Rachel Pennington

MUED 480: Block 3

Midblock Recording Video

Midblock Recording Reflection: Block 3

This video recording was helpful and insightful to see what areas worked when

teaching the choir, and what areas needed improvement. When thinking back on my

placement, my lack of piano skills is what comes to mind when thinking about one of my

main areas of weakness and difficulty. After watching this video, I see that while it could

still have been improved upon, it was much better than I thought, and I really just

needed to trust myself more. However, in this video, one of the main areas that needed

improvement was my classroom management and use of my “teacher voice”. There

was a lot of talking going on within sections while I was working with individual voice

parts. I should have silenced them while I was working with individual sections and had

them still following along so they were in place and ready to go when I called on them.

After I taught one section and was moving to the next, I should have made sure they

had a clear understanding of their part before I moved on to another section and added

parts together. Along with that, I also should have broken up the sections (alto 1 from

alto 2, for example) when they weren’t getting it together as a full section. My pacing

also needed improvement in order to have the most efficient choir rehearsals. I took

more time in parts of the music that didn’t need as much work and took less time in the

areas that did need more work. When accurately delivering this, it would have been a

much better use of rehearsal time. Something that would have also helped with this

would have been to have better transitions between working sections of the music and
moving from voice part to voice part. Most of all, I need to work on my teacher presence

and taking charge when in front of the classroom. I need to have more confidence in

myself and my abilities, which will help with each of these areas of weakness.