reading Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education (2016) by Randall Allsup has challenged what my original image of a music classroom is. One of my favorite quotes I read this semester from this book was “Thus, the laboratory and the museum are both metaphors for relationship making as well as actual physical spaces that construct how we live and learn with others.” (2016, p.105) because it made me consider the musical background I had and what my experience was like. I realized that the classroom could be both a laboratory, a place of experimenting and creativity, and a museum, a place where tradition is appreciated and used; however, there is a way for both the laboratory and the museum to become negative and become places where only rules and structure are enforced. I was forced to redefine what I wanted my future classroom to be like. Did I want it to just be a place where traditional repertoire was played or where we added more modern songs? Would students just sit in concert arcs and play music or would we have technological experiences and music making projects in small groups? These were the questions that made me nervous and excited about being a music teacher in the future. When Dr. Bledsoe visited, I believe that she did an excellent job of articulating and giving examples of how she combines the laboratory with the museum through Duo Musical Playground. She incorporates music learning with fun crafts and artwork. It was a great encouragement to see that it is possible in the real world and that I can incorporate this into my teaching. We also read Hammel and Hourigan’s Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-Free Approach (2017) and it made me realize how important it is to reach out to students with special needs and how difficult it can be. It made me understand a lot more about what it is to work with students who have special needs and the information I needed to be proactive in communicating with other teachers about, like IEPs, in order to provide the best experiences for my students. Hearing Dr. Hammel explain the complexities of the system and her experiences about working with support staff and the school administrators makes me feel more confident that even though it can be stressful working out all the many details, it is possible and there are so many other knowledgeable people who are willing to help and have the students’ best interests in mind. Gordan’s Quick and Easy Introductions also brought about similar considerations for me regarding student learning differences and how I should diversify the way I teach because the way students learn music is actually different than I initially thought. Learning music is similar to learning how to speak, so if this is the case, I should be teaching skills that allow them to recognize sounds first before notation. We also looked at relevant professional documents such as the JMU Eight Key Questions, the Virginia Standards of Learning for Music, and the National Core Music Standards. After looking at these documents, I was amazed by how many standards are explicitly stated that need to be accomplished. It will be difficult to incorporate all of them, but they have many great ideas like incorporating history and current events, different ethnic music, and contemporary media and technology that I would love to have in my classroom. The JMU Eight Key Questions helped me ponder and engage with an entire situation from an ethical standpoint. When Dr. Abramos visited, he also brought about these difficult questions when asking us what Beyonce’s Run the World was conveying and how so. From these scholarly engagements, I’ve been challenged to ask hard, thought-provoking questions, seek out answers, and discuss with others to become the best teacher I can be and know how to develop my own beliefs about music education topics. Reference List:
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Davina MiawOn this page, I will present examples of my scholarship in the form of reflective essays and philosophical assignments. Archives
November 2019
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