Chris Hettenbach

MUED 211

Dr. McCabe

24 October 2018

Music Education Philosophy

In music education, I believe that there is a fine line between a bad teacher and a fantastic

teacher. When teaching, if a student observes how you teach for one week, they expect you to

come to class and teach with the same method ever day of that week. If the teacher doesn’t do

that, the student won’t know what to think of that teacher, nor will that student know how they

feel about the teacher, whether it’s a good or bad feeling. This is why teachers must find a

teaching philosophy that works for them and keep that philosophy for good. For me, I don’t

believe I have found my way to my perfect philosophy but I am getting there. During

observations, I take mental notes of what I like in the teacher I am observing and what I don’t

necessarily like. For instance, last semester in MUED 111, our class observed a percussion

teacher. We loved the way he carried himself throughout the class but he was a little too strict for

my liking. I know as a teacher you have to be strict at times, but it seemed like he was being a

little too harsh on his students. Another example, my last observation at Dulaney High School, I

observed a guitar teacher who told us and gave us his grading criteria for the class. After looking

through the rubric, I started to realize that very little of the grading in that class is done by actual

guitar playing. Most of the grading criteria had to do with how disciplined the students in his

class were. I do think it is very necessary to have a very disciplined class, but not to the point

where discipline is the main aspect of a student’s grade.

 As a teacher, I also feel that the majority of the time, you need to appeal to the interests

of your students. For example, if every year, you give a high school orchestra a piece written by

Beethoven or Mozart, and the class groaned every time you handed out one of those pieces

written by one of those composers, the students best interest is to stop giving them Beethoven

and Mozart. Instead maybe start looking at an orchestral arrangement of a song written by a

modern composer or an orchestral arrangement of movie soundtrack. Thus, appealing to the

interests of your class. Also, as a teacher, you must know when too much student interest is

enough, because at some point, the teacher will no longer be the person in charge, the students

will.

Another idea I’ve started to implement in my teaching is to make sure I always have the

attention of my learners. I do this by always asking if the class understands and I make sure of

that by requesting an “audible yes” from my learners. If I don’t get a sufficient response, I repeat

myself once as to fully make sure my learners are paying attention. I believe this aspect of my

teaching is the most important because without my learner’s attention, can we call them learners

anymore? From experience as being a learner, I can say that when I daze off for maybe 10

seconds, I could not repeat back to you the last five words my teacher had said.

The last of my most important teaching philosophies has to do with how the message is

being presented. Over the past year of my music education degree, I have learned that the most

important this when delivering a message is to keep it short and simple. Personally, I am still

trying to improve on the short aspect because words are not my friend. However, I have found

that I am a natural at making things simpler. At my high school, I currently have a brass tech

position for the marching band, and the way the brass students understand me the best is when I

start to use metaphors in my teaching. For instance, when I teach someone how to roll step for
basic forward marching, I use the metaphors “act like you are trying to put toothpaste on a very

large toothbrush by getting all the toothpaste out” and “like you are trying to squish a very large

bug”. I also use other metaphors for how to hold an instrument properly and for how to make

something sound better. But, most things cannot be explained through metaphors and that is

where I struggle the most.

I do know that my teaching style has much to build from but I do need the push in the

right direction. I do think I can fully get my teaching philosophy grounded and set, but that is

why I am going through this degree. One foot in front of the other, and soon I’ll be walking out

that door.