Jake Grimsley

MUED 271

Practicum Observation #3

For my third practicum observation, I visited the classroom of a small high school wind

ensemble. There was something fairly unique, however, about this experience though, as the

band had just finished their last concert the week prior. As a future music educator, I only tend

to think about the things we need to do in preparation for concerts/performances. You tend to

forget, though, that there’s a lot of time where you don’t have anything to do, and you have to

figure out how to make productive use out of extra time. In addition to the class I observed

being right after their concert, it was also the last class period they had to attend before their

Thanksgiving break. This caused there to already be a bit of a stir to start off the class, with

many reasons present for these students to be distracted. To start off the class, the teacher went

through the announcements, before focusing on breathing exercises. This was extremely

interesting to see, as while I’ve talked about breathing a lot in my classes this year so far, I

haven't actually seen it in a class, and the experience of seeing it helped tremendously in giving

me a situation to refer back to when thinking about it more in the future. Next, the class went

through the process of playing long tones, also interesting to see in person. Next, they had a

playing quiz on their scales. According to the teacher, they had been told about this weeks in

advance, and had been given plenty of time to practice. It was hugely interesting through, as in

college we are all required to know our scales extremely well, so I had somewhat forgotten how

little high school students know their scales. Most of them were either hit or miss, some having

trouble with range, and most of the kids seemed nervous, although I’m sure playing with the

class watching helped them prepare for situations like that in the future. Seeing a warm-up and
high-pressure playing experience like this gave me plenty of thoughts for my future in teaching

and how I can make use of time which would otherwise be wasted.