http://www.msu.edu/~rosenmi2/Podcasts/rosen.mp3

One of the most important steps in becoming a teacher is developing a personal philosophy of teaching.  My philosophy of teaching is specific to a music curriculum due to the fact that I intend on teaching music.  In this philosophy I will not delve into my reasons for choosing music as a teaching profession.  Instead, this philosophy will address the multitude of questions that potential teachers should ask themselves after having answered why they wish to teach.  I will address my position on topics such as: teaching methodologies, assessment methods, student to teacher ratios, multiculturalism, tracking, class, race, gender, language, and students with a disability or disabilities.   

            My approach to teaching music incorporates different aspects from various methodologies and is therefore an eclectic approach.  For example, I believe that both Comprehensive Musicianship and the Gordon Music Learning Theory methods approach music education in ways that would help students understand music in an effective manner.  I prefer Gordon because his approach teaches students to audiate the pitches that they will produce instead of just reading notes on a page and then pressing the right buttons.  For those who are unfamiliar with the term, audiation is when you hear the pitch in your heard before you physically produce the pitch with your voice or instrument.  Audiation has many uses; however, I really like to incorporate audiation into my teaching because it helps students to internalize the pitch.  When students internalize the pitch, they will have an easier time playing in tune.  I also favor Comprehensive Musicianship because it constantly stresses the fundamentals of music.  In Comprehensive Musicianship, producing music isn’t a linear process but rather a broad process.  This process encompasses many steps and incorporates many ideas and perspectives when approaching the concept of learning.  For me to choose a single method, however, would be silly.  My style of teaching doesn’t perfectly match any single method and therefore I’ve found aspects of several methodologies that I really like and have decided that I’m going to utilize them.  

            Assessment is an important part of any class, be it music or math.  Assessment is important for several reasons; however, I believe the largest role assessment takes is in the growth of both our students and our own teaching.  When I assess my students I plan on using portfolio assessment.  In my opinion, portfolio assessment should be the only way we assess our students.  Portfolio assessment assesses students over a very long period of time and this in itself can serve many purposes.  Instead of seeing a single test score, parents, teachers, and students could see a graph or chart outlining the student’s progress by displaying a students test results over the course of several years.  Being able to see a student’s progress over a longer period of time improves the accuracy of such information.  Portfolio assessment isn’t limited to assessing student through tests.  Portfolio assessment can include all sorts of different methods of evaluating students, from homework to in class presentations and anything in between.  In my opinion, tracking and portfolio assessment are interlinked.

            Tracking should happen in music classes.  In order to provide the best experience to greatest amount of students there should be a variety of ensembles and music classes in any music program.  Tracking is essential in placing students in ensembles which they can find challenges that they can comfortably meet.  If I were to offer music theory at a high school or middle school then I would want to offer at least two different classes.  For one class I would allow any student to enroll, regardless of musical experience and it would be considered a learning music from the basic class.  I would also like to offer a more advanced music theory class where we would expand on concepts that the students should already have some background in.  In order to properly place and track students, I believe that one should use the resources that they have collected through their portfolio assessment methods.  Asking students to take a single test and evaluating them solely on that test isn’t nearly as accurate as looking at a portfolio.    

            Music classes can contain anywhere from upwards of one hundred students in the largest of bands, all the way down to as low as a single student for private lessons.  In order for a band or orchestra to have all the different parts covered with the minimum amount of performers the number still weighs in at about thirty five to forty students.  The teacher to student ratio is often ignored when it comes to music classes.  According to my teaching philosophy, I would allow as many students to enroll in music as the room’s capacity would allow.  Additionally, if there were enough interest from the students I would gladly teach multiple music classes so that all those who are interested could have music in their class schedule.

            My classes will make no distinction between race, gender, class, students whose first language isn’t English, and students with disabilities.  Of course, students with special accommodations will potentially need more attention than those without, however, my main goal is to plan my curriculum and teach in a way that can accommodate all my students.  Music is a universal language and teaching students whose first language isn’t English isn’t that much of a challenge.  I’ve had two flute tutors throughout my musical journey and both of them had recently moved to the United States from the Ukraine.  They had no trouble instructing me and I didn’t have any trouble understanding what they wanted because music instruction doesn’t require the use of that much verbal communication.  A great deal of music instruction can be given simply by modeling the correct way to perform something.

            I think it’s important to know and understand your students on an individual level.  This can be accomplished through documentation, observation, and through a variety of assessment forms.  Knowing your students and their capabilities is the first step in knowing how to differentiate your teaching in order to accommodate the needs of individuals.  Students come in all variations: Talented but unmotivated, talented and motivated, untalented and motivated, untalented and unmotivated, ect.  As a teacher, I need to be aware of how to encourage my students, “Along with providing such modeling and expectations yourself, expose your apathetic students to peers or people with whom they identify who model active minds at work”  (Brophy, 2004).  As Brophy explains, providing students with a positive model can be very helpful.

            It’s important to remember that every student is different, some learn faster and some need more time in order to catch on.  The pace of learning needs to be such that all students are being adequately challenged.  With that in consideration, I support  mastery learning or a variation of mastery learning, “Mastery learning adjusts whole-class pacing by allowing slower students more time, and usually providing them with tutoring or other special assistance to enable them to learn material that classmates have mastered more quickly”  (Brophy, 2004).   After initially describing mastery learning, Brophy explains a variation on mastery learning where the teacher makes compromises and keeps the more advanced students in an environment where they are still being challenged, “A feasible adaptation of the mastery learning approach may be to identify those learning objectives that seem most essential and see that all of your students master them, while tolerating more variable performance on objectives that are less essential” (Brophy, 2004).  I had a teacher was able to do this by allowing the students to form chamber ensembles.  We even had a chamber ensemble recital where all the chamber ensembles performed.  It’s true that not every chamber ensemble was pleasant to listen to; however, everyone in that class met the required objectives that were outlined for us at the onset of the class.  Instead of having the slower students get farther and farther behind like they tend to do in other classes where they would potentially fail; here they were able to fulfill the requirements and actually have something to show for their achievements. 

I also want to expose my students to a wide variety of music from different cultures and time periods.  Additionally, I think that my students should have at least some say in the music we perform.  Of course, I will choose music based on the maturity level of the ensemble, however, I think it’s important for students to feel as if they have options and to feel as if they have an impact on the direction of the course.  Thus I will present a wide selection of material to them and then they will vote on which pieces they wish to spend further rehearsal time on.     

            My philosophy of teaching music is an ever-changing entity.  As such, within the confines of this small paper I’ve only touched on some of the basic parts of my philosophy.  I know that my philosophies of teaching must accommodate the students first and it is my goal to help students understand and appreciate music at a greater level.  The formation of my philosophy of teaching is a crucial element to my becoming an effective teacher, as it should be for any teacher.                     

References

Brophy, J. (2004).  Socializing uninterested or alienated students.  In Motivating students to learn (2^nd ed., pp.  307-334).  Mahwah, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Brophy, J. (2004).  Rebuilding discouraged students’ confidence and willingness to learn.  In Motivating students to learn (2^nd ed., pp. 119-150).  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

            Is four minutes enough time for students to get from one class to another?  For my last tutoring session the most memorable moment was when I ventured out into the hallway in between class periods and saw all the late students straggling into the class across the hall.  The stragglers of course get a lecture from the teacher who is standing outside the door.  The lecture consists of questions like, “Can’t you go to the bathroom faster?” and I quietly laugh to myself as I hear this and the student whines.  Honestly, it didn’t feel like four minutes to me.  It felt much more like 2 or 3 minutes of passing time.  Perhaps I should measure the amount of time the students actually have.  The reason why I originally thought it was four minutes of passing time was because my student tried to run away from one of our lessons when the bell rang.  As he was running away without turning in his work and without having had a chance for me to explain the last problem that he answered incorrectly, I called out to him, “Hey, come back please, aren’t you forgetting something?”  My student turned and said, “I can’t I need to go to class.”  I responded, “This will only take a moment.”  He started walking back to me but didn’t look like he was going to sit down.  I said, “Please, this will only take a couple seconds.”  He responded again with, “I can’t!  I have to go to class, I’m going to be late!” and I responded, “How much time do you have between classes?” and he answered with four minutes.  So I said, “Well that’s plenty of time, this will only take a second.”  When he continued to protest and said how he’s going to be late I agreed with him, “You’re going to be late if you keep arguing with me” I believe is what I said.  So after about what I thought was around sixty seconds my students ran away from me without his homework and without having heard my corrections. 

As I told this story to one of my colleagues she said, “That’s ridiculous, you should have offered to write him a pass.”  Of course, that would have been a wonderful idea.  Coming from a school where it wasn’t necessary to write passes, this thought didn’t cross my mind.  For all of my precollege education years I’ve hardly ever been late for a class, however, when I was it was for a good reason and the teachers usually wouldn’t make a fuss about it.  Now that I’ve been in college for four years I’ve been spoiled by an atmosphere that’s much more understanding to tardiness, absence, and so forth.  I remember in my high school where three tardies would result in a detention.  Being tardy for class also meant that you had to go to the office and fill out some kind of form.  I’m not quite sure about the details since it never happened to me but I always thought that to be so silly.  Why make the student walk all the way to the office and stand in a line for 10 minutes when they’ve already missed several minutes of class due to tardiness?  What’s the point?  If a student is tardy don’t make him miss more class.

Should we even have a punishment for tardiness?  Does the punishment encourage students to come to class on time?  Students should know that if they’re not in class then they probably won’t do as well as they would want to on assignments and tests.  I think this type of thinking doesn’t really happen until college, because that’s when the system allows students the freedom to start thinking in this way.  “If there’s no penalty skipping class then what’s stopping me from skipping?”  The question is if students can think that far ahead.  I’ve read about schools where they take a more progressive approach to attendance and tardiness.  Honestly, I think that’s great.  Even if the students can’t realize the ramifications at that age, they will the ramifications once they get their grades.  Better for them to get bad grades in middle school when it really doesn’t count for anything than for them to get bad grades in college.  How many students flunk out of college due to poor attendance?  Directly, very few classes grade based on attendance, however, indirectly that lack of attendance will have a dramatic effect on the learning retention of the student and thus on the resulting grades from tests and assignments.  We should start teaching students to be more independent at an earlier age so then that way they won’t make mistakes when it costs their parents ten thousand dollars per semester for their son or daughter to fail.

            What does a teacher do when the student thinks that the teacher is wrong?  I had a bit of an awkward experience with my student.  I was looking over his assignment to make sure that he understood the material.  I went down the worksheet, problem by problem.  The worksheet was quizzing my student on adverbs, adjectives and nouns.  I can’t recollect the exact instance of the problem, however, I remember that my student missed one that younger students would typically miss such as the difference between good and well.  In any case, I presented the worksheet back to my student and asked him if he was confident with his answer on the specific one that I was examining.  He said that he was confident with his answer and looked skeptical, as if he was trying to figure out why I was asking him.  I then tried to explain to him how he got the problem wrong.  My student looked more skeptical.  I did my best to explain to him how adverbs and adjectives work and still my student looked very skeptical.  I asked him, “You don’t believe me?” and he responded with, “No, you’re wrong.”  If I were explaining something relating to music I think I could have convinced my student as when I tried to explain the intricacies of English language to my student I felt as though my explanation wasn’t as effective as it could have been. 

Speaking of explaining music, I recently needed to explain why chords need to be tuned upwards or downwards depending on their quality.  I teach a band of about eight middle school students and one adult every other Sunday for two hours.  The band accompanies a religious service on Friday evenings.  During this past Sunday rehearsal we came to a section of music that didn’t quite sound the way I imagined it.  I instructed the band to hold the chord and I isolated the chord by instrument.  I discovered the problem: the violin player needed to tune the third of the chord down as should usually be done in a major chord.  Being a 7^th grade violin player, he had never heard of adjusting the pitch of his instrument in order to tune a chord and immediately questioned my statement.  He asked, “Why do I need to do this?” and I soon realized that I didn’t have a prepared explanation.  I’ve never had a teacher explain to me why this happens I simply know that this is the correct way to tune a major chord.  After several minutes of me attempting to explain why the third of a major chord needs to be about 12 cents flat I came to the realization that I was loosing my audience.  I also didn’t feel completely confident in my explanation and I think this was coming off to the students.  I eventually explained that I would have an easier time explaining why this happens if I had a white board to diagram the explanation.  As the rehearsal went on I discovered that my violin player is quite curious by nature and that was not the last question I would be hearing from him in that rehearsal. 

Drawing this back together, I think there’s always going to be circumstances where the teacher can’t explain what the student wants to know.  Human curiosity is always going to be larger than the Human knowledge base.  There will always be 100 questions for every 1 answer that we have.  This is the nature of the Human mind.  While I may not know the answer to every question, I can promise my students to try and find the answers to their questions.  I believe that instead of struggling to answer my students questions I should have simply stated, “You know, I’m not really sure why this works that way but I’ll investigate an answer for you for our next lesson.”  I think I’ve perceived teachers as all knowing for a very long time and now that I’m attempting to fill that role myself I’m discovering how teachers are not all knowing and that it’s okay to admit this to your students so long as they understand some questions can’t be answered, at least not immediately.    

            I enjoyed reading Amy Burger’s response to the Labaree reading.  I felt like she really hit on the main points of the article.  I really liked when she brought up JFK and how many people expect the government to take care of all of their problems.  As I wrote in my own response, school reforms can’t be ushered in a solely political manner.  The general populace needs to have the drive for a change in schools in order for this to really happen.  It was for this reason that I felt skeptical when reading the Labaree as I believe politics are just part of the problem while Labaree seems to blame it all on our political system.  Also, I like the goal of shaping students into good human beings; however, everyone has somewhat different standards and ideas for what constitutes a “good human being”.  If we try to teach values to our students then we may become into conflict with the religious values that parents are trying to teach to their children.  Sometimes even the general values of what is considered right and wrong is contested.  Just as an example, not everyone agrees with the philosophy: an eye for an eye. 

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2005/6/16/523

            I’ve talked about DDR in the classroom before and now I’ve found another school where they’re going to be using both DDR and the Sony EyeToy:Play.  I myself haven’t used the EyeToy very much, however, on the two or three times that I have used it I had fun and my body was definitely involved in the action.  If you haven’t seen EyeToy before then I recommend going to your nearest Gamestop or EBgames store as they will often have an EyeToy setup for people to try out, however, EyeToy is becoming an older accessory and this has become less and less common.  The neat thing about the EyeToy is the digital camera, which picks up all motion that the player creates physically.  Many of the games involve the player swatting with his or her hands in order to deflect projectiles but there are other games that involve more than just hand eye coordination.  One such game puts the player in the kitchen of a restaurant and you basically create the meals for the customers by grabbing the ingredients and putting them in the right places.  While working as a chef might not sound like the ideal form of entertainment, it actually can be quite fun and you’ll find yourself laughing at some of the game play.  Personally, I think DDR is a better venue for exercise than the EyeToy as waving your arms isn’t nearly as exhausting as the motions that are required for DDR.

Many people have been commenting on DDR in the classroom and this is the other reason why I wish to write about this article.  One person made the point that students need the social interaction of outdoor play or a gymnasium.  When I read this criticism it really frustrated me because I personally had a horrible time in gym class.  Social interaction was the negative part of gym for me.  One time I got hit in the ear with a small rock because that was another student’s idea of “social interaction”.  Another time a student accidentally hit my friend in the eye with a metal baseball bat causing him to have to go the hospital where his skull effectively needed to be rearranged.  Do these people even remember what gym was like?  Did they enjoy having that nasty locker where they stored their nasty gym clothes?  Did they enjoy changing in front of the rest of the class?  I certainly didn’t.  DDR doesn’t build social skills?  I dare say that DDR does a better job at encouraging social interaction than baseball does.  DDR is usually set up in a two mat configuration so two friends can play together and they can play as a competition or they can play just for the fun of it.  In baseball people are spread out along a field or they’re on the side lines waiting for their turn to bat.  Talking isn’t exactly easy while you’re out on the field and when you’re sitting on the sidelines you’ll often find yourself sitting next to someone that you wouldn’t want to talk to in the first place.  With DDR you can choose who you play with and you’re not standing far away from one another like on a baseball field.  I would rather be playing DDR than playing baseball and I can say with confidence that I would rather have the youth of our nation playing DDR in gym than any other sport.

            Labaree has explained three different educational approaches to the purposes or goals of school: democratic equality, social efficiency, and social mobility.  The underlying message that Labaree is trying to get to the reader isn’t an approach to education.  Labaree is trying to tell the reader that “the central problems with American education are not pedagogical or organizational or social or cultural in nature but are fundamentally political”.  I must agree that politics play a large role in the problems surrounding our educational system; however, I can’t see how one can dismiss the cultural, social, organizational, and pedagogical problems.  The politics surrounding the educational problems we see today is simply one problem of many.  Political changes can be powerful, however, real changes in society are often not determined by the residing political power but by the general populace. 
Let’s take a look at history; in 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation granted all slaves their freedom.  If Politics were the only driving force in this country then on the day of the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves would have been made free.  Slavery didn’t really slow down in the country until after the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6^th 1865 and the Amendment wasn’t even fully recognized until weeks later.  Even with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery continued to exist in small communities and surprisingly enough, slavery still exists today.  Although slavery has been illegal in the United States for nearly a century and a half, the United States Department of Labor occasionally prosecutes cases against people for false imprisonment and involuntary servitude. These cases often involve illegal immigrants who are forced to work as slaves in factories to pay off the people who transported them into the United States. Other cases have involved domestics.  Not convincing enough for you?  What about prohibition?  You do know that our government tried to ban alcohol, don’t you? 
Prohibition began on January 16^th , 1920 when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect.  Even though the sale of alcohol was illegal, alcoholic drinks were still widely available at “speakeasies” and other underground drinking establishments. Speakeasies gained their name from the fact that a patron had to “speak easy” and convince the doorman to let them in. His job was to keep out those who looked like they were “dry” agents. Agents had no forced-entry rights at all, and so could not break into an establishment if the doorman refused them entry. Many people also kept private bars to serve their guests. Large quantities of alcohol were smuggled in from Canada, overland and via the Great Lakes, and from the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Additional alcohol was delivered from Rum Row off the US East Coast.  One of the big problems with prohibition was that it created more crime and bootlegging that our nation had ever seen.  Additionally, because of all the risks taken in producing the alocohol, the quality varied.  There were many cases of people going blind or suffering from brain damage after drinking “bathtub gin” made with industrial alcohol or various poisonous chemicals.  In the end prohibition lasted for 13 years and really only impacted the nation in a negative way.  My point here is that even with a driving political force putting a ban on alcohol, the nation still drank.
 

            Critical thinking has always been a topic which has interested me greatly.  In my freshman year of college one my teachers introduced the class to a workbook called critical thinking, or something like that.  The workbook was really great.  The premise was to get the student to start reflecting on the daily events in their life.  Why do I do what I do?  Often time’s people go through the day without any reflection.  They simply go through the motions: wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, have lunch, do more work, come home, have dinner, go to sleep, repeat.  Sometimes we never consider how we’re sleeping, why we’re sleeping that way, or what we’re eating, and why we eat that way.  For example, you may eat your meals far too fast and sleep far too little but you won’t come to this realization until you start to think critically. 

            Critical thinking needs to be a part of schooling from the beginning.  I think it’s sad that my first exposure to such material was in my freshman year of college.  Adolescents need critical thinking skills in order to conduct themselves in a safe and rational way.  Scientists have done studies that have shown that the critical thinking center of an adolescent’s brain doesn’t develop as fast as the rest of their brain.  This goes even further to demonstrate how much they need critical thinking in their lives.  I think one of the major problems with drunk driving and general academic failure stems from an inability to think critically.  They simply haven’t been presented with the ideas and skills.  This doesn’t mean we need more lectures on how terrible drinking and driving is.  Students need to come to these conclusions on their own.  They need to realize how these actions have consequences.  Learning to think critically is the best place to start.  

 http://ianbanker.edublogs.org/2006/04/02/podcast-the-naked-scientist/

I think it’s neat that there’s a podcast where people can call in or send an email with their questions surrounding the topics of science.  I myself often wonder why certain facets of reality function the way that they do.  You really didn’t delve too far into your own thoughts on this podcast.  How do you think this podcast could help you or others from an educational standpoint?  Could listening to this podcast make someone a better science teacher?  I’m interested to hear more about this.

My tutoring experiences in a Middle school in the Midwest are becoming more complex with each session. I find myself reflecting on these sessions and wondering how they might impact my classroom teaching. It’s easy for me to dismiss the experiences and their value. Teaching grammar and spelling to a single student seems very remote from what I intend to do as a career. Obviously there are very large differences in what it is like to give private English lessons and to teach Music as a classroom teacher. My most critical reflection is that my abilities and expertise would be better used in an environment where I could teach music, not English. I feel that my student would benefit more from the teaching of a student who has a larger knowledge base in the study of English. Let’s delve deeper into this, if an English major were assigned to give private lessons to a music student, could the English major teach the music student? That all depends on the music background that the English major has. It is very possible that this hypothetical teacher has no background in music at all, what then? Now we have a situation where the student knows more that the teacher. Of course, when we look at the reality of my situation, any college student could be assigned to teach English. Does this make sense? In all honesty, I would feel much more comfortable teaching in my own field of expertise. The material that my student is learning hasn’t been explained to me since high school. I’m in my fourth year of college. I’m drawing on knowledge from over four years ago. Sure, I have a fairly good knowledge of how to spell and write sentences in a grammatically correct fashion, however, just because I know how the English language works that doesn’t necessarily mean I can teach how it works. The essential problem here is that I didn’t necessarily learn all the vocabulary in explaining how grammar works. I’ll give you an example of my blind knowledge from my last lesson:

We’re learning the difference between adjectives and adverbs. My student has been absent for the past two days. The teacher gives us the homework and in class assignments that he has missed. I review the instructions and in essence, learn what an adverb is on the spot. I then waste about one minute of my student’s time in learning the material while he sits there in a daze.

The point here is that I’m not an English education major. I don’t need to know how to explain the difference between an adjective and an adverb. I’ve gotten by just fine so far not knowing a verbal explanation. I know how to write fairly well without that verbal explanation. The problem arises when I’m asked to teach how to write well. I simply haven’t been taught how to do that, at least, not explicitly. It is possible to make an argument that since I have been taught how to use grammar properly that while being taught I observed how to teach. This is true, but how long ago was I taught the difference between an adjective and an adverb? Ten years ago? I honestly feel unqualified to teach this material.