Education
This is a part of an ongoing blog that I have and will be an outlet for me to reflect on what my students have taught me in my career of being a music teacher. Reflection is one of the most powerful forms of professional development we as music educators can engage with. Taking the time to think about how an interaction with a student, class, week, school year, etc. have been going and what you can do to maybe change things to make it better for your students is an important part of personal growth as an educator. This is going to be one of the ways I do that. As well as this, I will try to offer some inspiration for other music teachers for things they can gain from their students while engaging with them in the music learning process. My students have taught me everything that I know. Can I say that? Should I say that? It is an interesting way of looking at how we develop as teachers because if you think about it, without witnessing your students’ learning, you would have no idea if you were being effective or not. Right? When a student achieves something we have structured for them, we know that structure can be successful. Over time those successes add up. If we are aware of them and compile them the right way, we can build many skills as a teacher. The same can be said for when a student doesn’t achieve at something we structure for them. We either learn that the entire structure for what we did doesn’t work or that pieces of it work and pieces don’t. It is all about reflecting how things went and learning from it. At the same time your students are learning music, you are learning how to be a better music teacher. The two processes feed off of and inform one another.