Ethan Neal

Student Teaching
Dr. Martina Vasil

Week 6 - Teacher Interview

1. Describe how you spent your time each week. Write about your interactions with students, the
cooperating teacher, and school personnel. You can work on this daily, or do a summative
reflection at the end of each week.

KMEA…. That’s all that needs to be said, but I’ll elaborate. This year we had 41 middle
schoolers going to KMEA which was a lot given that many schools brought 10 or fewer. It was
just a lot to wrangle. Between getting students to and from rehearsal and getting to the Men’s
choir performance, there weren’t many sessions I was able to get to, but I also got to observe
both the middle and high school rehearsals with all of the directors and that was extremely
informative. Especially with the middle school and elementary rehearsals. This is a bit closer to
what church work looks like at least here in Kentucky. This reminds me of an anecdote from a
friend who works in church music: “If you can teach middle schoolers who don’t know where
they are, you can teach Bill and Cheryl who can’t remember where they are - we start and end
life in diapers, you climb that ladder then turn right back around.”

2. Reflect on how these experiences have helped you grow as a teacher.

I think these experiences really grounded me as an educator - I felt like I finally got my
sea legs this week. The kids who were at All-State also really attached themselves to me this
week. Not that they already weren’t, but this experience just deepened our relationship and the
rapport that I have with the students. It was nice to see all the logistics for the trip - Mrs. Wells is
hyper-organized and on top of everything and I love it. This week was just a LOT - Saturday
ended up being a rest day for me. The main takeaway from this week was grounding - I feel far
more grounded and solidified as to who I am as an public school educator rather than a solo
teacher educator.

3. Interview your cooperating teacher this week. What is his/her background? How did he/she
get into general music teaching? What is his/her philosophy of music education? How do you see
this philosophy in what he or she does each day this week? Does the teacher subscribe to a
certain approach? (Dalcroze, Orff, Kodaly, something else?)

It’s been great to get to know Amanda over the last few weeks and I know that as well as
a great cooperating teacher, I have a great friend and mentor with her. She was a flute
performance/vocal education major at Morehead and has a background in musical theatre
performance as well. She took a brief detour in her education to pursue musical theatre
performance professionally and then came back to finish her degrees and pursue a master's. I
think her abilities as a performer have immensely informed her teaching as she holds herself and
her students to a very high standard. She’s also incredibly organized and understands
professional performance schedules which I think is informed by her prior experiences. She told
me that she began teaching general music because it was the job that was available and she fell in
love with it! She’s now “in her dream job” and doesn’t intend to leave anytime soon. Her
philosophy of education is that she wants every student, regardless of their background or
experience in music, to have a foundational understanding of the basic skills in music to garner
an appreciation of music as a field and mode of expression for the betterment of all our lives. I
can see this every day as every single one of her classes is focused on the fundamentals of music
making. Rather than telling students what to do in a specific situation in a piece of music, she is
teaching the rules of the music. Crescendo or decrescendo over held notes, let every note have a
shape, take a breath at the punctuation, etc. Rather than “just take a breath at beat three of
measure 4”, “crescendo on the last note of measure 33”, et. She’s teaching them how to be better
musicians, not just better at singing that one piece. Mrs. Wells doesn’t ascribe to one particular
approach but blends some Orff and Kodaly concepts in most classes. Incorporating
improvisation and movement into almost every lesson.