Week 3- Post 3- Response to Eric Anderson

Week 3: Free Post - Creating Music

I found out this week that next year I’ll be teaching a section of a class I’ve never taught before, a class called Creating Music, which is an introduction for music theory and composition for high school students with little or no experience or background in music. Though I’ve never taught this class, I’ve observed two of my colleagues teach it many times over the past four years, and I know that this class can sometimes be a challenge, primarily in terms of motivating students to be interested in learning to read music notation.


A year or two ago, I probably would have not been very excited about the prospect of teaching this class, but I immediately started thinking about all the great possibilities for how I could incorporate the things I’ve learned through the EMDT program and through my action research to make the class more interesting and engaging for students. After graduation, I’ll have some time this summer to collaborate with the other teacher of the class to work on developing new curriculum and content for the class, and I’m looking forward to incorporating many of the elements of my action research project into this course.

Eric,
I think it is great that you are looking at this new class as an opportunity to reach students as opposed to a burden you have to deal with. I am sure you will find many different ways to reach and engage all of these beginning students. I understand the idea of spending time this summer preparing for next year. I am going to be spending most of the rest of my summer preparing for my Spanish classes next year. I am going to be putting a lot of the content and work online so my students have access from home. The client that we use is being updated this summer, and after I am trained I will be spending the rest of the summer putting everything online.