Music Education Philosophy
For me, teaching music centers around facilitating experiences of making music, understanding and interpreting musical context and meaning, encouraging identity formation through music, and habituating empathetic and reflective thought processes through engagement with music. In contrast to traditional models of formal music education, my teaching practice is process-oriented rather than product-oriented. This means that collaboration, exploration, creativity, and a balance of formal and informal learning are prioritized as much as musical excellence.
In my teaching, I hope to facilitate experiences of wonder, exploration, connection and success and guide students to develop resiliency and responsibility. That said, I teach with the conscious awareness that different types of musical (and/or non-musical) experiences are necessary for each individual student to tap into these experiences and develop these generalizable, life-long skills. This is why I prioritize a variety of musical experiences and ways of engaging with music. I hope to make it known to each of my students that their opinions, creative input, and personal experiences are valid and valued in the context of music class. While a high level of musical performance and conceptual understanding is necessary, it is equally important to me that students can engage with music ways that serve them beyond the walls of the music classroom. Above all, I hope to make my music classes a place in which students can come to feel safe, to have fun, to explore their thoughts and feelings, and reflectively and empathetically think about their world through the lens of music.
In my teaching, I hope to facilitate experiences of wonder, exploration, connection and success and guide students to develop resiliency and responsibility. That said, I teach with the conscious awareness that different types of musical (and/or non-musical) experiences are necessary for each individual student to tap into these experiences and develop these generalizable, life-long skills. This is why I prioritize a variety of musical experiences and ways of engaging with music. I hope to make it known to each of my students that their opinions, creative input, and personal experiences are valid and valued in the context of music class. While a high level of musical performance and conceptual understanding is necessary, it is equally important to me that students can engage with music ways that serve them beyond the walls of the music classroom. Above all, I hope to make my music classes a place in which students can come to feel safe, to have fun, to explore their thoughts and feelings, and reflectively and empathetically think about their world through the lens of music.
Work Samples
7th Grade Band Semester-Long Arranging Project
Students fill out musical preference survey. Teacher compiles information and selects three songs based on student preferences that are developmentally and school appropriate.
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Students engage in class discussion about the song options and then vote on which song to arrange and perform.
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Students begin by learning melody using singing, clapping and playing the rhythm on one note, assigning solfege syllables to each syllable, and then discovering how to play it on their instrument. This process is repeated for each section of the song, and form of the song is discussed while working with and labeling each section. (Melodies of popular music are often extremely complex in terms of rhythm. They would be extremely challenging for beginners to read in traditional notation, so an informal process of internalizing the music and then playing it “by ear” is used. Non-traditional solfege notation is used in this process).
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Bassline, harmony, and percussion parts (which typically use more simplistic rhythms than melodies) are developed by teacher and, if developmentally appropriate, students. Signing with solfege, aural training and traditional notation are used in learning these parts. Students learn all of the parts to the song.
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After learning to perform each part of the song, students collaborate to make creative decisions about how the piece should be performed, including its instrumentation and form. Students have the opportunity to experience the trial and error process as they make and revise their musical decisions.
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Once the arrangement is finished, students engage in a detail-oriented rehearsal process to prepare their arrangement for performance, which focuses on precision, balance, expression, and intention
Purposes of Project:
Students fill out musical preference survey. Teacher compiles information and selects three songs based on student preferences that are developmentally and school appropriate.
↓
Students engage in class discussion about the song options and then vote on which song to arrange and perform.
↓
Students begin by learning melody using singing, clapping and playing the rhythm on one note, assigning solfege syllables to each syllable, and then discovering how to play it on their instrument. This process is repeated for each section of the song, and form of the song is discussed while working with and labeling each section. (Melodies of popular music are often extremely complex in terms of rhythm. They would be extremely challenging for beginners to read in traditional notation, so an informal process of internalizing the music and then playing it “by ear” is used. Non-traditional solfege notation is used in this process).
↓
Bassline, harmony, and percussion parts (which typically use more simplistic rhythms than melodies) are developed by teacher and, if developmentally appropriate, students. Signing with solfege, aural training and traditional notation are used in learning these parts. Students learn all of the parts to the song.
↓
After learning to perform each part of the song, students collaborate to make creative decisions about how the piece should be performed, including its instrumentation and form. Students have the opportunity to experience the trial and error process as they make and revise their musical decisions.
↓
Once the arrangement is finished, students engage in a detail-oriented rehearsal process to prepare their arrangement for performance, which focuses on precision, balance, expression, and intention
Purposes of Project:
- Develop aural, rhythmic, and technical instrumental skills
- Practice using traditional music notation without it becoming a barrier to performing challenging music
- Bridge gap between in-school and out-of-school music
- Facilitate collaborative creative decision making process
- Introduce relevant technological tools that can be used in music making and learning
- Engage students in autonomous learning
- Experience in reflective thought about how a piece of music should be performed and why, the emotional intent of a piece of music, etc.
Musical Journey Assignment (General/Instrumental/ Choral Music)
As part of your general/instrumental music studies, you will be documenting and reflecting on your musical journey by making a playlist. The playlist will include songs that are meaningful to you and/or represent an important step in your musical journey. By the time you are done, this playlist will be an artifact of your entire musical life! Your playlist will be in chronological order, starting from your earliest meaningful musical memory all the way up until this year in music class. Requirements:
You will have a short amount of time in class each week to add a song to your playlist and write 2-3 sentences about it, but you may add more songs to it at any time. At the end of the semester, you will email me a screenshot of your playlist and a separate document (typed or written) with your explanations for each song.
- Your playlist must include: 1 song that shows your GarageBand skills, 1 excerpt of a piece of music, and at least 1 recording of your own original music or your performance of a piece of music made in class
- For each song in the playlist, you must write 2-3 sentences that thoughtfully explain why this song is meaningful to you. (Some questions you can ask yourself to help: Does is bring back a memory? Does it remind you of a certain feeling? Does it represent a change in your life? Why is this song important to you?)
- You can make your playlist in any music software that you use. Some examples: iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Prime Music, a folder on a computer
You will have a short amount of time in class each week to add a song to your playlist and write 2-3 sentences about it, but you may add more songs to it at any time. At the end of the semester, you will email me a screenshot of your playlist and a separate document (typed or written) with your explanations for each song.
Purposes of Assignment:
- Facilitate students thinking thoughtfully and reflectively about their personal experiences with music
- Facilitate connections between in-school music and out-of-school music
- Provide a platform for students to creatively apply skills from music class
- Provide an opportunity for teacher to assess skills learned in music class (GarageBand, instrumental performance, use of music software, etc.)
- Build respectful music community and learn about the musical experiences of one another
- Support identity exploration through music
Sample:
- A Whole New World: My first meaningful musical memory is when my very first flute teacher performed this song at an instrument demonstration assembly when I was in 4th grade. I was hooked by the beautiful sound of the flute playing this magical tune, and it really did open the door to a whole new world for me!
- Musical Evolution GarageBand Track: I created this medley using GarageBand to provide a quick chronological overview of the musical experiences I had from fourth grade through high school. The music started simple, but little by little, I got to experience more complicated music in more complicated musical settings! I got to perform in wind bands, orchestras, marching bands, choruses, and jazz ensembles.
- So What: This track reminds me of one of my first negative experiences I had with music. In high school, I took Jazz Improvisation class, and it terrified me despite how kind and supportive my teacher was! This experience was just as important as all of my positive ones because it provided important perspective that has informed my philosophy of teaching.
- Poulenc Sextet: This track is one of the first pieces of chamber music I performed. When I was about 18, I experienced chamber music for the first time and fell in love with the process of working in small groups with other musicians to make music come alive. It was a great way to get to know other people, and it is inspiring to work so closely with others!
- Midsummer Night’s Dream Excerpt: Though lively and impressive, this excerpt reminds me of an uninspired feeling I came to know during my undergraduate degree in flute performance. I sometimes felt I was building skills but not creatively making art when I was working on this excerpt and similar music. The long hours spent alone in the practice room had me missing the inspiration of working collaboratively with others. These sentiments inspired a passion for a process-based (as opposed to product-based) music education!
- Tchaikovsky 6: This beautiful, hauntingly sad orchestral work is brings continuation of my comments from track 5. As I continued to study flute performance, I found myself becoming conflicted. I loved the music I was learning and I loved playing the flute (I still do!), but I felt I was neglecting so much meaningful music that does not come from the Western canon of classical music. Problematically, I was rarely dealing with any music by women or by people of color. But grappling with these issues, it turned out, was incredibly formative in my teaching practice, and an incredibly important part of my musical journey!
- Afro-American Suite: This piece of music represents the shifts I made in my musical life after careful reflection of the feelings I mentioned with track 5 and 6. This relatively unknown masterpiece of chamber music represents of my commitment to exposing students to a wide variety of music within each genre of music rather than simply “the classics” or “the hits.” It is also meaningful to me because I programmed this piece for the inaugural concert of Femmelody Chamber Music Collective, a collective I founded that puts on concerts that feature exclusively musical works by women composers performed by women.
- All We Got: As I began teaching in various settings, I began to question why the music that is usually taught in school is so far removed from the music many students and teachers enjoy outside of school. I would find myself teaching a group violin class, but playing songs like this one in my headphones as I walked away from the school. This process of questioning led to a commitment to bridging the gap between in-school and out-of-school music in my teaching.
- Fake Love, You Da One, and Lucid Dreams: The final three songs in my playlist go hand in hand in terms of their meaning. In my first student teaching placement at PS 126/MAT in Manhattan, my wonderful Cooperating Teacher, Nate Sutton, allowed me to take over the 7th grade band from the beginning of the fall term. I developed a semester-long arranging project, in which the students selected a song as a class to learn formally and informally (through solfege, music notation, and by ear), and worked collaboratively to arrange it and then perform it in the winter concert. I wanted the song options to reflect the music the students enjoy, so these three songs were selected based on student responses to surveys about their musical preferences. The students voted and selected Lucid Dreams as the song for this project. This project is representative of my work as a teacher, and was one of my favorites!
