Liana Booker

Critical Pedagogy 1
Professor Gallo
Final Philosophy Paper
Friday December 12th

Knowing Self
Music has always been a huge part of my life and I knew from a young age that I wanted
to pursue music in some way for the rest of my life. I have been singing since before I can even
remember. One of my mothers friends used to always tell her that I was going to be a singer and
I still cant believe how right she was. Music was always there for me to run to when things got
hard or when I needed to think about things. Even today while Im doing work or working out, I
have to listen to music to get me through it.
I didn't know anything about Western Classical music until my freshman year of high
school. As I went along in my high school career, I began to love it and I started to think about
what I wanted to do with that. I always knew I was a singer, but I didn't know until my junior
year of high school that teaching was where I wanted to take it. I had a choir director my last two
years of high school that inspired me probably more than she knows. I saw the passion and love
that she put into every piece of music that she presented to us and I knew that was what I wanted
to do. When I do start to teach, I want my students to be able to see the passion I have for music
and the passion I have for teaching in hopes that seeing it will cause them to want to lear even
more. I think as a teacher it is important to encourage your students and also push them just
enough so that they want to grow in their education.
This course has a lot to do with how I observe other peoples teaching. I never used to
think much about how teachers think and how much work they do before they even step foot into
the classroom. I think more about the details that go into teaching a lesson. I have begun to un-

derstand the importance of lesson planning. Knowing what you are going to teach before you
start to teach is very important. In observing the second grade lesson, I noticed things that I never
would've noticed before coming into this school. As musicians we can sometimes get carried
away in talking about a piece of music and it is very easy to get off topic and I noticed a lot while
observing the second grade lesson that the teacher caught herself when she was getting ahead of
herself. I think that knowing when you have to slow down or go back to something to benefit
your students is a very important skill to have.
Knowing Students
I think that knowing things about your students can help you to actually know your students as people. Just knowing things about your students is not enough, making some kind of
connection with them is very important. In The Journey from Music Student to Teacher Chapter
8, Raiber and Teachout talk about the different things you could know about your students like
their race, religion, sexual orientation, etc., but then it goes into Knowing Your Students- As
Individuals (pg. 189) and tools to get to know them better. Doing things like actually having
conversations with you students could lead to you finding things out about them that you never
knew and that could help in the ways you teach them. Showing your students that you actually
care about what they have to say can cause them to be more willing to participate in class and
can even cause them to open up more and therefor have a better learning experience.
In To Teach chapter one Ayers says teachers are a large presence in the lives of students
(pg. 17). When I read that I connected with it very well. I have had some amazing teachers in my
life and they are the reasons I want to be a music educator. Teachers really are so important to
their students. Students look up to teachers that show they care and that go the extra mile just so

their students have the best learning experience that they possibly can. When a teacher has clearly taken the time out to get to know their students, it shows not only in how the teacher acts, but
how the students react to the teacher. When students know that teachers care about them, there is
a certain level of resect that the students have for the teacher that makes for a really great classroom environment.
If you know your students and what they like or dont like, you can incorporate certain
things into your lessons that you know certain students would be more interested in. If you have
a student that has a skill that you think would be important for the rest of the class to learn, not
only are you giving that student the chance to show their skills, but you are also giving the other
students the chance to learn from their peers.
If you have students that are difficult, getting to know the better could help you understand why the student may be acting out. In chapter two of To Teach by Bill Ayers, there is a
short story about a child that is sometimes not that well behaved and difficult to deal with and the
mother of the child knows that is is difficult and wonders to herself Would they [teachers] find a
way to teach him? (pg. 41). As an educator, trying your best to understand your students is extremely important. What I think a lot of teachers forget is that students are people and they are
growing up and maturing. They arent just faces they have stories no matter how young or old. It
isn't fair to your students to not get to know them because the things you may not know about
them could potentially help you get through to them which could help them in the long run.
Knowing Curriculum
I really dont remember most of my music education before high school. My high school
is a specialized high school that focuses on the arts, so I was lucky to have had such an intense

music education starting at the age of 14. When I was a freshman in high school, all of the vocal
majors had to take a semester of sight singing and had to be in a choir for at least three of the
four years being there. The sight singing class was very helpful because it taught some students
that may not have ever looked at a piece of music how to read music and how to decode what
was on the paper. Since I knew that I wanted to go into music, I was in choir all four years of
high school and being in choir for such a long period of time was really helpful for me as a musician. As I moved up in grade levels, I moved onto more advanced choirs. By my senior year, I
was in the top auditioned choir in my school. The different things that are expected of each choir
was clear and by the end of my high school career, I knew a lot of different choral pieces and
was able to have intelligent conversations about the music that I was singing.
I knew a little bit about Kodaly before I took this course but I didn't know the background
of the development of his approach. I knew nothing about the Orff and Dalcroze approaches to
music education but I like that all three of them follow the idea of Sound before Sight. I think
that a lot of he time music teachers, mainly in a choir setting, are so focused on the final product
that they forget about that. When reading Methods of Teaching Music to Children talking about
Kodalys thinking in developing his method it said music belongs to everyone. (pg. 52) and
that stuck with me. I think that as an educator that is so important to remember. You may not
have students who are prodigies but that doest mean that they have any less of a right to learn
about music than a student who might know a whole lot about music.
In taking this class, I have thought a lot about how I want to be as an educator. I hope that
one day I can inspire my students as much as my music teachers have inspired me. In chapter
one of Constructing a Personal Orientation Campbell says Many music teachers are drawn to a

life of teaching because they have a genuine love of music, a deep concern for others, and a
strong desire to pass along the joy of music to others. (pg. 1). This couldn't be more true about
me. Since the first time I said that I wanted to teach music that was my reasoning for it. Since
music has always been so import ant to me, I want to show my future students that music can
also be important to them. I have seen how some teachers of mine worked extremely hard to get
the best of the best for their students and thats how I imagine Ill be as a teacher. Why would
someone go into teaching if they didn't want to do the best they could for their students? I hope
that in my time as a teacher, at least one of my students will come back to me one day and tell
me that they love music because of my class or even that they learned to appreciate music because of my class. What I really want it to have an impact on students lives.
I have always wanted to be a choir director. It makes sense because the teacher that inspired me the most was my choir director for two years. I love the thought of standing in front of
a choir and having them sing beautiful music not only because of the movements of your hands
in front of them but also the hard work put into it. I strongly believe in students working hard in
choir to get to a beautiful outcome. Since being in this class I have seen the importance of changing the way choir is run in certain ways. In some choirs, the students have no say in what the music means and the choir director just tells them what they should think it means. I am such a firm
believer in a democratic music classroom. I think that students should be able to contribute to the
overall interpretation of the music they are singing. Making a personal connection to music plays
such a large role in the music sounding amazing and if students aren't allowed to come up with
their own meaning of a song then they wont be able to fully connect and the music wont sound
as beautiful as it should.

Being in this class has completely opened my mind to different things not only about
teaching music but teaching in general. I feel like I have really been given the extra push to be
able to start really thinking like a teacher, I dont think that I felt I could really be a teacher until I
got well into this class. I pay attention much more to detail not only in my teaching but also in
other peoples teaching. I have written quite a few lesson plans this semester and I know this is
only the beginning, but I am able to understand the importance of them now that I have worked
from several. I truly believe that this thinking will make a me a better music educator in the future.

Citations:
Raiber, Michael, and David Teachout. The Journey from Music Student to Teacher:
A Professional Approach. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Ayers, William. To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. New York: Teachers College,
1993. Print.
Campbell, Patricia Shehan., and Carol Scott-Kassner. Music in Childhood: From
Preschool through the Elementary Grades. New York: Schirmer, 1995. Print.
Campbell, Mark Robin., Linda K. Thompson, and Janet R. Barrett. Constructing a
Personal Orientation to Music Teaching. New York: Routledge, 2010. Print.