The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical/creative thinking and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues.
Teachers of music need to understand that it is necessary to use different perspectives when teaching students and connect other concepts to their teachings. Teachers need to make sure they engage their students in critical and creative thinking and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues. This requires teachers to not have only one perspective when teaching their students and approach their lessons in differing ways to engage their students. These ways allow for students to understand what types of issues the musical communities have throughout schools and the United States. Teachers could make students aware of what educators who have not had music think about it and the problems that can arise if their minds aren’t changed. It is suggested that teachers make their students think of ways to make it known how important music is to students and what it brings to schools that use it correctly. Teachers can incorporate this understanding of issues in the school systems to their classrooms and allow the students to have a chance to say what they think about it and to change it for their future.
I do not have much experience in this standard at all. Being a freshman in college, I have not been placed in the environment of teaching in front of students and engaging them in critical and creative thinking on issues that need solving. I believe I need to be put into this sort of situation and get the experience of teaching with multiple perspectives and with the connection of content to fully master this standard.
In order to prepare me and help me master this standard, I will be doing a variety of things. I will continue taking my music education courses, which allow me to get started teaching in front of a class, and learn the correct and most efficient ways to teach these standards. I will also participate in choirs and ensembles to observe how my teachers allow us students to become engaged in our learning. This will help me to see from a different perspective on how to let students do critical and creative thinking. I hope to gain the knowledge and experience to master this principle through doing these things, and adding more steps as I mature and continue classes at Ball State.
MUSE 356- Choral Methods 1 Rationale: This course has given me opportunities to engage learners I am teaching in creative and critical thinking, but mainly with concepts they are taught. Through lessons, I ask questions that engage the learners in thinking critically and problem solve to understand concepts. Calling on many different students to hear their answers and opinions on questions allows other students to think with their peers and understand other people's perspectives. Relating to authentic local and global issues, I feel that I need more practice and participation in school systems and communities to teach my students the importance of problem solving and thinking critically with these issues.
MUSE 376- Choral Methods 2 Rationale: Choral Methods 2 allowed me to become more comfortable with experimenting how I present the material to my students in their lessons. I learned through teaching that I need to ask a variety of questions, call on many different people, and possibly rephrase how I present a concept because they may not understand right away. Working with high school students has given me the chance to see in a real world example how students react to lessons and that I need to be innovative with how I present them. I gain a tremendous amount of experience on how to think on my toes and know how to change up my approach to lessons so students learn the best they can by being among students in schools. In relation to authentic local and global issues, as was said in my muse 356 summary, I still need experience in school systems. I believe that once I am at a school system on a regular basis such as when I will be student teaching, I will have a better opportunity to engage the students in thinking critically on these issues.
MUSE 350- Practicum Artifact: Reading Strategy Lesson Plan ELL Lesson Plan Rationale: Throughout this course, I was required to implement strategies and techniques that fit benefitted specific students. One of those lessons was for a reading strategy that involved filling out a model to determine the definition of a concept. This created the opportunity for cross-curricular relations, specifically how music and reading strategies can be used together. The artifact attached is a lesson plan implementing this reading strategy in front of the students while teaching song by rote. This reading strategy required the students to think critically about what they are learning and how to analyze their music for what they hear. I feel that this artifact reflects how to use innovative applications of content through cross-curricular strategies. The second artifact I have attached was a requirement for this course as well. I had to implement tools into a lesson for English Language Learners in a classroom. Throughout this lesson plan, I have multiple means of representation and references for English Language Learners so they can succeed in the classroom and understand the material being taught to them. I feel that this lesson plan shows how I could innovate the content to help ELL students learn musical concepts as well as keep the other students on task and learning or reviewing material.
Student Teaching Artifact: Program Lesson Rationale: The artifact I have attached is a lesson plan in which the students learned about reveille and the draft. In this lesson, we talked about the requirement of the draft and how this effected many lives during World War 2. This lesson helped the students to understand the importance of this time and what the people had to do because of the war. This relates to the global issues of the past as well as today, and the students are more knowledgeable of how the song they learned relates to this time era. I will use tools and lessons like this in the future to express the global issues and how they were combated in the past and how we still handle them today.