Education is a powerful tool that people across the world have. I believe that all children have a right to a free and equal education in the public school system. It is the job of the educator to teach the student in the most effective way possible. This means that teachers must teach using various instructional strategies in order to best meet the needs of the students. The classroom should be well structured with a clear discipline plan in place. The structure of the classroom will allow the classroom to become more interactive between teacher and students.
As I teacher, I believe my job is developed on two main ideas: 1) I must meet students where they are; and 2) I must model for my students what I expect them to demonstrate. These two main ideas are the central concepts of how I act in the classroom, the rehearsal hall, and in private voice lessons. Meeting my students where they are, for example, includes finding out where they are experientially in music. I must find music that will relate to my students where they are. In the same fashion, I must be able to relate historical music to my students so that they become interested in what is being taught. My philosophy: meet the students where they are at and then help them move to a higher level of thinking and musicianship. I must be a model for my students. If my goal is to establish kindness and respect in my classroom, then I must be demonstrating kindness and respect to my students. My enthusiasm will be reflected in my students if I show it while teaching.
As a music educator, I believe music should be a curricular subject because it contains information that needs to be available to all students. Music is part of our everyday lives, yet many people can not even communicate clearly what the music is doing. I believe in helping students become life-long learners. We as teachers are responsible for the education of our students. It is my belief that we should ensure that our students obtain the knowledge that will help them continue on as students or learners. Part of this means that we must help our students learn to become problem solvers; this is the progressive point of view. By doing this, we are ensuring that our students will be able to see outside problems and then apply educated decisions to help solve the problems that exist. I believe that it is important to have a classroom where teacher and student learning roles can be switched back and forth. Students are very bright and brilliant. I believe that we should allow our students to teach us as teachers the knowledge and skills that they have. There are many perspectives that lead to the same answer. A student might understand another perspective rather than the teacher’s perspective a little bit better. Allowing students to teach in certain circumstances will allow the student to start his/her journey down the path of life-long-learning.
In music, performance is one of the key elements to assessing the students. I believe that the performance is nothing without the supplemental instructional information that is added in during class time. A teacher should make sure they are teaching through this style: comprehensive musicianship through performance. This means that my classroom will learn about music history and apply that to a performance piece that they will present at a concert. I believe that the historical context of a composition is just as important as performing the composition for the public. My classroom will be interactive where students can interact with me throughout a lesson. Music is by its very nature is an interactive subject and should be taught as such. Visual, auditory, and psychomotor strategies should be involved in the music classroom order to provide variety and to teach to different learning styles. These are the foundations of my philosophy of music education.
