Oh man, I'm not even sure where to begin on this post. I've learned so much in this class. This is the class that opened my eyes on how to apply these educational concepts to music. Not just concepts from this class, but from others.
In the oral final, I discussed how to apply comprehension instruction to rehearsal through using well structured warm ups that ease students into more challenging passages in their numbers, using background knowledge to help students make predictions reviewing concerts and discussing what went well and what didn't. The thing is, many music teachers do this already, but we don't know that what we are doing is "comprehension instruction" or that when we incorporate a wide variety of music at varying difficulties it's "differentiation." We just know that it's good to do it and so we do.
Now the biggest hurdle we have to get past is finding the time to do all this and rehearse. It would be nice if all we needed to do was teach basic music and how to sing or play an instrument, but we have to perform as well. I'm not begrudging performance. I love it! Why else would I have stayed in choir and then majored in it? But I feel like it's harder for us to do it all. I know for a fact that my high school choir director (who was heralded as a fantastic director, who won awards for being such a great teacher, who produced and directed extravagant, spectacular musicals each year) didn't even sort of incorporate these things into her lessons plans. She was all about rehearsal and making sure everyone sang the right note at the right time at the right dynamic with the right vowel. Why do I bring this up? She was seen as one of the most successful directors in my district, but she didn't even cover a fourth of the state standards. It's just a weird dynamic going on with music education that I still am trying to grasp.
To ideally use all of the techniques I've learned this semester (and past semesters) I feel like I'd have to have several non-rehearsal periods so I could teach history, appreciation, theory, and songwriting among others. But that when would I be able to rehearse my choirs? It may get to the point where we would need more choir directors than one per school. Gasp! Imagine that! (Actually in the midwest and Texas that's not uncommon. Actually it's not uncommon to have vocal coaches/teachers on staff as well as choreographers, professional accompanists, and assistants! And people wonder why I would ever want to leave Utah which makes me fight for the existence of my job.
Sorry, I got off on a tangent. The way I see this truly incorporating this into my teaching style in an ensemble setting is to have 10-20 minutes (depending on length of a period) devoted to teaching music concepts, studying musical texts (that aren't our repertoire), and historical information. And then dive into rehearsal for the rest of the time, because that is what music teachers are judged mostly on. The performance of our students (which other subjects are just now feeling). I know Marcia Neel has structured classes this way in Nevada, where music is a core subject (I mean really, come on Utah. Get with it!) I imagine me using the same structure while still incorporating as much as I can to the rehearsal portion as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
