A couple things I learnt about my teacher's views on teaching and music education is that she believes that it's much harder than it looks and that there's more to it than just having fun and making music. I consists of loving what you're doing and most of all patience. This is important because by watching you doing what you love inspires students and requires a lot of patience because not all students are there to become professionals but mostly for interest or to get an easy art credit and it's your job to make them fall in love with music.
While doing the interview I felt as though I could relate to most of the things she was saying, for example she told me that what inspired her to become a teacher was by taking the careers class in grade 10 as well as doing COOP’s with music teachers and that's exactly the same thing that inspired me as well as my genuine love for music and the trumpet.
When I asked her about what are the best and worst parts of teaching are, she replied that the best parts are that you get to see the progress of the students starting from when they had no musical knowledge to them performing a concert in front of several hundred people. A couple things she said were the worst parts of teaching is budgets cuts and improper or old instruments. This makes it harder than it already is to teach students because it’s hard to run a successful music program without instruments or reeds etc.
When I asked her why she wanted to go into education rather than performance she seemed very uncertain that she really wanted to do music ed because in the back of her head was always that thought of ‘what if’ or what her life would be like if she went into performance. Regardless she still has many performance opportunities even as an educator for example community bands and weddings etc. By the answers I got from the other questions I asked I think in the end she's happy that she pursued music ed because she gets to share her passion and do what she loves every day and finds her life very rewarding.
Since inclusion in the classroom is something we discuss a lot in class, I asked her what ways she can include everyone in her classes considering their ages and different skill levels and capabilities. What she does to make sure every student gets a role is that she writes her own band parts to make it suitable for the level of that player. If there are grade 9’s she may give them the simple melody to play, more advanced students may get the Harmony and even more advanced students would get the fingering patterns and chord progressions, in a guitar class setting, same can be done in instrumental band although it may take considerably longer.
When I asked her for a piece of advice she may give a future educator she told me that patience is key and to not let yourself get frustrated over little things because there's always time for improvement and forcing a student to be the best will only discourage them. To make the class fun because not everyone is there to become a professional musician, and finally to make the student love music by trying different ways of teaching to get them interested in the subject!
POWERPOINT: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTl9LhVIX7IGoSkWlH0GpfY7jYdxSHvUZSMAL4Io6Y_A0IBG1gGeJ_L5iH6bvtqrdhRR3zop0jLKhs3/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=5000
STUDENT INTERVIEW
Student - Teacher Perspectives
When interviewing my teacher and my friend I found a lot of similarities as well as diffrences in their musical backgrounds and what they're doing today. Obviously my teacher continued in music but that was simply from passion and interest, and my friend didn't continue in music but still has that passion for music, maybe just not as much, this is to say that you don't have to continue in music to be considered a musician, because my friend continued into business and music is still a part of her everyday life. I noticed that my teacher and friend both took piano when they were young and my teacher continues with piano to this day but my friend quit after several years. This was when I started to notice the difference between the two of them. Maybe my friend didn't necessarily quit because she hated it but it was too time consuming and she just didn't have that drive to continue. As she got older she began to realize she's generally a math orientated person whereas my teacher kept going with the musical path. I found it very interesting to hear from two different people with the same childhood music experience and see where they are today with music. In the end I feel as though pursuing music a career takes more passion than pursuing any other career because you need to be 100% devoted to it and love it. In my friends case, she realized that she wasn't devoted to it at a young age so she stopped but she still has a general interest for it which is awesome and she's able to use that to her advantage, for example she plays when she is stressed. In the end I learnt that Music has a positive impact on everyones life wether or not they choose to continue with it and it shows me how important music education is because you're teaching students life lessons while teaching them music and you're introducing them to something that may end up being their life long passion or simply a hobby they can use to benefit them in the future.