Alexa Hampel

Critical Pedagogy I
Professor Gallo
December 10, 2014
Final Philosophy Paper

I believe the most important things I have learned over the course of this semester is that
teaching truly is a selfless act, and students are not simply numbers, they are unique individuals
with ever changing lives, emotions, and learning abilities. Of course before getting into this class
I knew that everyone is different and teaching is about having your students learn the subject at
hand, but I didnt realize how easy it is to marginalize students in the classroom, make
assumptions, and spew the facts and lessons without making them engaging or understandable.
In this course, I have learned more about myself as a music educator than I believed I would
have. I learned that students will all have specific needs, and I will have to adapt and recreate my
lessons time and time again when I am finally teaching. I learned that I will learn more and more
about myself, my strengths, and my weaknesses through my lessons and my students. In this
paper I will discuss what I have learned about myself as a future educator and what I have
learned about students and the actual art of teaching over the course of the last four months.
Myself
When I first came to this school I told myself you need to teach high school so you can
recreate the incredible experience you had in choir which, in theory, is a great goal. I wanted to,
in a way, model myself after my chorale director from high school because he was a great man.
Assertive, fair, interesting, fun, and still evoked such musical passion. As I stated in my Who
Am I? video, my senior year performance of Amazing Grace still brings a tear to my eye
because I had such an emotional connection to my high school choir experience. Of course
recreating this experience and having my future students feel the way I did is, as a said, a great
goal in theory, but I have learned that its nearly impossible to recreate an exact experience that
you have had because you are a completely different person than the person you strive to be and

no matter how hard you try to be this person, certain aspects will not work for you. In modeling
yourself after said individual, you lose who you are as an educator.
I also learned that there has to be a balance between being the students best friend and
simply being their teacher. Of course I will not really learn the true meaning of this balance until
I get into the field, but there must be a line as an educator you must not cross. Me, being an open
person and a person that wants to open any line of communication, there are certain things to
keep private about yourself and your personal life, as well as there are certain things you should
not ask a student about. I think this is going to be one of the hardest things for me to learn over
my music educational career. Of course there are ways I can bring in my life experiences and
musical interests through songs, lessons, or examples while still trying to maintain that I am the
role of the educator. It is also important to get to know the students, as I will discuss more
thoroughly later on, but there are certain things that are not to be discussed, especially if the
students are younger, and finding that line is personally going to be extremely challenging.
The last big thing I have learned about myself in this course is why I want to teach. I
didnt really know this coming into this school. I know I loved music making and I was
passionate about the subject, but I couldnt really figure why I chose this specific field. Was it
because I wanted students to realize their own musical passion? Did I want to create an outlet for
certain students to get away from the regular academia? Or did I simply want to instill my
musical knowledge onto students who would listen? As Ayers stated in his opening chapter of his
novel To Teach:
People are called to teaching because they love children and youthwatching them
open and grow and become more able, more competent, more powerful in their worlds. they

ways in which they [teachers] become better, more human, more generous and thoughtful and
caring. (pg 21)
This statement got me thinking that there is no set answer to why someone wants to
teach, no overall desire every educator ad future educator has that made them choose this field.
While taking this course I really questioned why I wanted to do this, and I came out of this
knowing that is a multitude of reasons, and I learned that that is okay. I do want to make students
realize they have a passion for music that they may not have realized before. I want to create a
safe environment for students to be themselves and not be afraid of any ridicule or exclusion. I
want children to have an enriching experience that make them realize that music is just as
important as reading and math, but in a different way. I realized that my overall idea is my future
music education idea is not about me, its about my future students. I dont want to teach because
itll make me feel good or smart, I want to teach and know that my students are getting as much
as they can out of their musical experience, whether theyre 5 or 18 years old. If I accomplish
that, I know my personal goals will be reached.
The Students
As I stated previously, students are not just a name and a face. They are unique people
with different personalities, lives, learning styles and abilities, and cultural backgrounds. Getting
to know them as individuals is incredibly important to be a good music educator. As Ayers stated
in chapter two of To Teach:
Teachers need to be one part detectiveone part researcherone part world-class
puzzle master.Our story never ends with a neat conclusion, our data are mostly unruly and

insufficient, and our jigsaw puzzle is always incomplete because it is always fluid, always
changing.
From this I gathered that, as teachers, we have to be observant and ready to think and
learn while trying to get to know who our students are. We have to watch them to see how they
handle certain situations, who they surround themselves with, if anybody, how quickly or slowly
it takes them to grasp certain concepts, plus a million other things. Something Ayers also
mentioned in chapter two of To Teach is to take notes of your observations, which I find
incredibly useful. Even if its just a few words like Sally likes doodling, anything is important
to get to know how a student is. If you know your students well enough, you can then see if they
start having trouble in something they usually excel at and try and figure out a reason as to why
they are suddenly struggling, whether it be a home issue or something going on at school. By
knowing your students well enough you can also adapt your lesson plans to make your lessons
easier to understand for the students with different learning styles while still enriching the
students that were able to understand before modifying your lesson. Learning the students inside
and out, without getting too personal, will also help the students be more comfortable in your
classroom, more willing to listen and learn, which can make your teaching experience much
more enriching for both the teach and the students.
An issue that is extremely prevalent in the music education field is the marginalization of
students. Being culturally aware, I have learned, is incredibly important. Before this class, I
didnt think of it much. I didnt think about the fact that there are such diverse cultural
backgrounds in different areas of the country that if we ignore the majority of that specific area
to focus on the majority of the country as a whole, we are, without realizing it, excluding those
who are not the overwhelming majority in America. In the Allsup and Shieh article Social

Justice and Music Education the first step to stop the injustice is by noticing the inequity is
there and is an issue. As Allsup and Shieh stated: Noticing inequities and identifying them as
such, takes a great deal of quiet courage. The best thing we can do as music educators is not
label and categorize the students. If youre teaching in an arear where there is a high MexicanAmerican population, you cannot label those students as one section, label the Caucasian as
another section, and the African Americans as another section. Instead, research music of the
different cultures your students are from. I learned that asking the students music they grew up
with, music their parents listen to, music they currently listen to are all good ways to modify
your lesson to teach things that are applicable to those students while still including the other
students. Of course classic repertoire and lessons are still necessary, but maybe making a solfege
exercise a song that students from a Mexican-American background can relate to will make
themselves and their cultures feel more included in the lesson.
I think the most worrisome thing about the marginalization of students is how much it
can happen without even realizing it. There are so many factors that make a student they way
he/she is. In The Journey from Music Student to Teacher gives just a few defining factors that
make a student who they are, such as ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation and identity, and
poverty level, just to name a few. Again, as educators, the starting point to make the social
injustice decrease is by realizing there is an issue with the marginalization of these factors. Of
course this is going to be difficult, I know for me especially. I am the majority and it is hard for
me to understand what it is like to be discriminated against, but I know its there. I just hope that
I can do the best I ca to make the music classroom be a place not where discrimination of any
kind is prevalent, but a safe place for all of my students to not be afraid to be exactly who they
are.

The Art of Teaching

As Ayers stated in To Teach chapter one: Teaching is more than transmitting skills; it is a
living act, and it involves preference and value, obligation and choice, commitment and
justification.
Teaching, as I have learned, is a fluid profession. It is not simply knowing facts and
preaching them to your students, but it is being able to think on your feet, know and understand
what you are teaching, and truly believing in what you are teaching. As a music educator
especially, you have to know that what you are teaching is important to these students lives and
not just an elective or a simple arts course. Being passionate about what you are teaching is
crucial to get the students involved and appreciate what you are teaching.
It is important to know that while you are the teacher, you are still learning every day.
You are learning what teaching styles works best for you and your students; you are learning how
your students learn. You have to be able to be adaptive; say a sight singing exercise isnt
working. You have to be able to change the way you are approaching the exercise to make it
more understandable for your students; you cannot just leave it as it and hope that itll eventually
make sense to the students, you have to be able to change what you might think is the best way
to teach to make the students grasp the concept at hand. While having a lesson plan is crucial, it
should also be a fluid and adaptive tool in the art of teaching.
Before coming to this school, I had never heard of the Kodaly, Dalcroze, and Orff
teaching methods. While reading more in depth about them I thought, This way is the best way
to teach. Actually this way is better, but this seems like the most logical way. What I learned
after stepping away from the specific details of each method is that it important to use a fusion of

all three is, as I see it, the most efficient way to teach to multiple learning styles and sticking to
one can really close you off from a world possibilities and make it harder to adapt on your feet. If
you use, lets say, Kodalys approach of solfege hand syllables, the Dalcroze emphasis on
movement, and Orffs emphasis on instrument playing, I feel like you give your students the
most diverse and enriching musical experience because you give them numerous ways to
experience one grand idea: music.
A concept I didnt really think about until I came into this class was the effect of
classroom environment on students. The concept of creating an enriching classroom environment
was talked about in Ayers To Teach chapter three and he states Environments tell us what to
do. I find this short statement to be incredibly true and impactful. If you create a classroom
environment that caters to music expression students will feel more comfortable and able to
create music. If you teach in a blank canvas classroom with desks, cement walls, a smart board at
the front and possibly and keyboard that is kept in a closet; its a very rigid environment. If you
have a classroom with students compositions on the walls, music terms on the side board, desks
pushed off the sides to make room for a big open space on the ground, and music instruments
scattered throughout the room will make the students more comfortable with the creation of
music and musical expression.
Overall this course has made me learn new things about myself, students as
individuals, and the art of music teaching. Before this class, I didnt have any real opinion on
who students are and the best way to teach to enrich their musical experience. I still dont know
the best way to teach because there is no overall best way, its whatever makes your students
have musical breakthroughs, whether its they finally being able to sing a major third or writing
their own logical composition. Teaching, especially music teaching, is an adaptive and creative

profession that is about the students, not the teacher. I know that if I evoke some type of musical
passion in at least one student in my career, I know Ill have accomplished everything I set out to
as a music educator.

Citations:
Ayers, William. To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. New York: Teachers College, 1993.
Print.
Raiber, Michael, and David Teachout. The Journey from Music Student to Teacher: A
Professional Approach. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Allsup, Randall Everett. "Social Justice and Music Education: The Call for a Public
Pedagogy." Music Educators Journal 98.4 (2012): 47-51. JSTOR. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.