Module 8-1

• How will what you learned in this course about philosophy and aesthetics affect your teaching in the future?

 Hoffer stated, "He (Aristotle)  said that music directly imitates the passions of the soul-gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites and other qualities; hence, when one listens to music that  imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued with the same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to the kind of  music that arouses ignoble passions his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form." (Grout, 1973, p. 7) In the article, Music: Its Expressive Power and Moral Significance, Whitfield begins with an in-depth overview of ancient philosophers of contrasting opinion who all agreed that music is on of the most powerful art forms. She journeys through several explanations ranging from theories to mathematics, but the results are that music plays an important role in affecting human emotion.  Those emotions, she writes, goes on to effect the complete human being. Whitfield concludes, "The creation and practice of music is tightly wound with human emotion, character, and the overall tapestry of human experience. Music arouses sentiment, whether it evokes the intended sentiment or not. Thus, music cannot be underestimated as a powerful shaper of human virtue, character, and emotion." (Whitfield, 18) With these powerful, educational findings, I feel empowered to rest in what has always been my personal philosophy: Music affects human character.  Though I have felt this way for a while, prior to this course I did not have substantial information to support my belief. Learning more about philosophy and its relation to music has given me the missing links to connect my personal philosophy to my professional teaching philosophy.  

Further more, I have learned that aesthetic experiences are moments created for students that have no practical utilitarian purpose, involves feelings, involves intellect, involves a focus on attention, and finally, it must be experienced.  These experiences can in turn introduce students to various styles of music and serve as a launching pad for further musical studies. I plan on incorporating these types of experiences in my classroom, and be reminded avoid treating these experiences as moments for teaching music history and/or 

music theory.  

• How will what was covered in the parts on sociology, social psychology, or psychology affect your teaching in the future?

Although there was much discussed in these areas, my main take-away is the topic of socioeconomic factors of music. In learning the socioeconomic factors of music and their effects on music education, I have made several correlations to my own teaching experiences.  It has also helped to give clarity to a number of different challenges faced during my previous year of teaching.  For most of my teaching career I have taught mostly at-risk youth.  That is to say that most of my students have come from low socioeconomic statuses with minimal parental involvement.  This year I transferred to a brand new middle school where I had the opportunity to build the program from ground zero.  I did not realize that the culture of the school would be so drastically different from my past experiences.  The socioeconomic factors were the main differences.  

In my present teaching situation most of the parents have graduated high school and a great percentage of them have attended college. Most of the students come from families where there parents are either nurses, engineers, business owners, clergy or educators.  Similarly, most of the students live in homes where they have their own bedroom and since of privacy.  These will likely be students who will each have their own cars when they reach driving age. Culturally, the divide is probably 50% white, 30% black, and 20% other.  Because of our location in Georgia, as expected, there is a very high percentage of Christians and Christian groups in my school as well.

Obviously, the big shift in SES from my previous experiences to my current experiences effected the musical selections a bit.  The majority of the repertoire choices remain the same as I strive to use quality pieces of music no matter what SES of students I teach.  Still, the differences between the teaching situations should be observed.  With the majority of the music learned in my chorus classes, the only difference between the two teaching situations were that in my previous teaching situation I had to spend more time relating the Classical repertoire to the students' preferred styles of music (which was mainly Pop and Rap).  My current students seem more accustom to delayed gratification as mentioned in the text, which makes it a little easier to explore more challenging choral pieces. I plan to use this information to raise the standard in my choirs next year and challenge them more. I feel better about pushing them having realized this contrast in my teaching experiences.

The social psychological foundations of music education spoke quite extensively on conformity and its significance to the adolescent and the implications for the music educator. As a middle school choral director, I found this section very interesting as well. I always try to use conformity in recruiting and expanding my program. My teaching style is one that is fast paced, energetic, and rigorous. The pacing of my lessons are intended to foster student engagement and minimize classroom disturbances.  I always begin the school year with team-building activities and ice breakers and try to instill a sense of cooperation and homogony within the group.  In fact, I often refer to my ensemble as a team and often compare their work ethic in class to that of an athlete.  One way that I acknowledge hard working students is with a monthly award called the Star Student award.  This award is presented to the choral student who demonstrates good rehearsal etiquette, gives 100% during rehearsals, works cooperatively within their sections, and shows improvement in skill.  I make it clear that this award is not presented to the best singer or performer but instead focuses on the hard working music student. I considered omitting the latter strategy (Star student) from my class room next year, however, after learning about the importance of conformity and social psychological, I may consider keeping it.

• Choose any one of the previous seven units in the course, and explain how what you have learned will affect your teaching in the future.

While there are several aspects of this course that were helpful, I found module seven, The Psychological Foundation of Music Education, to be especially helpful.  I like to explore concepts in my classroom, but like any realistic teacher, I know there are many things that I could be reinforcing and doing better.  Learning that concepts are primarily a classification process that will also increase the likleyhood of recall was as useful as it was interesting.  i found being able to identify and design lessons for my own classroom to be very beneficial and these concepts are presently what I look forward to implementing the most in my classroom.

1. Rhythm (duration). For this concept, I could incorporate more rhythmic exercises in my warm-ups.  Currently, I use most of my warm-up time for sight-singing with pitches. Of course rhythm is incorporated here but there is no direct attention placed on rhythmic reading.  Dotted-quarter notes and dotted-half notes are the notes that need the most re-enforcement in this concept.  I have not introduced sub-dividing into rhythmic reading, but could utilize this approach for these types of notes especially.  By allowing my students to feel the pulse of the eighth note in the dotted-quarter note and the pulse of the quarter note in the dotted-half note, the students would be more apt to successfully perform these notes.
2. Pitch. The specific area of this concept I would like to develop is being able to transfer the student knowledge of reading pitches from sight-singing to actual repertoire.  In my experience there is a disconnect from the skills they use in sight-singing and the skills that they use in rehearsing their actual music.  It seems that students are use to being given the pitches by the teacher that they disengage in the reading process.  There are three ways that I can help develop this area: 1-use actual music excerpts for sight-singing, 2-have students sight-sing the re-occuring theme of new repertoire (where appropriate), or some section of the music before it is rehearsed, 3-play the piano with the students as they read instead of relying completely on vocal modeling.
3. Dynamics. For this concept, I can give practical references to identify the dynamic making.  Although my students are use to the dynamic terms and their meaning, sometimes the execution of the dynamic gets lost in translation.  For example, my students can identify that mezzo piano means medium soft and that mezzo forte means medium loud, but singing a line mezzo piano and then repeating that line mezzo forte can get a little confusing to them.  However, if I explain mezzo piano further as being the volume you would use to speak to your friend who is seated beside you and mezzo forte as the volume you would use to give a presentation to the class, students would have more of a practical reference that they could use to perform the dynamics.  Other examples could include, forte as loud as the roar of a lion, pianissimo as quiet as a sleeping baby. Also, posting these dynamics with their practical references somewhere in the classroom will help serve as a constant reminder.
4. Tone. This year my students have vastly improved their overall tone. Still, there is room for improvement.  To develop this area more fully, I could focus more on tone production.  I identify four basic steps to tone production with my students: 1-'singer's breath' (engaging the diaphragm), 2-raise the soft palate, 3-drop the jaw, 4-rounded lips.  I could consistently use these steps sequentially in everyday warm-ups.  For example, I could start the warm-up with deep breaths where the students focus on diaphragmatic breathing. Next, I could have them practice dropping the jaw, raising the soft palate up and lowering it through releasing their 'singer's breath' on 'ha'.  Lastly, I could have the students move from 'ha' to 'who' (like an owl). This would re-enforce rounded lips.  If I use this as a beginning warm-up consistently, perhaps the students will think of these tone production steps in a sequential manner and incorporate them in their everyday choral singing.