Music Education Department

October 9, 2013 Re: Observation Nick McBride, Assistant Professor I of Music Education From: Sharon L. Morrow, Associate Professor of Music Education Dear Nick, Thank you for inviting me to visit your ME 171 Critical Pedagogy I class and allowing me to observe your outstanding work with our music education students. This is a required course for Music Education students, usually taken in their freshman or sophomore year. It is the first in a series of three courses designed to investigate the philosophical underpinnings of the art of teaching. It was a pleasure to see you in action and to witness our students so fully engaged in learning. From the beginning of the class period, your energy and ability to connect to the students was evident. Not only that, but your pedagogy was exemplary. When helping clarify an assignment where the students needed to collect data, you challenged them to constantly go back to Why and not How. This distinction is a major step for our young music education students, and I was pleased to see you forefront this difference for them. Your class was framed by looking at the culture of education today. You contextualized this by referring to the seminal work, A Nation at Risk, and then showing an interview with Michelle Rhee, a controversial educator in a position of power, challenging your students to find the positive things in the interview in the context of what you had talked about in class as a group, asking them what they thought about it. To facilitate this, you had your students think-pair-share (including a clear handout about Think-Pair-Share) on where you are on what she said. You framed the question to the group after this activity as What are your thoughts? Where are we 30 years later on this document? Also, when students asked questions about Rhee, you had done the background search, so you had answers for them. You consistently challenged your students to engage in critical thinking themselves. Your artful ability to refer to students previous remarks kept the students actively involved in the lesson. You used subtle, engaging techniques to keep the energy of the group moving forward, including gesture, face and voice, humor when

appropriate, great eye contact with each student, and a wonderful openness about you that allowed each of them time to answer completely. Your ability to extrapolate from the students comments to other areas and connections was impressive. I was equally impressed with the intellectual responsiveness of the students. Further, you kept the lesson moving along, and did a great job of giving a brief summary of a segment at the end: Just a couple more comments before we move onI think we would all say that none of us would support mediocrity. From this point, you moved on to one of the case studies from the course text books. These case studies are designed to highlight certain practical or ethical challenges that can confront the teacher when working with students. I loved that you were able to refer to your own teaching experience, bringing a personal touch to this exercise. I was struck by your comments to students: I get what youre sayingThats a fair questionThe other side of this, tho, is And this is the hard thingOne of the takeaways for this is There are all comments that validate the input by the students and at the same time, challenges them to think further, to dig deeper. The class ended by discussion of Learning Styles as set forth by Bernice McCarthy. It was clear you had a firm grasp on this, and your ability to provide examples of each type of learner and teacher for your class. Well done. Nick, this was a wonderful example of your teaching today. The class was briskly paced, elegantly sequenced and delivered with a great deal of expertise and goodwill. It is clear that you bring a wealth of knowledge gained from your own personal experience teaching in your own classroom. It was a delight for me to see you in action. Thank you for inviting me into your classroom and sharing your work with me.

Sincerely,

Sharon L. Morrow, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Music Education