Wow,
It's the end of the year, hard to believe! So much to think about and so much to consider.
I've grown so much as a teacher this year, it's hard to pinpoint what to think of as my biggest growth. One thing I definitely have improved on is anticipating and planning things for the classroom. Many things about teaching you have to live through in order to learn from and that certainly applies to this year. I work with a colleague(co-band director) who knows every detail about upcoming events and things that need to be planned for. She has given me quite a bit in that avenue and I'm greatly proud of those accomplishments.
There are several things that are on my list to get better with next year. I'm working on altering my assessment, adding some playing tests, building a website/facebook page to enhance student-parent communication along with a multitude of other things. After all, it's about giving the kids the best experience possible.
On a political front, I worry about the future of music education in a school. Current administrators on the state level are continuously calling for higher standards and restricting budgets, along with calling for higher use in technology.
While I'm all for integrating technology(I serve on the technology committee at school), all practicality, along with the balance we seek to give our students, can easily be lost. For instance, I fear those who are continuously seeking out ways to integrate technology in our schools without thinking about how the details of the integration would go. Doing things just to do things can ultimately raise some red flags.
On the a similar front, it's important to keep Arts in the schools, not just to justify employability skills(which is something I often use when recruiting or retaining students) but to create well rounded human beings who understand emotions like compassion, sympathy, love...the list goes on. My hope is that parents who are informed about these true benefits of Music Education, along with other arts education programs, see the benefit for the life of their child, not just their employability prospects.
