Before the debate I had thought I made up my mind completely, I knew that I was sure I wanted music education to be very much involved in public schools. I thought that not having music education in public schools would take away the music opportunity offered to kids. I also thought how difficult it would be to find a job as a music educator if we removed music from the public school system. They began their debates in ways as which I though, I though the representative of why it should be in public schools (A) said basically exactly what I though he would say. However, the representative of the opposing opinion of, why music education should not be taught in a public school setting (B), made some very solid points and ended up swaying my position. One point that convinced me very well that music education can be a bit overwhelming and restricted in a public school system is that, we have all these standards we have to meet and most of the time they are geared towards things such as classical rep. We need to stop limiting our public school education to classical rep with these traditional orchestras and wind bands, we need to be flexible. School systems need to be able to provide opportunities such as rock band, drum circles, and even rap groups. With all these limitation like how it has to happen on school days or during the school day, or has to be tested or give a performance. Its just to much on the students and makes it to difficult for them to experience what musical experiences THEY want. With music oprotunites that us educators can host or direct students to, we can allow for a more individual experience, not just limited on school but on all ages. One thing grad student Daniel Warron said that really touched my heart was " I want students to be able to say "I get the opportunity to play in a band with my son and daughter every Monday and Thursday together" we need to allow these musical experiences between families". If I could come to a house hold and help a family start a band together that would be one of the coolest things ever I think. The moderator asked me a question of "Name a time you had one of your favorite musical experiences outside of the classroom, I described my times jamming with Joey. I don't think their were any points I strongly disagreed with, but by the time the debate was over I was very torn. I believe personally we should keep music education In public schools, however, I think that we shouldn't limit our only jobs to public school. We need to start programs outside of school that are more flexible and allow for a completely diffrent path of a musical experience, if we have failed to provide it in school (which I believe we have), then we need to still facilitate an experience the student desires. Do you know how cool it would be to start Beatles cover student band outside of school, that would quite literally be the sickest thing ever. We have these limitations of funding however, one of the biggest hurdles of music education that we deal with today, we need to find funding, Ive been looking into it because as an educator I really would like start this outside of my schools in the future.
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One of the things that we have covered in class that still stands out to me is the lack of improvisation involved in a public school setting when we are expected to have opportunities to improvise, everywhere in our k-12 experience. I personally had no opportunity to improvise in my k-12 experience until I joined jazz band, but a student shouldn't have to be In jazz band to experience something such as this. One day in our class, we had a guest lecture given by Dr. Bledsoe, In the process of this we ended up gathering in small groups and put on a small performance that was completely improvised, this brought me much joy because this was many students in the classes first time improvising. Being a big Jazz enthusiast improvising was a big part of what I do, heck I sometimes improvise outside of jazz in my classical music to see how creative I can get with things.
We then covered in Allsup a section on our relationship with your teacher. When studying at my practicums, I noticed the many different relationships you have with your students, their are many different types or relationships. I feel like this is one of the most important things in a classroom, I think I would like to come off as friendly as I can be and not label myself as "The one in charge" but as "The one who know where to go next" I want to become friends with my students and teach them more then how to become musicians, but how to become a valuable person in society and develop as a person. I think its also important your students don't walk all over you, you have to set boundaries especially when students start neglecting each others musical experience. One of the best relationships I would like to replicate is the one I have with my saxophone professor, I can tell he is caring and enjoys teaching me and I enjoy learning and developing as a player in lessons, but he has expectations and boundaries that he expects me to follow and I respect that. We also covered in the class the idea of what if every student doesn't have the same drive for music, and I actually don't mind that, I hope to instill the great musical experience I can provide in my classroom to my students. If you can lead a horse to water and you can't make him drink. Let the kids experience music how they intend to, weather it be a after school activity for fun, or even a student who takes extra circular music classes because they hope to be a music major also one day. You should still give them the same amount of opportunity and attention. If you fail to do this you might miss out on an opportunity of your student deciding mid school process that they want to go farther in their music experience, and you have to be there for them. `Allsup, R. E. (2016). Remixing the classroom: toward an open philosophy of music education. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Allsup, R. E. (2016). Remixing the classroom: toward an open philosophy of music education. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
The first part I plan to talk about is the eight points and how to relate them to an ensemble I would like to teach as an educator. I want my students to play music that would be meaningful to them, so in the process of listening to music I would like to survey my students and see what music most interests them. I want my students to be curious I want them to have the opportunity to explore so even though we would have our band music and it would be selected and we would work on it through out the year, I would like to then incorporate weekly listenings. This way I can give the students an opportunity to hear more then just the music we play everyday in ensembles. At the end of the process I would like my students to be able to tell that they can do things they could once not do as musicians, even if its something as little as not flubbing that scale as much by the time of the concert, because that is improvement and that is measured progress and it is important. SO on my first day as a teacher in my ideal job, I have to think about how I am going to get my students excited about what to play and give them some interest so the might actually want to become invested and band and work towards becoming a better musician. So to do that I would like to start the first day by just doing some listening of the students favorite music and talking about how it makes them excited and what emotions are conveyed through their music. I feel like this would be an appropriate first approach because what better way to interest students in your music class then to talk about music that they already like and feel passionate about, then I can start working toward band literature and relate it to music they already know they like. Just like the first question we could do some of the listening I wanted to do for classes on music on the top 100 board. Then the students will hopefully come back with lots of ideas about how the music makes them think, and they can have a conversation with their class and discuss their musical thought. How Allsup has helped shape me as an educator thus far in my process of reading, I have realized a lot about the process of inclusion and the importance of a safe atmosphere, to help my students learn and prosper from each other and from themselves. I have also learned a lot about the process of my students not having the same drive for music as I do, I will do anything to help them find music as a important part of their life but if it isn't to them, than thats okay. What really matters to me is that they are developing off of the lessons and process that we cover in classes, and I am helping develop better teamwork skills, critical thinking abilities and other important abilities. In the section "We can make music together?", I have found that experimenting before giving assignments is an important step of a learning process. If students do not have time to do what they want to do with this new thing that is being introduced to them, then they aren't going to want to go and make some weird video with it, or play scales with it, or watch videos on it that would be no fun. Which is why I think when you introduce something new to your students you should give them time to adventure with it and test the limits of their device. After the process of exploring, I think it is important to have some kind of discussion on it, not a planned discussion ether, more a free flown one that allows the students to talk about whatever topic they would like to cover on what they had just experienced. Then by the time the students come back for future classes we could start working on getting together something like a performance on whatever they are covering and learning how to use, that way they could have some professional examples on how to use said device but before all this the students have had the opportunity to do what they want in the classroom. In this post I will be covering the questions that are asked on page 45 in this book.
Hammel, A., & Hourigan, R. M. (2017). Teaching music to students with special needs: a label-free approach. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. The advocacy rights that were mirrored in the civil rights movement to the special education students today. I feel like the points that are similar are the ones where when they need help there are a lot of people willing to help and make what they desire possible, but on the other hand their are other groups that don't see allowing a good educational experience available for those with learning differences, and they almost just want to pass them through their education and not really being concerned with how much of an education they are obtaining. For the second question the Public Law 93- 112, this helped create equal access opportunities for students with learning disabilities such as speech or transportation disabilities and much more, I thought this was an important start because it would help build the foundation of accommodations for the disabled. The six principles of IDEA are, zero reject, nondiscriminatory evaluations, free appropriate public education, least restrictive environment, procedural due process, parental involvement. I feel like these principles apply very similarly in the musical classroom to any other classroom, of course some of the circumstances might be a little different just because of the subject and the bases of music, you might have to approach some of the ideas differently, but the subject should allow for students to be more expressive since music is an expressive subject. The next question is on the subject of the least restrictive environment in the music classroom. I can achieve this in the classroom by removing barriers and subjects that would restrict it to a particular groups, like a all men's choir piece, as that would take away the music experience from the women. I could also open up my ensembles to less common instruments that are easier to play, to allow students with less advanced compression of music can participate and still have a good musical experience. Another way I could create a healthy environment in the classroom would be opening up my students to more music based on culture so we can have a mutual understanding for how others perceive music and learn and experience it. This next question was a little confusing to me and I had trouble comprehending what it was particularly asking, I think it is important that general education classes take priority over things such as music because they help you develop more critical thinking and problem solving skills. I wouldn't be to upset about the situation stated in the book also because I know I can meet with them one on one and still give the student a great musical experience, If a student needed to miss class time for some remedial session then I can advocate, because as a music educator it is also my job to be flexible and work with the students and not agents them. For the last question I feel as a RTI member I could really apply myself as an educator and take in a lot from really working on the bare bones of a music experience to help a struggling individual understand what they can do as a musician. I would be able to present them with a whole lot of instruments and music types that they have never experienced before, because I would think if they are struggling in music their is a good chance they don't have a lot of experience with it. Allsup, R. E. (2016). Remixing the classroom: toward an open philosophy of music education. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
1. In my general school classes I was given standardised test that seemed as they were trying to label me as average and in some cases under average. I would struggle taking my standardised tests and in some cases it didn't help me at all with the understanding of the material and showing how well I understood it. In fact, I remember I failed my Algebra 1 SOL but a few years later I passed my Algebra 2 SOL in advanced? I feel like the standardised testing label is your marching band assessment competitions, this did nothing good for me because we always got 3rd or 2nd place to schools with funding large enough to have a general effect score that was much larger than ours. That usually being one of our lowest scores because we did not have the money to buy things we needed for the band sometimes. I think what is important at competition is the quality of experience you get to have as a musician and the vast amount of opportunities that students got to have, like maybe they could bring in some guest artist to teach masterclasses on marching, for example. 2. Basically what this next question is covering from what I see, it's discussing if it is important that we cover information that might not be used in the process of teaching most relevant things. My philosophy on the subject at hand would be that even in the case of learning something that would not be applicable except for specific things like scales, I think it teaches you the process of learning something and committing to it through repetition and healthy practice. Also the subject of my students not loving what I love is fine, I'm here to give them a good musical experience and if they don't love it or even like it then I might try to change things more in their opinion to what they would want to do. But not to much to the point where it would affect how much my other students like it. Not everybody is going to want to be a famous musician after they graduate from my school, but I know that every kid will have a an opportunity to have a good musical experience before they graduate. 3. In regards to Authority Allsup (2016) writes, "In the context, it appears that power and fatherhood are key terms when referring to authority:" (pg. 13). I think it is important that he Acknowledges authority and how it is relevant to him as a music educator and what ways he might be able to use it in classes. He then covers Empathy by writing, "I have said that we are more than the music we make"(pg. 23). This makes me think that he sees his art as important, but also being a human being and caring is very important as well as an educator. For Liberty, he writes,"Western artists attempted to stretch the limits of this interpretive function"(pg. 30). This is basically the ideas of the western artists stretching out the ideas and interpretations of the music that has been created for other purposes. For outcome he says," We are more than the makers of music; we are made by the music we make."(pg. 11). This is basically describing how music can make us and better our outcome of what kind of person we are in the future based on our musical experiences. |
Brandon RhinehartHere I will be posting reflective essays and philosophical documents and other assignments Archives
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