Dear Collegiate Member,

Happy New Year!

Another year begins with another opportunity for a fresh start in your musical career. Now is the time to start thinking about what the future may bring, especially if you're graduating this year.

With that thought in mind, this month we'll take another look at the music education department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, which conducted a community outreach program for preservice teachers as a supplement to their degree program requirements. Working with band students in grades 6 through 8 from 12 schools, undergraduate music education students served as sectional coaches, instrumental specialists, and conductors for the full ensemble in ten 90-minute evening rehearsals. The benefits gained were plentiful and varied greatly according to each individual’s needs and level of personal development. Parts III and IV will be featured in this issue of Newslink.

In Part III, Paul Farus describes his enhanced understanding of student motivation through his experience with and detailed description of two students. In Part IV, Megan Garrison describes how self-evaluation has helped her make strides toward becoming a confident and satisfied teacher.

[Visit the December issue of Collegiate NewsLink to read Parts I and II of this series.]

As always, if you have comments, questions, or would like to share your chapter’s activities or recruitment strategies with us for publication in a future issue, e-mail Shauna Leavitt.

University of Colorado, Boulder:  Community Outreach Program

Part III: Motivational Differences
by Paul Farus, Saxophone Instructor

I was able to work very closely with many wonderful children as the saxophone-section instructor for the outreach ensemble. Through our interactions, I was able to learn more about how students are motivated to study music. I will briefly describe my experiences with two students who demonstrated strikingly contrasting motivational profiles. Michelle was a self-motivated student who always seemed to be focused on making improvement for improvement’s sake, whereas Steve was a student who was primarily concerned about avoiding failure and revealing a lower level of ability than the other students.

Michelle’s positive attitude and high level of motivation was clear from the first rehearsal. She was enamored with everything about the saxophone and had a intrinsic desire to learn more about it. For example, Michelle was overheard excitedly expressing to her parents that the students and teachers in the outreach program were “serious musicians,” and that she would need to practice. Furthermore, upon learning that students would receive occasional individualized instruction in addition to sectional instruction, Michelle specifically asked for time so that she could “learn how to play the saxophone better.” When it came time for these individual sessions to end, she would always try to negotiate for more time. It seemed that she wanted to work on everything she was having trouble with, or had ever had trouble with. Michelle’s positive attitude and motivational desires also had a social impact among her friends. Michelle would consistently talk over approaches to overcoming technical challenges with her friends and clearly inspired her friends to be more serious in rehearsal.

In contrast to Michelle, Steve showed up late several times and never really seemed interested in what we were doing. He recognized that he wasn’t necessarily the best player there and often avoided playing so as not to let on that he might not be as good as other members of the ensemble. Michelle also recognized that she wasn’t the best player in the ensemble, but rather than hide, she would constantly ask questions, seek help, and push herself to become as good as the others around her. Steve, on the other hand, seemed to be motivated primarily to hide his inabilities. It was also harder to get to know Steve as a student, because he never really would talk to me or the other students. When asked questions, he would often ignore the question or answer it quickly and quietly so that he could go back to hiding in the ensemble or section sound. Steve always played quietly and never wanted to play alone in front of the rest of the section. I often asked Steve if he felt comfortable in sectional and for clues about what he wanted to learn. I thought that asking what he wanted to learn how to do and attempting to cater instruction to his desires (e.g., play with a better sound, develop the ability to play faster) would help him feel more comfortable and perhaps motivated. Although it seemed that Steve liked playing the saxophone on some level, it was very difficult to move him beyond his timid and nervous approach to participating in the ensemble.

Through this experience I learned that there are often motivational differences between students that have implications for the ways they deal with their deficiencies in playing music. The contrast between Michelle’s and Steve’s approaches to learning music is just one example of how student motivation can impact learning. Although these two cases represent extremes in motivational drive, it’s likely that similar differences exist among students in many classrooms. This real-life example of differences in student motivation has shown me the importance of understanding students as individuals and of developing methods for teaching them accordingly.

Part IV: Conducting Yourself with Confidence
by Megan Garrison, Conductor and Trumpet Instructor

I entered the outreach ensemble program with what felt like very limited experience, both as a conductor and a teacher. Having only one full semester of practicum, I was apprehensive about my teaching abilities. I was fortunate, however, to be hired as one of two student conductors, and as a result, every day was a new challenge in my growth as a beginning teacher. What I gained was an invaluable experience working as both conductor and sectional coach in the outreach ensemble. I learned to control feelings of fear and self-doubt while teaching and was able to redirect those feelings into a reassuring confidence. I used my music background to command this confidence and discovered how important and rewarding a videocamera is for the development and improvement of both conducting and teaching execution. I also learned what I can do in the future to expedite the learning process both for myself and for my students.

I’ve been told most new music teachers experience the frozen sensation of the “underwater” syndrome while trying to direct an ensemble. We can hear sound, but can’t distinguish the sounds. As I found out, it’s the same feeling of disorientation as playing a wind instrument with earplugs. I had never before been asked to teach a piece from start to finish. My first few weeks were spent in a total panic as I tried to “get the water out of my ears.” As this is no way to teach, I dreaded conducting my piece. I was in constant fear that I would hinder the learning process because of this disorienting condition. My professor gave me very good advice to control this – rely heavily on all my years of being a musician to sort out the sounds that had been jumbled together because of nerves. Each day, one sound at a time, I slowly started to take this advice. I started to hear one section at a time until the sounds were as they should be. As I became able to hear more clearly, I also became more able to make good decisions for the ensemble based on my musicianship. Through this experience, my comfort and confidence in front of students improved. When I walked on stage at our concert, I had no inhibitions. I trusted the work the students had put in and my own ability to teach them.

A major factor to my growth in confidence was the constant surveillance of a videocamera. Through watching myself, I was able to fully appreciate the high energy needed to teach. I was amazed to see that what I thought had been energetic instruction often came across as somewhat apathetic. Each time I watched the video, I learned something new. I adjusted my pacing, attitude, and vigor and focused on different aspects of teaching effectiveness. The videorecordings also presented opportunities for me to critique my own conducting, which also improved through this process. I saw that it’s really important to exaggerate motions while conducting – just like phrasing when performing music. Without bias, the camera showed where my strengths and weaknesses were and, more important, what my next steps should be. Combined with the weekly opinions of my colleagues and mentors, this approach helped me learn effective teaching more quickly than other practicum placements that had less built-in continuity due to coordinating collegiate and public school schedules.

In the future, I will be able to teach more confidently and musically as a result of the valuable experiences I received by being a part of this program. I learned many techniques that work well with younger students, and some that don’t. I found that if I genuinely enjoy teaching, the students will enjoy learning. It was rather remarkable how the students responded more favorably when I taught with a smile on my face than when I portrayed fear or indifference. Because of its regularity and structure, the outreach ensemble gave me a chance to find confidence as an educator. This experience marks an important step toward reaching my goal of becoming an inspired and inspiring music educator.