Megan

Hendrix

Professional Essay


Throughout my time in the JMU Music Education Program, I have shifted

many of my philosophies about teaching music. My overarching goal is to teach in

such a way that students will become life-long learners and participants in our
musical community. I have a firm belief that students who are exposed to music
education formal or informal will have a lasting advantage over others who
didnt have any exposure to music education. Music students not only learn skills
such as time management, team building, leadership, and self-criticism, but they
have a unique understanding of expression and what it is to be human.
One manner in which my philosophy has shifted over the years is my
understanding of teaching music in various stages of a childs life. Before studying
music education and pedagogy practices, I thought I wanted to teach high school
band because I would be able to focus on making REAL music because in my eyes,
high school players were more musical. This concept seems utterly ridiculous to me
now, as it is my responsibility to teach students how to be musically expressive in
whichever level of education I teach. Elementary school students are just as capable
of making meaningful music as collegiate musicians. I have learned about how to
scaffold students in a spiral curriculum so that they are expanding on the
foundations introduced to them at a young age. It is absolutely possible to teach a
complex concept to beginning students if it is presented through an avenue with
which they are familiar, such as games or recognizable tunes.

Another skill I have acquired through higher education and my student

teaching experience is the ability to create a wonderfully prepared lesson planthen

disregard it when it comes time to teach the lesson. Although this seems to be
counterproductive, the capacity to assess and adjust instruction on the fly is
essential to being a successful and effective teacher. I have learned how to plan by
thinking of anything and everything that could possibly benefit my students, from
winding instruction forward/backward to the logistics of carrying out an activity
smoothly. Once I plan to the best of my abilities, it comes time to teach my lesson to
the class. This is the true test of musicianship and expertise in the craft of music
education. If I begin teaching my lesson and the students respond in a way that was
entirely unexpected, I need to change my approach in a seamless, effective manner.
I have learn that the key is to simply be aware of how the students react as well as
how things play out differently in order to teach what the students need to hear and
what will be beneficial for them.

As I have expanded my knowledge about how to effectively teach an

instrumental music program, I have also acquired ideas about how to stray from the
traditional model of music classrooms. I have learned that there are effective,
informal ways to teach music such as learning by route. Students can benefit a great
deal from learning in a mode that is unconventional rather than reading off of a
sheet of music. I had a student at my high school placement who reads at a fourth
grade reading level and a student at my middle school placement who is an excellent
musician but really struggles with associating what he is playing with what is
written on the page. Though I never had enough time with either group of students

to experiment with this, I guarantee that those students would truly benefit from
learning music in a way they feel they can be successful. In addition to varied modes
of teaching, there is so much varying material out there that can help my students
become well rounded and well versed in their musicianship. Composition and
improvisation in an instrumental music classroom are excellent opportunities for
projects or even entire units, and the students might find ways to express
themselves through music that they had never even considered.

I would like to expand upon a topic I briefly touched on: winding instruction

back/forward. Here at James Madison University we are lucky to have an adjunct

professor who seems to know absolutely everything about students with special
needs. Dr. Alice Hammel has opened my eyes to the ways I can revise my teaching
strategies for students who learn a little bit differently from others. The concept of
winding instruction back is simply this: accommodate students who may not
process information as quickly as their peers. The four major ways to adjust lessons
to fit the needs of every student is to account for size, color, pacing, and modality.
For example, if I let a student work on a composition assignment for a longer period
of time, I am modifying the pacing of their assignment. If the student has a hard
time submitting work in pencil/paper format, I can allow them to complete their
work in a different modality such as a podcast. If I have a student that is absolutely
bored with the work I am assigning because she finishes it in half the time, I need to
wind instruction forward for her. I can let this student explore more deeply into the
material, write a harder composition, or do her minor scales in addition to the major
ones assigned.

At my high school placement, the students in band had theory worksheets to

complete over the course of the year. The way Ms. Cole and I adjusted instruction
for the level of each student was to have students keep revising their work until they
did it perfectly. That way if one student needs to spend more time absorbing the
circle of fifths, they can. The students who can do that in a breeze were free to move
on to the next assignment on their own time. The fact of the matter is that fair is
not always equal. I have a responsibility to level the playing field and make my
classroom as fair as possible, and to do that sometimes means that things arent
equal for every student.

I just recently completed my student teaching where I was given the

opportunity to learn from middle and high school band students. Through this
experience I gained an understanding of what it really means to be a band director,
but more importantly a teacher. I was exposed to paperwork, grading, coordinating
with administration, meeting with band parents (for positive and negative reasons),
being part of a committee, faculty relations, and the one thing I had been worried
about classroom management. Something my supervisor told me that has stuck
with me everyday is that if I keep all my students engaged, I would never have to
worry about behavior issues. This has been a challenge because I am starting from
scratch learning how to establish a climate in my classroom, how to carry out a
lesson plan, how to modify instruction, etc., and keeping forty middle school
students in one room engaged for the entire class is certainly a challenge. I learned
how to make behavior plans consistent, how to keep promises, and how to give

dispassionate negative feedback. I have grown so much as an educator during

student teaching, but I still have so much I need and want to learn.

In addition to continuing my growth in classroom management, I have a

burning desire to feel comfortable with curriculum building. I want to learn

everything I can about sequencing and meaningful progression. I am very
comfortable working with individual students and teaching a series of lessons that
will help students learn a piece of music. My comfort ceases when I am asked to
create a yearlong curriculum that will be expertly paced and include the vast
material I feel is important and beneficial to the music education of my students. I
am sure that my first year teaching will be a rollercoaster of trying to find that
perfect balance, but I plan to take away as much positive information as I can
through my failures and successes. In addition to learning how to build an effective
curriculum, I want to continue learning how to assess and adjust over long periods
of time. Part of my philosophy of music education is to continuously improve myself
based on feedback and assessment. In order to create a productive process of
learning, I plan to evaluate and adapt from year to year in addition to adapting from
student to student. I have had experiences with professors that teach the same
thing in the same way year after year as well as professors that constantly
reevaluate their content and mode of instruction. For the professors that change
every year, their curriculum continuously improves. For those that do not, not only
does the material get stale for students, but the professors also get bored and
become lackadaisical in their teaching. When this happens all hope of rich,
meaningful learning is absolutely lost.

I plan to turn my classroom into a student-centered learning environment.

Most likely I will get a job teaching in a traditional band classroom, and that is
perfectly wonderful. However as the teacher in a traditional classroom, it is easy to
fall back into the mindset that the teacher is the source of all knowledge imparting
my wealth to the students year after year. That attitude is exactly what I want to
avoid. I plan to have a student-centered classroom; I will facilitate instruction, but
my students have control over how much and in what way they learn. I plan to
constantly ask questions about their experience, ask for feedback for what I can
improve, and allow them to take control and ownership over their own learning.
This provides them with a dynamic that they probably dont get much of in other
disciplines.
The biggest plan I have for future growth is to learn from my students. If my
center philosophy point is to help students become life-long learners, I would be an
outright hypocrite if I didnt follow my own ideology. I learned a great deal from my
students about teaching music, about myself as a teacher, and about being an adult
in a childs life. My future students will undeniably have much to teach me, and I
would be a fool to disregard that. Music education is a unique and irreplaceable
discipline that will touch the lives of anyone who experiences it in a meaningful way.