Professional Documents

Professional Goals Statement

(Includes statements of strength and weakness in teaching)

There are many different ways a music teacher could be considered qualified. To me, a qualified music teacher is committed, above all else, to two things: accessibility of a music education, and helping to create new generations of life-long music lovers.    When interviewing my high school band director, he said “When I became a teacher, my instrument became the students and ensembles I was teaching.” While there are certainly those that argue that a qualified music teacher is an absolute master of their primary instrument, however I think that musicianship expands beyond one's own single instrument, and music educators in particular should have a developed musicianship that allows them a teachable amount of knowledge in as many areas of music as possible. A great music educator should meet their students exactly where they already are, and then take about three steps forward. This is to say, great music educators should have standards that are high enough to keep students engaged in learning, but not so high that the standards become unreasonable or toxic for students. Music teachers also have to be well organized because of the amount of administrative work involved, especially when considering programs that compete in different areas, and management of music libraries and rehearsal spaces. 

I am incredibly passionate about music education. I believe in an accessible and comprehensive music education for every student, not with the intention of making every student into a professional, classically trained musician, but rather to introduce each and every student to a facet of music that they can learn to love and appreciate for their whole lives. Music is everywhere in the world, and is an incredibly large part of just about every culture, so access to a basic understanding of different types of music also fosters an access point to understanding many aspects of the world around them, near and far. I also believe I demonstrate a commitment to access and advocacy that will serve my students no matter where I end up teaching. Access is a topic that I believed myself to have understood, but I have learned in the last few months that I am only beginning to grow my understanding. I have had very diverse teaching experiences already, with a combination of high and low SES schools, including marching, concert, and jazz bands, choir, orchestra, elementary, and modern band. Even just one year ago, I would not have had any proficiency in orchestra or modern band, and a very limited proficiency in elementary music. I am of the mindset that I should broaden my horizons as much as possible while I am still preservice so that I can serve whatever school I first teach at the best I can, in whatever capacity necessary. I am a well-rounded musician and a proficient conductor, and I am good at building rapport with kids in a way that makes access points attainable to me.

My organizational style is one that tends to seem unorganized to other people. I usually tend toward “controlled chaos” because that is often how my brain tends to work, however it can sometimes lead to clutter or mess that isn’t very helpful. I have continued to work on controlling the chaos more and more, and have had the opportunity to continue to grow in that area through my work-study job as the wind band librarian at CSU. I also sometimes have the tendency to let things slip my mind. I am getting much better at this through vigorous use of alarms and reminders, however I believe that this trait combined with my “controlled chaos” is the largest barrier I have to being the teacher I want to be.

Along with my organized chaos comes a mind that sometimes moves too fast for anybody’s good. I sometimes have the tendency to get ahead of myself, and move on with content before students are quite ready to, or I speak so quickly that my intentions are not necessarily clear to students. In the past, I would have the problem of moving on for the sake of my lesson plan instead of completing the objective at hand before moving on. I believe the fact that I no longer have this habit is indicative of improvement, but sometimes I still need to simply slow down a little bit, physically and mentally. 

While my proficiency with strings has improved a lot through my slow learning of the violin and my successful teaching of CSU’s Middle School Outreach Ensemble orchestra, I still have more to learn about string-specific pedagogy. I was able to learn a lot from those students (whether they knew it or not), and a lot of the first half of the MSOE season was me expanding on their general musicianship while I was still learning the ropes to strings. We had a great and successful time together, and I am confident that I could learn to be successful in a string role, however a professional goal of mine is to increase my knowledge of string-specific vocabulary and techniques so that I can give more specific, individualized instruction rather than focusing only on more abstract musicianship.