Editor’s Note: Meet Katheryn Naler, an MIE student/Violin major in her 3rd year and doing her first MIE Guided Internship! Katheryn’s internship this semester is tied in with the String Pedagogy course taught through the NEC Strings Dept.

This last summer, I created my own internship to equip me for something I absolutely love: pre-college teaching. This last month has been full of learning pedagogical skills by writing lesson plans, teaching lessons, and subsequently, writing responses about the experiences in lesson. In addition to these activities, I also observe lessons at NEC: college level as well as pre-college, with varying teachers. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know! To parallel my internship in concentration, I am taking the String Pedagogy class. It has been such a wonderful asset as I continue gathering up methods of teaching.

My darling student, an unexpectedly smart young boy in Newton, is learning the violin. Because of teaching a four-year-old, I am in the process of learning the skill of keeping his attention and interest. Magdalena Richter suggests having multiple areas of education, and switching back and forth quickly before the child can loose interest. I keep thinking on this as I begin to seek out my style in teaching. I am learning to, as Benjamin Zander implements, automatically give him an A, treating him as such a student. Over the weeks, the more I think on this idea, the more focused, positive, and productive our lessons have been.

Editor’s Note: This post is in a series of several by undergraduate composition major Juhye Lee. Read Juhye’s previous MusicLaunch posts here. Or you can also see the whole MusicLaunch blog archive.

Today Devin and Pui tried to teach the rhythms and pitches with the blocks. They started to clap according to the blocks. For instance one block means clap once (which could be quarter note) and the longer block of the two is followed by clapping twice(which could be two eighth notes in quarter note). Singing the pitches were followed by the rhythms. Singing One-Two-Three (which is Do-Re-Mi) was added to the rhythms they were clapping. Do (in a quarter note), Do-re( in a quarter note, so there would be two divided notes of quarter notes, which are two eighth notes), Do-re-mi(Each do-re-mi is an eighth note singing in two quarter notes as (8th rest)-do-re-mi). I was curious when they sing do, do-re, (rest)-do-re-mi, The do-re and (rest)-do-re-mi has eighth notes in each, not a quarter note as the first Do. The next step would be building a harmony on Do-re-mi as singing the thrid above them(Which is mi-fa-sol). The kids will naturally learn about the sounds of thrid intervals.

In Pui’s Class, most of them were beginner and I could see that every kid’s ability (understanding, time that take them to get Pui’s teaching) was different even though they all are in the same situation.

About a year and a half ago, I was given the opportunity to initiate an education-based Community Engagement program under the auspices of NEC’s Preparatory/Continuing Education division, led by Leslie Foley, the (then) newly-appointed Dean & Executive Director of NEC’s Preparatory/Continuing Education division. At the time, I had been working with the Music-in-Education National Consortium, managing its FIPSE grant and consulting on documentation & portfolio assessment practices for its teacher professional development (“PD”)-driven elementary music programs.

Throughout my time with the MIENC (roughly 2004-2011), teacher and teaching artist training became an increasingly large part of how the programs were designed and implemented. I would travel with a small team of other experts and give PD sessions on a regular basis at each school; sometimes at many schools within a district, or at a district/region-wide teacher conference. While the other experts usually focused on standards-based curriculum design and teaching methods, my area of specialty was classroom documentation. I’d observe individual classes, meet with the teachers one-on-one, and offer advice on how to document and exhibit their work (in school community spaces; in online digital portfolios; on blogs, etc.) so as to simultaneously showcase their curricula, teaching style, student learning outcomes, answer project inquiry questions, and how their classrooms meet‐and often exemplify— inquiry questions and content/subject area/grade-level standards. We’d also look at how to design student assessments so that they could easily be used in those kinds of ways. Teachers loved the opportunity to demonstrate the artistry of their teaching, side-by-side with the development of their students’ scholarship.

Towards the later part of my MIENC tenure, I began freelancing as an educational researcher with Larry Scripp and served with him as a consultant for the PAIR Program (Partnerships in Arts Integrated Research), led by the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education organization. In that project, math & social studies classrooms (3rd-5th graders) were paired with music, drama, sculpture, and painting teaching artists, and we were charged with designing a portfolio program to document and assess those outcomes, as well as collect reflections by students, teachers, and teaching artists. Many of the participants (kids and adults alike) had never participated in a program where portfolio documentation was central to the curricula, and in the beginning, we had to do a lot of teacher training to setup the structure for collecting rich documentation, particularly when it came to eliciting student responses. Part of the challenge was finding a way to exhibit this data in ways that were rich, conversational, and authentic to both the kids and the teachers/teaching artists.

We eventually devised an interview protocol that put 2-3 kids at the same table as their classroom teacher and teaching artists, in which they had the chance to reflect on they learned (individually and from each other) throughout the semester; and perform or demonstrate their composition (music or play). Most students relished the chance to ‘show off’ for their teachers in a non-classroom setting, which was pleasantly met by their teachers’ candor. Unsurprisingly, this type of exchange boosted camaraderie back in the classroom, raised students’ self-esteem, and provided a rising platform for quality student participation.

From these two particular experiences, I saw first-hand the positive benefits of having a strong documentation component in music-integrated programs, and it’s from that vantage point that MusicLaunch was born. Like the MIENC initiatives and the PAIR program, MusicLaunch combines the two worlds of teacher professional development and demonstrating student understanding:

• MusicLaunch teachers and interns both have a hand in documenting the student experience, and in fact, kids do too. (Kids love taking video of themselves and each other!) A frequent activity is watching the videos together and reflecting on what the camera captured.
• From the ‘moments of learning,’ ‘aha! stories,’ and similar vignettes captured by documentation, we can look across them for meta-themes and overarching inquiry questions. What questions does this kind of anecdotal evidence answer, and to what degree are those questions different from the ones we set out to answer?
• Each week begins, and ends, with collaborative sessions with all students talking and sharing in the same room, in a structured reflection session facilitated by ML staff. Children are encouraged to demonstrate what they learned and—regardless of their age group, chosen instrument, or skill level—teach it to their peers. (We believe this to be a crucial first step in developing children’s musical and cognitive self-awareness!)
• All documentation is collected and organized by ML interns, and will be assembled into an evolving digital portfolio, to be shared and discussed with parents at designated times throughout the year.

Stay tuned for more posts as MusicLaunch grows and blooms this year, particularly from our interns and teaching staff!

Editor’s Note: We welcome back Lauren Flaherty for her 2nd MIE Guided Internship! Lauren is a Master’s student in voice and also works in NEC’s Financial Aid office.

I returned to my voice lessons at Club Passim around the start of NEC’s fall semester. I am in the process of teaching two back-to-back six week sessions to accommodate the upcoming holidays and possible snow cancellations. (Not what anyone wants to think about while we’ve been enjoying an Indian Summer!)

This semester I will be teaching four students, including three brand new students and one returning student. Most of my students sing and play and about half of them enjoy performing in the area. One suffers from a lack of confidence. Another is extremely new to music and requires more ear training than vocal coaching. It is difficult to control my expectations when their abilities differ so wildly, but I remind myself that I am there to teach, not to act as a judge.

Aside from helping my students grow at their own pace, I am focused on trying to create more of a formula for my teaching, specifically geared around our six week semesters. I have begun creating my own exercises that I think will help them warm-up and drill correct techniques into muscle memory. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for awhile that will hopefully reflect everything I’ve learned since I began teaching several years ago and during my past internship at Passim.