My Music Education Philosophy

Teacher’s Role

• Music Education should be fun, motivating, exciting, and challenging. It should be taught with an approach involving excellence in both performance and understanding. Teachers need to balance these with the content that is mandated by the National Standards for Music Education.
• Music provides students with intrinsic motivation. It is my job as a teacher to build on intrinsic motivation because intrinsic motivation is essential to foster a student's self-direction in music.

Philosophy

• Music Education should be required for all students grades K-12.
• Music Education must be available for all students regardless of ability.
• All people have the right to receive an education in music that focuses on the intrinsic values of music as an expressive art form. “Music is a basic way that humans know themselves and their world” (Reimer). Music education is a critical link for schools serving students of diverse cultures and/or abilities. Music shows students that there is more than one way for people to learn and understand their world.
• Music education involves teaching and learning with the goal of understanding basic elements of music: rhythm, melody, harmony, form, tone color, texture, and expressive qualities. To realize music fully, a well-balanced appreciation and a critical understanding are essential. For example, these can be achieved through activities such as having vocal students refer to, discuss, and demonstrate different ways that playing an instrument relates to singing. This would help broaden the musical cognition of singers by providing supplemental learning focused on the development of skills and understanding required for singing. 

Music Education in Public Schools

• Drawing up in my experience as a student, substitute teacher, section leader, and leader of collegiate student organizations, I am aware of the need for communication at all levels within a schools music department. What happens in my class affects the entire department; what occurs in my band affects (to some degree) each individual student in the music department.
• In addition to the musical outcomes above, research has shown that participation in music education promotes creativity, lifelong learning, complex thinking, knowledge in the fine arts community, effective communication, sensitivity, aesthetic awareness, awareness of personal responsibility, responsible citizenship, and career preparedness.
• Music enhances students’ academic achievements beyond music. Even though this is not the goal of music education, we must not ignore this truth.

Extra Musical Effects

• Music education provides an outlet for self-expression and our thoughts and feelings.
• “Music education is the education of human feeling, the development of responsiveness to the intrinsically expressive qualities of sound-inherent of the quality of people’s lives through enriching their experience of human feelings” (Reimer).

Lifelong Learning Goals

• The music classroom should be an environment of active, creative, meaningful, and diverse musical experiences, which will result in music making and listening as life long skills.

Finally…

• I believe that teachers need to focus on the process of teaching music rather than the end result, which is usually a performance.
• Lessons need to vary to meet the needs of all students, which means rehearsal of concert music should not be the strict focus of every class.
• I will not support a competitive, “winner takes all” atmosphere where perfection is the primary goal of performance studies.
• Performance repertoire will be chosen to match the ever-developing individual needs of students and ensembles, always selected with the goals of musical diversity, artistry, and educational opportunities in mind.

“The study of music is an important part of a complete education.  It engages students in individual and group activity, develops creativity, problem solving, and critical and evaluative skills.  Music education helps students acquire talent in the production and performance of music, as well as an understanding of history and culture.”

-- George W. Bush