This semester in 345 has been so eye opening for me in such a positive way.

Each
semester that Ive spent at Penn State, Ive not only been able to grow as a future music
teacher, but Ive also learned to appreciate what it really means to be an effective and
creative music educator. The strings, secondary band, and middle school general units
each gave me new insights into the world of music education.
Being that I was never in an orchestra prior to college, I feel that I learned quite a
bit during our strings unit. I gained whole new understanding of the importance of lesson
planning. We created lesson plans for our rote teaching assignment and for our planning
for instruction assignment. Completing these assignments with thorough attention to
detail allowed me to understand the importance of stating clear objectives and finding
different ways to achieve those objectives effectively in a short period of time. In addition
to this, I also feel that I got a much better idea of what content to focus on in a primary/
secondary strings setting (intonation, hand/instrument placement, bow directions,
rhythmic difficulties, etc...). I learned about this most when we observed the high school
orchestra rehearsal.
During our secondary band unit, I learned a lot about what it really means to
understand a piece of music. We spent a great deal of in-class time and individual time
analyzing and creating cognitive and affective charts to represent our specific pieces of
music that we taught for the final assessment. These charts were a great visual
representation of dynamics, instrumentation, meter, tempo, style, and timbre. I had never
seen a map like this before but am certain that I will use it in my future teaching. We also

created pedagogical worksheets that allowed us to pick a pedagogical concern for each
section of our assigned pieces. This assignment helped me to think like a band director
about creative and efficient ways to overcome some of these concerns in an ensemble
setting. I view both the cognitive/affective charts and the pedagogical concern sheets to
be invaluable resources for any band director who truly wants to help their students
succeed.
My last unit was middle school general music. Being that I am an elementary
general emphasis, I found the general music portion of this course to be exciting, fun, and
refreshing! We discussed the different ways of immersing students in a new musical
culture with authenticity, something that I find to be incredibly important. In order to do
this we went through the steps of attentive listening, engaged listening, and enactive
listening. We were able to apply this in our practicum teaching at Mount Nittany Middle
School by teaching them an engaging lesson about Native American culture and music. I
taught the dance portion of this lesson and I must say, I had a blast! Teaching middle
school students was a lot more fun than I ever thought it would be.
I feel that Ive come a long way this semester in terms of academics and
musicianship. These classes have also allowed me to become much more goal oriented in
my teaching. I look forward to using some of the teaching techniques that I learned over
the span of the semester and building upon them when I return in the fall!