Continuing in Music
Education
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After spending a semester learning more about music education and my own teaching abilities, I am still very interested in pursuing a career as a music educator. One of the main reasons I believe I should continue on in music education is my desire to help students appreciate music and have positive experiences with the arts. I think I have many qualities that will help me succeed in this field, but I also realize I need to work to develop these skills over the next few years in order to become a good teacher. During the last few months, I have had many opportunities to identify my weak areas and make plans to overcome them. After recognizing the areas that need the most work, I have thought about ways I can improve upon them in the upcoming semesters. My
strongest skills are written communication and organization. These skills will help me in corresponding
with parents and administrators, as well as filing music and other important
items. I am also beginning to learn
how to incorporate my creativity into teaching music. I would like to continue to learn how to
work this creativity into lessons so that I can hold the students’ interest
more easily. Most importantly, I feel
that I have made the decision to major in music education for the right
reasons and I am willing to work to be an effective teacher. Because of this, I am very motivated to
develop the skills necessary to teach and to persist in overcoming my
weaknesses. I believe my most significant weakness is public speaking. Over the semester, I feel I have made some progress in this area, but I know I still have a long way to go. When I speak in public in the future, whether it is in peer teaching assignment or another situation, I will work to be more confident. Specifically, I would like to increase the volume of my voice and make eye contact with the audience more often. The best way to work on these skills will be to take advantage of every opportunity I have to speak in front of an audience. Overall, I want to reach a higher comfort level so that teaching will seem more natural for both my students and me. Another weak area for me is assertiveness. By being more assertive in my peer teaching lessons, I would have looked more confident and prepared for my lesson. Becoming more assertive will help in several aspects of teaching, including classroom management and communication with parents, administrators, and students. In order to achieve this, I would like to work on overcoming my nervousness when in front of a large group so that I will seem more confident when I am teaching a class. I also need to incorporate public speaking skills into everyday conversation. If I try to be more assertive and confident in ordinary situations, then it will be easier to work these skills into my teaching. For the most part, I think that assertiveness will come more naturally when I become a better public speaker. To improve my teaching skills in general, I plan to take every opportunity available to learn from experienced music teachers. I think this is one of the most important methods I can use to strengthen my skills. By watching educators actually teaching music in their classrooms, I will be able to develop my own teaching style and expose myself to several different methods of teaching music. Hopefully, this will help me to find what works best for different students and classrooms so that I can be more prepared when I have my own class. Overall, I have a very optimistic attitude about becoming a music teacher and I am willing to work hard to learn how to be a successful teacher. Although I am inexperienced in many areas of teaching, this semester has helped me recognize my strong and weak points, and to see what actions I can take to improve myself. I have set many goals for myself so that I can use the next four years to develop my strong points and improve in my weak areas. By the time I graduate, I hope to have developed the skills I need to succeed, as well as the positive attitude I will need to continue improving as I gain more experience. |
