Final Course Reflection Paper
Ziwei Bai
Looking back to my philosophy of choral music education and my experience as a choral teacher assistant at the very first time in the public school setting, I realize that the main purpose of my teaching philosophy won’t be changed. As a middle school choir teacher, I am not only responsible for following my daily curriculum, but also more importantly, in charge of building a harmonic choir family with my academic skills and professions so that my student can develop their own musicianship and identity by themselves.
Like what I said before in my teaching philosophy, my belief of a qualified choral teacher is to be well adaptive of various cultures and background, creating healthy learning environment with respects and encouragements for every improvement, learning from my students with curiosity and treating my students with passions as always. I can recall those philosophies so deeply from my own experiences as a choir student and from my internship placement.
As a choir student from a totally different cultural background, the curiosity of learning and experiencing musics from other culture and language can be one of my major factors to join the choir. I really enjoyed the mans choir curriculum last semester, with both American folk songs and songs from other culture and styles like “Baba Yetu” from Nigeria. On the other hands, the experience from classroom and performance stages may also influence whether I will continue singing in choir too. For me, the major reason why I decided to join gospel choir is because of the energy and the sense of united community that Dr. Thompson brought to his choir group. In fact, many of our gospel choir members won’t be the best individual singer, but the the choir is growing so fast because of the positive classroom environment and passions that Thompson show to every choir members. On the other hands, I had never sang in church and with school orchestra before I joined mans choir and gospel choir.Those experience from performing in front of public can be very valuable for me which I might not be able to have in the future. This is why as a choir teacher, we need to take care of every choir members thoroughly and keep the diversity of our choral repertoire.
As a choir teaching assistant in my internship placement, I found out that tons of paper works and preparation monthly musical programs are very common for a middle school choir teacher, which might be a distraction for me to stick on my philosophy perfectly. My mentor teacher had no time to joke or really smile even to her colleagues due to the stressful daily curriculum and tasks. We all known some middle school students are in their puberty which can potentially be a troublemaker in every choir class that acts countrary to other students.However, she was able to ignore those negativity by providing more caring body language and repeated phrases to attract student’s attentions. For my perspective, middle school students are very accepted and sensitive for teacher’s cares and passions on them because they like being followed.
By reviewing my growth as a teacher in this semester, the most prominent part for me is the confidence building throughout daily practice in the classroom as well as knowledge from my colleagues and mentor teacher. At the very beginning class, I didn’t even know how to start a simple warm-up section for my middle school choir students because I cannot make the cue properly for them to sing after me. It is so grateful that my mentor teacher helped me to use hand gesture for cuing and suggested me to practice at home in front of the mirror and avoid overuse of piano for help. With those home practices and guides, I am able to do more and more comfortable to help her with every warm-up section for the rest of the semester, which really boosts my confidence in teaching choir. For the sight-singing exercises, I learned quite a lot of teaching skills from my colleagues micro-teach section such as how to use modeling more than descriptions and how to use more solfege hand signs more fluently and effectively. All those methods worked for my internship experience so well and my voice projecting is also gradually developing with my improving confidence. However, there is a large space to enhance for my ability to organize my language in teaching. I really had to review and practice my lesson plan for several times in order to make my teaching fluent enough and without occasionally stops or pauses. Moreover, my conducting skill still needs a long time for developing into professions by individual practices and private assists.
For most parts in this course, I had learned a lot of theoretical knowledge and teaching experience from Mr. Evans and graduate colleagues during lectures and discussions. However, for students like me who have lack of conducting skills and choral teaching experience, learning can be more effective with additional micro-teach experiences and professional instructions from my professor and colleagues. However, the last two expert’s lecture that Mr.Evans brought to our class were quite useful and insightful for our future choir teaching preparation.
William Bai 