Being a teacher involves, no matter what level you are teaching, endless amounts of
changing and refining work and ideas physically and mentally. Not only being there for your
students but being there for yourself matters just as much. You need to know how to teach in a
way where your students will not just absorb the information given to them but know how to
use that knowledge in the future. The largest goals I have made for my future as a music
teacher are making sure my students will have the ability to use their knowledge from my music
class in their future and in society, using different strategies to make sure I know whether my
students are learning and grasping the subject instead of just listening, and running the classroom with the students ideas in mind (letting them choose pieces that I have picked out or letting them choose the warm-up for the day from a list that I have made, etc….).

When it comes to my first idea, making sure my students will have the ability to use their
knowledge from my music class in their future and society, I believe this is extremely important
for not only my older students, but especially my younger students. I first decided that I wanted to do music for the rest of my life in fifth grade because of how my teacher inspired me. Because of her, I joined orchestra in middle school and stayed in orchestra all the way until my years of college. Because of my middle school teacher and the inspiration he gave me, I learned enough knowledge to be able to tutor other kids on the violin and then join Bay Youth. I was already able to use my knowledge that I learned from elementary and middle school out in my own society and community. This is what I strive to do as a teacher: To teach my students all of the knowledge that I have gained throughout my years involved in music and ensembles and inspire them to do the same in their own community.

When I become a music teacher, I do not want to teach the same lesson every year. I want to
be able to teach the same topic in a million different ways for my students and have them learn something new each time I teach it. One of my main goals as a music teacher is to observe my students each day and look for changes in their understanding when I am teaching a topic in a certain way or with a certain activity. If the students are not grasping the idea of what I am teaching about, I need to have another plan up my sleeve so I can help them understand what they are learning in a more clear and successful way. If I just observe the students when I am trying to talk to them about what they are learning, they easily could be pretending to understand what I am teaching them and just guessing all of their answers. If I ask them multiple questions and observe their written work and playing skills while teaching, this will give me a clearer answer on whether the students actually understand what is going on in the classroom.

Lastly, I do not want my classroom to be just a “only teacher led” classroom. I want to give the
students a healthy number of choices to pick from when it comes to what pieces we should play that year, what scales and topic of questions we should warm-up on, and just ask them on the first day what they want to learn from this class in general. This will give me an idea on my students’ different interests and what they want to achieve that school year. I will obviously not let them completely run the classroom, but I do want them to be involved in many of the choices that will help run the classroom.