Second Lesson Reflection

I recently had take 2 of my ten minute lesson on Bach.  I did the lesson on fugues just as I did the first time.  When the ten minutes was up, my first thought was:  “That was horrible.”  It didn’t feel great while I was doing it, and it felt even worse in the couple of minutes afterword when I reflected on it.  When my time was up I quickly packed up my things and went to my computer.  I didn’t write my actual reflection then.  Rather I just wrote the first few things that came to mind.  This was what I wrote:

Did a worse job

Messed up the color

Not clear

Crappy teacher

Got distracted by people laughing

When I hear someone say it’s making them nervous that can’t be a good sign

Obviously I’m hard on myself, but this was truly how I felt.  I was very nervous before my first lesson, but it ended up going alright, and I was ultimately proud of myself for getting through it.  This time though, I felt it was a borderline disaster.

The main thing I wanted to change was to make the lesson a little simpler in the sense that I wanted fewer facts.  I really wanted to focus on what a subject was and what the exposition was, and to not get bogged down with getting too much deeper.  The first time around I definitely talked too much, so I wanted to have a bit more of the class doing something.  One idea that I decided to try sort of at the last minute was to teach the class the subject vocally.  I had them sing it back to me in a few different sections and then had them sing the whole thing.  I realized that this was going to be a big challenging because it’s a fairly complicated melody to have to memorize on the spot like that, but I thought it was worth giving a try anyways.  The main thing I wanted to accomplish was for the class to get the subject in their head and become familiar with it.  It didn’t really matter to me if they couldn’t sing it perfectly.  I also decided to bring my bass guitar because that’s the instrument that I’m most comfortable with.  (My piano abilities are extremely limited).  I also wanted to play the beginning of the fugue with a student rather than just have them play the subject on his or her own.  This went all right, but I embarrassingly messed up a couple of notes because I let some of the laughter and comments of the rest of the class distract me and throw me off. 

            The other change I made was to split the class up into four groups for the listening/visualization part.  Rather than having everyone simply call out the color that was playing the subject, I assigned a color/voice to each group and had that group stand up when they saw/heard the subject.  Unfortunately I mixed up the color of the tenor voice with the alto voice, which led to confusion.  We tried the exercise again, but I felt it was too late to try and correct the colors at that point, so it only went moderately better the second time.  One interesting thing that happened was that everyone started singing their part along to the video.  I let it continue, and I’m still undecided if this was good or bad.  By singing were they getting more or less out of it?  Were they doing it seriously or as a joke?

            Overall the whole thing just felt uncomfortable to me.  I thought my tendency to be inarticulate came out, and I got a few laughs the first time, which didn’t happen this time.  Thinking about it now, I think getting people to laugh a little bit is a useful way for me to feel a little more comfortable.  I guess it’s a way of realizing that the people I’m talking to are really listening to me and are semi interested.  However, the only way for me to really use humor is for it to be spontaneous.  Quite often when people laugh at things I say it’s borderline unintentional.  In any case it didn’t happen at all this time.

            As I watched and participated in the other lessons I started to feel even worse about how my lesson went.  I thought for the most part everyone else did a great job and showed a lot of improvement on their first lesson.  On the other hand it felt to me like I took a step back.  It’s too bad because I thought all of the changes I made to my plan were quite good.  It’s just that it didn’t really come out when I was actually doing it.  

Luckily I didn’t have to wallow in my own self-criticism.  Professor Schneider actually gave me some very positive comments and told me that it was a big improvement compared to the first lesson.  Not only that, but I even got some nice feedback from a few of the other students in class.  This was very nice to hear.  It says to me that sometimes I really shouldn’t trust myself.  Maybe I did a better job than I gave myself credit for.  I did do a good job with stream lining the lesson, I got everyone singing more and doing a bit more, and I got everyone to learn the subject of a Bach fugue.  I still can’t change how it felt to me, but I suppose that in the end I did improve on my initial lesson.  Regardless of how well or bad it went, doing these lessons as well as seeing other people’s lessons has been a valuable experience.  I look forward participating in the rest of my classes’ lessons on Monday

Audiences

There are really only two ways I can think of to build an audience.  The first way is by promoting.  This can be through advertising, word of mouth, or by playing concerts outside of school in a variety of settings.  I’ve never actually had to do any of this.  I’ve been in many bands over the years, and I was never really the guy that took on the promoting and marketing of the group.  This is probably because most of these bands were groups that I wasn’t completely invested in.  In any case, promoting a musical group, be it a rock band or a high school jazz band, is something that I have little to no experience in and don’t know a lot about yet.

The other way I can think of to build an audience is by being both really good and interesting.  If your band plays at an exceptional level, then most likely more people will attend the next concert.  Even better than just being good though, is to play something that really grabs people’s attention and that everyone will remember.  If the band is unique in some way, then it’s more likely to build a following and get a bigger audience.  I would guess that the school bands that attract the biggest audiences are the ones that have a special identity, that play a lot outside of school, and that even have a name they go by other than “Such and Such High school Band.”

I’m not sure that it’s always necessarily important to build an audience as a high school band or orchestra director.  The most important thing is for students to get lots of experiences performing in front of an audience period whether it’s an audience of 30 or 3,000.  Preferably, students would get the chance to perform in front of audiences of greatly varying sizes.  In fact, playing in front of a small audience can be a valuable experience.  I’ve had many gigs where there were only about five people actually listening.  I sometimes had to remind myself that I should care just as much about playing well as if I was playing in front of a huge crowd.

I remember that in “Teaching Music With Purpose”, Peter Boonshaft says that rehearsing is much more important than actually performing.  I guess I disagree to some extent.  I think they’re both equally important in different ways.  The whole point of being musicians is for other people to hear us play.  If we just play for ourselves, then that’s great, but what have we really accomplished?  What’s the point in playing if others can’t hear us ultimately?  It’s sort of like the tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it expression.  Performing in front of an audience is a form of practicing.  It’s the practice of being comfortable on stage with people watching, and the practice of not just playing the right notes with the right musicality, but having good stage presence and being a good performer.

Do we need competitions to motivate bands?

I only know of one way to create a love for music and performing in students.  It has to start with the teacher having a love for music and performing him/herself.  The teacher then has to have the ability to convey this love of music to the students.  The teacher may have all the enthusiasm in the world, but if he/she doesn’t express it, then the students aren’t going to see it.

One example of a teacher showing his/her love for music is simply taking it seriously.  I recently watched the movie “Chopped.”  It was obvious that the jazz band director Ace Martin from the movie had a love for music because of how seriously he took the band.  After he had conducted the auditions, he made a comment about how he was just hoping that the band would sound good and that they had enough talent.  He cared deeply not just about music, but about performing music at a high level and making it sound great. 

As I watched the movie, it became clear that one of the reasons why Martin was so serious was that he was working toward getting to and playing at The Essentially Ellington competition in New York.  When he told the band that they had been accepted, everyone was incredibly excited.  The band became more focused and worked harder.  Everyone cared about maximizing the potential of the ensemble and playing as good as they possibly could. 

This competition was the basis of the film.  It’s clear that competing in New York was a major motivator for all of the schools involved and pushed all of the bands to sound better.  This seems like it could only be a good thing, and yet the idea of competition in music as well as any art bothers me.  I realize that band competitions are a reality that I must live with, but the whole concept just doesn’t sit well with me.  I suppose it’s human nature to be competitive, but why do we have to give trophies to winners?  How does one “win” in music?  Isn’t the desire to sound great enough motivation?  Apparently not unfortunately.

In the second half of the movie when some of the bands were shown performing, my feelings were even more amplified.  I realize that the bands had to qualify to be there in the first place, but I found myself wishing that the competition was just a performance only.  All of the bands sounded great.  I would think that for the students, hearing great bands from other schools would be a valuable enough experience.  Why does there have to be a winner and a bunch of losers?

I hope that when I get my first job, I won’t have to participate in musical competitions, because I don’t know that it’s in me.  I hope that I‘ll be able to get an ensemble to take music seriously without an extrinsic motivator like a trophy.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do this.  I know it starts with having a love of music, which I know that I have.  I guess I’ll see.  I realize that this is probably all wishful thinking, but at this moment, before my teaching career begins, this is how I feel.

Lesson Reflection

I think that I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life before I did my 10-minute lesson.  I struggled greatly trying to come up with a lesson plan.  Honestly, most of my time “preparing” was actually just spent trying to come up with a good idea.  I finally thought of something that I could do, and went with it.  Doing a lesson on fugues was one of my original ideas, but if it hadn’t been for finding that color visualization video on YouTube, I’m almost sure I would have settled on something else.  My big issue with the idea was trying to present it in a clear, easy to understand way, and that video really helped me do that.

            My stress was building throughout the weekend, and it peaked right before Dale started his lesson, and I found out that I was going to be second.  I sat in my chair with my head down, nearly in tears.  It was a bit strange.  I’ve performed music probably thousands of times in all different environments.  I don’t even have a major fear of talking in front of crowds general.  Yet this was different somehow.  I think the main reason why was because I was unsure that what I had prepared was going to work.  I suppose I felt a bit underprepared.  This is despite having shared and practiced my lesson over the weekend with my wife and my parents.  They all were very encouraging, and said I would do great, but I just didn’t believe them, because that’s the negative attitude I tend to have.  I think another reason why I was so nervous was because along with the conducting assignment I had to do two days later for a different class, this was the most relevant thing I had been given to do in graduate school yet.  I wanted to take it seriously and hopefully do a good job.

            When I started, I had pulled myself together, and I was no longer nervous.  One of the things I was most unsure of was the beginning of the lesson.  I felt pretty good about the idea of having the class sing a round, but I hadn’t completely crystallized how I was going to do it in terms of what words I would use to get them to start.  Overall, I was pretty happy how the whole initiation part turned out.

            Having someone from class come up and play the piano was a last minute change I made.  I was intending on playing it myself.  I’m an extremely poor piano player, but I had practiced that part enough so that I was fairly comfortable with it.  In the end though, I thought it would be better to have a student do it because it was another way for the class, or at least someone from the class to be doing something instead of the teacher.  I thought, anything to make it more like a lesson and less like a lecture.  I’m glad I made this decision, because I think it worked just fine. 

            Making sure it wasn’t a lecture was possibly the number one concern I had, and was most likely the thing that made it so hard to come up with an idea.  Everything that was popping into my head just involved information, and me talking.  I knew that the ideal lesson would involve the students doing some sort of activity most of the time rather than just sitting and listening to a teacher talk to them.  Ideally, the activity would involve them playing music.  As much as I tried to fight against lecturing, I ultimately failed. 

Mr. Schneider rightfully pointed out in his comments that I was indeed starting to lecture, and that I was introducing too many terms.  After discussing it with him, and doing some more thinking about it myself, I think I’ll be able to come up with some ways of making the lesson more student-centered for next time. 

Should we have to rely on parents and fundraising to run a modern BOJC program?

I believe there are three parties of almost equal importance that determine the success of a student in elementary school learning a new instrument.  The first is the student him/herself.  The second is the teacher, and the third is the parents.  If one of these three isn’t invested, then the student isn’t likely to continue with their instrument.  Although the teacher is responsible for what the student does in school, the only way the student will improve is if he/she practices at home.  A lot of kids aren’t totally self-motivated, so the parent’s job is to keep their children on track, and making sure that they practice.

            By the time students get to high school, they have hopefully become more self-motivated.  However, I believe parents are still important.  Even if they don’t have to actually sit down with their kids when they practice anymore, they still need to be supportive.  They should attend the concerts, they should help transport their instruments, and they should pay for private lessons.  In this way, parents need to be relied upon to run a successful BOJC program.  If the parents stopped sending their kids to private lessons, for example, the students will not be able to improve as musicians, and their ensemble at school will suffer.

            However, I don’t necessarily think a BOJC program should need the financial support from parents or fundraising to be successful.  I think it really depends on the school.  There are certainly schools that may require fundraising because they have limited recourses, which are put into things other than music.  There are many other many school districts however, that do provide enough already.  I really think it needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

Reflection on the choir warmup

            Much like the trumpet lesson, I was a bit scared at the prospect of leading the choir warm-up.  When it came time to decide which one in our group was the least experienced, it was a run away.  I can’t think of too many other musical activities that are further outside my comfort zone.  For one thing, I can barely sing.  I suppose I would call myself of baritone, but that’s just because I can’t sing high enough to be a tenor or low enough to be a bass.  I’ve also never once conducted any sort of ensemble.  That being said however, I sort of wish that I had tried conducting rather than snapping.  It definitely seems much more musical, and I could really observe as the other warm-ups went on that it really has a tangible affect on the singers.  Another thing, which I clearly should have done, was to make better eye contact with the rest of the class.  This is no surprise to me that I stunk at this aspect.  I’m terrible at making eye contact with people that I talk to, let alone people that I’m trying to conduct.  I’m sure I came across as quite uncomfortable, and that’s basically how I felt.  I realize that I can be quite hard on myself, but it’s hard for me not to be.  On a positive note, I felt just a tiny, tiny bit proud of myself for going up there before anyone else and ultimately following through with it.

Technology in Music Education

            Part of music education involves listening to music.  Since technology has affected the way we listen to music, this carries over into the classroom.  We’ve gone from records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s.  Smart phones allow us to carry around thousands of songs with us at all times.  We can find almost any song or musical artist we can think of on youtube.  This means that teachers have greater flexibility.  One general music teacher just recently showed me how she has every song she teaches along with every lesson plan and activity organized in iTunes on her phone by grade level and time of year.  I can think back on how different things were since I was in college only ten years ago.  In my private lessons, every week my teacher would give me music to learn and a cassette tape with a copy of the recording to practice along with.  I’m sure today he just has students look up the song on youtube, or email them the file.  Having the Internet at our fingertips all the time has made exploring music much easier and more convenient for both teachers and students.

            I think that technology has helped especially in the area of composition and performance.  Not so long ago, to record music, you had to go to a recording studio.  Now, we can carry around portable versions of Garageband and Sibelius on our phones.  There are things like metronome apps, tuner apps, and ear training apps that can help aid in practicing.  One free app that I’ve used quite a bit myself is iReal Pro.  In addition to a few other uses, it allows musicians to practice along with a song, and the volume level of the practice instruments can be lowered or muted all together.  As a bass player, I’ve found this especially helpful.  I can really see how a teacher would be able to use it with students.

            Since it seems like just about everyone now, including kids, have smart phones, one may think it would be a no brainer to take advantage of some of these applications.  However, I can see a possible downside.  A lot of schools have a strict no cell phone policy, and I can understand why.  For much of the day, students really shouldn’t have any need for their phones in school.  I can see a possible scenario where if exceptions are made to this rule, it could be hard to monitor.  Overall though, I would be in favor of using phones as long as it’s only for specific lessons the teacher has planned.

            Since kids grew up with this technology, there’s a good chance that they know how to use some of it better than the teachers do.  By using it to help teach music, teachers can make their lessons more relatable and fun for their students.  The only other down side I can imagine is if the technology itself becomes the focus rather than the actual music.  However, as long as teachers always keep this in mind, I think that technology will continue to have a positive impact on music education in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMrxdXagJUQ

Response to "The Trouble With Rubrics" by Alfie Kohn

I have to admit, Alfie Kohn’s article “The Trouble with Rubrics” bothered me a little bit.  In the article, he argues that it’s not a good idea for teachers to use rubrics to assess their students.  His major reason is that rubrics cause students to work with the ultimate goal of getting a good grade rather than to just do good work because they want to.  As a result, the quality of work suffers.  Kohn quotes an article by Linda Mabry of Washington State University.  Her point is that in terms of writing assignments, the standards that rubrics hold to tend to focus on spelling and organization, so the for a student to get a good grade, creativity and thoughtfulness take a back seat to grammar and form.

            I have two major issues with Alfie Kohn’s argument.  The first is that he seems to have an extremely idealized view of students.  For the student who wants to do work hard and do the best job he or she can do, I can completely see how a rubric might get in the way and be somewhat of a detriment to the type of work they might produce.  However, most students are not purely intrinsically motivated like this.  A lot of students need more structure, and need to be told what steps they need to take to complete the assignment and yes, get a good grade.  I was somewhat amazed at the part of the article when Mr. Kohn said that if a rubric must be used, it should just be a guide for the teacher, and shouldn’t be given to the students.  If students don’t know how the assignment is going to be graded, how are they supposed to know what to do?

            My second issue with the article is that Kohn offers no alternative to rubrics.  I understand that that is not really the point of the article, and perhaps he does have other ideas.  Perhaps he’s written another article about those ideas.  However, I don’t see how you can write something saying how rubrics and grading are a bad idea, and not offer any other concrete ideas at all.  I can definitely see his point about some of the flaws with rubrics, but his problems with rubrics really seem to apply to any sort of grading.  I’m not sure how school, in the traditional sense, can exist without grades.

          I would really like to agree with Alfie Kohn.  I think grading in music is probably even more difficult than grading in writing or math.  This is because music is an art, and art is inherently subjective in some sense.  As someone trying to become a music teacher, I would love to have a good alternative to using rubrics or other types of grading.  Perhaps I could simply judge each student on an individual basis based on his or her work and improvement on that work.  This certainly sounds more appealing than using a rubric, but I’m just not sure if it’s practical.  It’s one of the many things I’ll find out when I start teaching.

Should music teachers be experts in folk and jazz music?

I think one of the most important characteristics of a good music educator is that they should be well rounded.  This isn’t to say that all music educators have to be experts in every type of music.  Every music teacher has his or her own musical background.  A music teacher could be a classical pianist, a jazz trumpet player, an opera singer, a composer, or a songwriter, or any number of other things.  The music teachers I had in school and the ones I know today have a wide variety of strengths.  My high school orchestra instructor was a conductor first and foremost, and he was also a cellist.  My middle school music teacher was a blues guitar player.  The music teacher at the elementary school where I’m currently interning is a singer and pianist with a classical background, and the music she enjoys most in her spare time is Christian rock.  Another elementary school music teacher I met recently had a career in the 70s as a rock guitar player/singer/songwriter.

Everyone has his or her own musical tastes, strengths, and tendencies.  In this case I don’t intend for the term well “rounded” to mean that a music teacher should be good at everything.  Instead I’m using it to mean that a music teacher should be interested in as wide a range of musical genres as possible, and be a good enough musician to be able to teach them.  A music instructor could have a completely classical background and have no experience really playing anything else, but he or she could still like and appreciate folk, jazz, and other types of music.  Obviously the more a music teacher knows the better, but it doesn’t take them being an expert to want to teach music that’s outside their comfort zone.

Both jazz and folk music are important for kids to learn about.  When I was trying to make a list of songs that all kids should know, it seemed that most of the songs I was coming up with fell on either that jazz or folk spectrum.  This is my list so far:

This Land is Your Land – Woody Guthrie

The Star-Spangled Banner – John Stafford Smith and Francis Scott Key

Heal The World – Michael Jackson

It Don’t Mean a Thing – Duke Ellington and Irving Mills

            Everybody’s Talkin’ – Fred Neil

            Simon Smith and The Amazing Dancing Bear – Randy Newman

I Got a Name – Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox

Wouldn’t it be Nice – Brian Wilson and Tony Asher

The Time They Are a Changin’ – Bob Dylan

Lean on Me – Bill Withers

Blue Skies – Irving Berlin

Rain Drops Keep Falling On My Head – Burt Bacharach and Hal David

Embraceable You – George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

I Just Called to Say I Love You – Stevie Wonder

Somewhere Over The Rainbow – Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg

All The Things You Are – Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein

Reflection on trumpet lesson

I know very little about the trumpet, so I was quite nervous before I started my five-minute lesson.  In fact, even if I had been teaching an instrument I know how to play I probably would have been nervous.  I’ve really only taught a handful of “first” lessons before.

I made the decision to show the student how to hold the instrument right at the beginning of the lesson.  I thought that it made sense to do this because since the student is there for a trumpet lesson, then that’s what he would want to do right away.  I suppose everything went according to how I expected it to go, so any bad part of the lesson was because of my poor plan.

One little thing I wish I had done was not ask what the student’s name was when I walked in.  Clearly it’s a private lesson and I would have known what his name was.  Another thing I wished I had touched on was posture.  A few other people did this, and I realize it's very important.  This seems like something that should be taught when teaching how to hold the instrument.  I also could have done a better job of laying out the expectations of the lesson.  I’m sure I also could have made better eye contact.  This is constant struggle of mine not just in teaching, but in life in general.

I’m sure there were many other things I did wrong, and if I think of them later I’ll add to this post.

On "Creating Musical Flexibility Through the Ensemble" by Brandt Schneider

Brandt Schneider's article   on creating musical flexibility promotes the idea that band students should be learning how to be well-rounded musicians.  He makes the point that because of the way band and orchestra are usually taught; students end up being limited in their musical skills.  The typical high school band conductor is only interested in giving a piece of music to the students and having them read it and learn how to play it.  Mr. Schneider points out that there’s a lot more to music than just playing the notes on a page.  He argues that students should be learning not only how to read, but how to transpose, play by ear, and compose.  He focuses on four specific skills, which are musical discipline, technique, theory, and composition.  The way he defines these skills in the article however, makes me believe that they could almost have been simplified even further into one skill:  theory.  If a student is to develop into a musician that can learn something by ear, know many different tunes by heart, transpose a piece of music on the spot, improvise, and compose, then they have to have a strong foundation in theory.  The student actually has to know why the notes she is playing work and the piece sounds like it does, as well as how all of the different parts fit together. 

            This is something that I certainly never learned when I was in school playing in the orchestra or in my private cello lessons.  It’s kind of amazing how little theory “needs” to be taught when teaching someone an orchestral instrument.  I thing what Mr. Schneider is really saying in his article is that classical musicians should learn the same skills that jazz musicians usually learn.  A jazz musician is expected to know a bunch of standards by memory, have the ability to transpose, improvise, and have the ability to learn music by ear.  A classical musician, especially one at the high school level is really only expected to be able read music and play his instrument.  It’s quite a discrepancy, and I agree with Mr. Schneider that it really shouldn’t be this way.  Learning these skills would help a high school band student have a greater understanding of music and be a better musician.

            This isn’t to say that just reading and playing your instrument isn’t incredibly important.  I actually think that the technical aspect of playing an instrument is the most important thing in determining whether someone is a “good” musician.  Someone could have a lot of theoretical knowledge about how music works, but if she doesn’t have the ability to get a good sound on her instrument, then she can’t be considered a good musician.  Learning the skills that Mr. Schneider discuses in the article certainly can make one a much better musician.  In fact you can argue that to be a great musician, one needs to be able to do all of those things.  However, I think the baseline for just being “good” is the ability to be technically proficient enough to play the notes on the page musically.   

Everything is both complex and simple

One of the amazing things I realized about teaching is how much I actually learn myself from doing it.  As soon as I taught my first bass lesson, I found that just the act of explaining a concept to someone else crystallized it in my mind.  A lot of it has to do with the technical details.  There’s been so many times when I’ve explained why one needs to execute a certain technique in order to get the right sound, and I’ve thought:  “I never even realized I did that before.”  When faced with the challenge for the first time of teaching someone to use the bow when playing cello, I was amazed at how complicated a motion it is.  Even though I had been playing cello for years, I had never had to actually show anyone how the forearm, hand and fingers work in conjunction with each other.

In “Teaching Music with Purpose”, Peter Boonshaft briefly discusses how everything is complex and simple at the same time in regards to conducting.  Teaching bass and cello lessons has helped me understand how this idea also applies to playing an instrument.  There are so many details that go into playing even the simplest music.  The flip side to this however, is that once all of the basic techniques are internalized, even complex music can seem simple with just a little practice. 

My first Post (Some Stuff About Me)

My name is Jacob Bartfield, and music has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember.  It started when I was about three of four.  Although it would be a couple years before I started to learn how to play an instrument for real, I had a blue plastic toy guitar and a yellow plastic toy microphone that I would use to pretend I was Paul Simon.  One of my earliest memories was “playing” guitar while watching a tape of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1981 Concert in Central Park.

            I went through my childhood never seriously considering the future, but when I was in tenth grade I was suddenly introduced to a whole new type of pressure.  Where did I want to go to college, and what did I want my career to be?  It took me a surprisingly small amount of time to figure it out.  As soon as I considered my options, it was obvious to me that I wanted to go to music school and be a musician.  I went to Berklee, graduated as a bass performance major, and I have been playing bass professionally ever since.

            To be honest, teaching music wasn’t something I had really considered till very recently.  I’ve taught some bass lessons.  I had a regular student in Boston for a while and a regular student in LA for a while.  In between these I’ve taught some people that didn’t stick with it beyond the first one or two lessons.  I also started teaching my first cello student a few months ago.  In the past couple weeks I’ve been helping the strings teacher in the school where I’m interning teach a little bit.  Yesterday I had my second day as a substitute teacher, and for a few minutes I had to teach an introductory lesson in division to third graders.  These few lessons have been the extent of my teaching experience up until now.

            I’m saying this because early in my graduate educational schooling, I’m noticing some level of reluctance and insecurity in the few things I’ve written so far.  I hear or read other people in class uses phrases like “as teachers we should…” where as I would say “when I become a teacher I would....”.  I’m just trying to be honest with myself and use language I feel comfortable with.  I hope to become a teacher, but I can’t consider myself one just yet.
           Despite my lack of experience, I think I can be a good teacher because I’ll be teaching about something that I love.  In the future, if I’m honest with my students by letting them really see my excitement for music, then hopefully they will become excited too.  I also think I can be a good teacher by just making sure I come across as the person that my friends and family know.  I think being likeable will go a long way.

Here's my website:

jacobbartfield.com