my teaching philosophy
I will always argue that more knowledge is better. Some may claim that ignorance can be better, more blissful, and that too much knowledge can lead to information overload. Although it may be easier to not know, knowing enhances your life, the lives of others by creating a more educated society—allowing for more technological advances, safer communities, and appreciation for diverse creativity—, makes your passions more complexly satisfying, and brings deeper contentment. Isn’t that the point to living, to have fun?
When teaching, this is what I work to incorporate into the everyday. The continued deepening of knowledge, comprehending a passion, or simply nerding-out over an interest should be intrinsic to enjoying life and in turn reciprocate betterment as well as a deeper, interdisciplinary understanding of itself. My main teaching strategy is to encourage the reframing of perspectives and the incorporation of study into your main aspects of life. It not only forces you to start subconsciously reworking material at all times of the day but it also roots your studies in things you enjoy, making you a lifelong learner and thus contributor to community.
One of my private oboe students, a middle schooler at the time, hated working on scales and could not build up the endurance to make it through one entirely. Dramatically exasperated after playing the shortest possible top note of the scale—like a true oboist—, he would throw his oboe down and resolutely say, “I just can’t.” It turns out he was a huge fan of video games so after chuckling and agreeing that the oboe was pointlessly hard, we decided to move on for now and I started asking him about the music in his favorite games. Were there snippets he liked?
After showing them to me, I found one that involved a scale with a couple turns and, without pointing it out, asked him to practice that melody for the week. The next week he came back, plopped down next to me and proudly played his melody, which lasted longer and even had greater range than our scale would. I asked him what he had been thinking about while playing. What did you feel? The main bit to his response was that he was just having fun. So, then we braved a scale again (in the same key as the melody) with the same results as the prior week. Again, I asked what he had been thinking about and he responded that he was thinking about how tiring it would be, about the act of playing. I sat back and had let the words sink in and then suggested looking at the key signature of the melody, the scale, then the set of notes within the melody and how they compared to the scale. His jaw dropped and I could not help but grin a little and ask him to play this scale but this time, thinking about making music out of it, feeling how each note made him feel and persuaded him to do direction-wise. He made it through no problem. When teaching undergraduates, they aren’t necessarily so interested in talking vulnerably about their sincere interests, especially in front of their vicious peers. Rather than use video games, we brought up something more interesting to them: their weekend plans. At the time in this aural skills class, many folks were struggling with conducting and sight-singing simultaneously. Frustrated, a student explained it was ridiculous to throw conducting on top of solfege syllables, intervals/pitch content, and rhythm to which I responded, “What? 30 things at once is too much?” So, right in that moment I asked the student to ask me about my weekend then asked everyone to start conducting a four-pattern. While conducting, I started responding with what my plans were and once I had finished, sharply returned the question and immediately, as if tripping on a root on a path, her pattern derailed and crashed. We all started laughing and I asked everyone to try the activity with a partner. Once we had gone through a couple patterns, I asked why I had tortured everyone like this at 8am. The class collectively realized that this was how we can become comfortable with patterns and incorporating them into sight-singing—we have to reframe the action and isolate it from its prior surroundings. “Better yet,” I began to wrap up, “you all remember parlor tricks? Welcome to the undergraduate 21st century version for all of your soirées I just heard about for this weekend!”
From year to year, even class to class, I try to reevaluate the ways I approach subjects and share information with students. This necessity to reflect on my teaching became incredibly apparent during my second year of teaching aural skills. I felt during my first year that the students were not grasping information as quickly as I would have liked, nor did they affirmatively nod or anything of the like during class. In turn at the time, I figured it was best to just offer up all of my perspectives all at once and cram it into a 50-minute chunk of time—talk about information overload. I am not trying to contradict myself but rather make the distinction that information takes time to be processed. Specifically, I remember students having a hard time differentiating between certain intervals my first year. Instead of offering all of the tricks in the hat this time around when the same struggles came up, I limited myself to giving one or two examples for the students to focus on. If they asked, I was prepared to give more but it turned out it was not needed. This taught me that calmness and absolute omnipresence are necessary while teaching in order to see what singular key perspective will work in that moment. If not, no worries and the next class another option can be offered once everyone’s mind has a second to process.
Although I do not think that comprehension quantifies or qualifies someone’s enjoyment, I am a firm believer that it does enhance enjoyment and bring more complex satisfaction and fulfillment. Not only this but in my teachings, I want to help students develop this capacity to think outside of the box, reframe problems, and incorporate information from all disciplines. It creates a person who is open-minded and willing to take a second to realize and appreciate any aspect of life that comes their way, making their unique discipline more profound. Teaching music offers the opportunity for another form of language that engages oneself in self-expression and connection. Music gives solace and calm and a safe space. In learning another form of communication—and ways in which we approach communicating this way specifically—we get to know one another better, learn each other’s intricacies that make us tick as individual human beings, and make the world and education itself more inclusive, well-rounded, and holistic. I strive to do this and foster the environment to do so each time I have the opportunity to educate.