During my guided internship in spring of 2012, I am interested in accomplishing the following goals:

1. I want to explore and test my interest in working with middle and/or high school aged musicians.
2. I want to gain a better understanding of how to teach student musicians how to use their ears for various purposes (improvisation, learning music and musical properties, composition, etc.)
3. I want to gain more experience in conducting a lesson or rehearsal in an efficient and focused, yet lighthearted and enjoyable manner.

I believe that in my efforts to meet these objectives, I will be putting past and concurrent courses to practical use. I have taken Educational Psychology as an undergraduate at the University of Miami and I am currently taking Models for Teaching and Learning here at NEC. Along with my internship next semester I will be taking Improvisation in Music Education, which will provide me with great insight in how to work with my students.

In my own experience, I’ve found that it is very important to have a solid foundation in both reading music and in using one’s ears. Although there are exceptions, I’ve found that students are generally more likely to rely more heavily on written music and less likely to be able to use and trust their ears to learn music, improvise, or compose. I believe that this is due to several possible factors, the most noticeable being:

• Students can feel bashful or vulnerable performing music in this way.
• Students don’t really know what to listen for because they haven’t immersed themselves enough in the music they are studying. These observations are based on my own private teaching of high school jazz students in my hometown of Gainesville, Florida, as well as my experience with other students while playing in middle and high school ensembles.

My goal as a teacher would be to help my students grow into musicians who play their instrument(s) with good fundamentals, have solid reading and written-music skills, and can use their ears for improvisation and learning music aurally.

Some of the most important questions I would like to explore during this coming semester are:

• How do beginning improvisers first get comfortable with playing what is not on the page?
• How can an improviser transition from “plugging in licks” to playing in a more spontaneous way?
• How to students learn material by ear rather than with written music?

All of these questions are inspired by my desire to understand more about how students can learn to train their ears. In my experience, I know that being able to hear intervals and also doing extensive listening to the type of music that one wants to play are two crucial aspects of developing the ears, but I would like to develop more specific answers and more specific techniques in this matter. Based on past experiences, my concern for the ability to transfer this information gives me question, “How do I use effective language and communication to better explain musical concepts, and how does this change from student to student?”

To record the contents of my internship, I will update on the MIE blog as well as add to my portfolio. My specific ideas for recording these experiences include at least 5 video recordings of my teaching practice as well as a written account of each time I go to my internship. This will include the events of the day, what techniques were used, and an evaluation of what went well, what didn’t go well, and why.The Artist-Teacher-Scholar model very accurately represents my long-term goals as a professional musician. As an artist, I plan to continue to play and write music my whole career, and continue to grow and evolve from my musical experiences. While I consider myself a jazz musician, I have no intentions of limiting myself to a specific genre and I want to have the most fulfilling musical experience as possible, regardless of genre. As a teacher, I want to pass on my knowledge and my musically diverse spirit to young students, helping them develop into inspired, eclectic, multi-faceted musicians. My specific interests would be more in small group and private studio interaction. I would be interested in teaching primarily in the late middle school and high school levels, but eventually, I would be interested in teaching at the college level as well. As a scholar, I am interested in continuing to research, listen to music, and try to elevate human understanding of music as much as possible, which would help me as both an artist and a teacher. It is my hope that this internship proves to be a valuable learning experience, giving me a promising launching point into the life of being a teaching artist.

Editor’s Note: This is Melody Jenkin’s second post in a series of three regarding her internship this semester. You can view follow-up posts to this one, and her internship proposal, here.

I’ve had the privilege of working with NEC’s Touring Children’s Opera through the Community Performances and Partnerships Program. The internship involves several things: writing lesson plans for the teachers to prepare their students to see the opera, scheduling all of the performances at local elementary schools, speaking to the students about opera before the performances, documenting the work, and making surveys to send out to the schools. Although I’m well into my project, I faced many challenges and questions. Which information and exercises are the most important for the study guides? How can the kids take something away from just five lessons before the performance? What did they learn from the packet? What did they learn from experiencing the performance? Although these questions aren’t completely answered, I feel that I’m on the right path. Today we performed for the schools in Rockport, MA. The students were incredibly receptive to the pre-performance talks and to the show itself, which is Bizet’s Doctor Miracle. When I asked one student what opera was she said, “That’s easy… it’s a singing and dancing play.” I thought that summed it up well! At this point, I think that any information or excitement we share about music is contagious to the kids. I heard them talking about the different characters in the opera with each other on the way out after the performance.

Editor’s Note: This is Melody Jenkin’s second post in a series of three regarding her internship this semester. You can view follow-up posts to this one, and her internship proposal, here.

I’ve had the privilege of working with NEC’s Touring Children’s Opera through the Community Performances and Partnerships Program. The internship involves several things: writing lesson plans for the teachers to prepare their students to see the opera, scheduling all of the performances at local elementary schools, speaking to the students about opera before the performances, documenting the work, and making surveys to send out to the schools.

I found myself facing many challenges and questions. Such as:

• Which information and exercises are the most important for the study guides?
• How can the kids take something away from just five lessons before the performance?
• What did they learn from the packet?
• What did they learn from experiencing the performance?

Although these questions aren’t completely answered, I feel that I’m on the right path. Today we performed for the schools in Rockport, MA. The students were incredibly receptive to the pre-performance talks and to the show itself, which is Bizet’s Doctor Miracle. When I asked one student what opera was she said, “That’s easy… it’s a singing and dancing play.” I thought that summed it up well! At this point, I think that any information or excitement we share about music is contagious to the kids. I heard them talking about the different characters in the opera with each other on the way out after the performance.

Editor’s Note: This is Shannon Kelly’s first post in a series of three regarding her internship this semester. You can view follow-up posts to this one, and her internship proposal, here. 

My internship this fall will be teaching a section for an undergraduate voice class at NEC, titled in the catalogue, appropriately enough, Voice Class for Non-Majors. I have eleven students in the class. Each week I teach a 50 minute group class, and each week I give each student a 45 minute lesson. The size of the class has been a challenge so far, just in providing each student individual instruction time. With all of our overscheduled time it can be tough getting a lesson in each week even though we try to stick with pre-set days and times. I’m beginning to see each student’s personality and needs. One of the exciting things is seeing even the bit of development that has occurred in the first few weeks of lessons. The classroom setting is another challenge in itself. I had the opportunity basically to structure my own course however I saw fit which was scary and great at the same time. I feel with each lecture I’m learning something new and I’m glad I get the chance to teach the class again next semester and apply this experience. My learning curve is pretty steep. Lessons so far: Keep it specific, bring examples, use handouts, communicate frequently and often (email is your friend), repeat and re-emphasize, use multiple delivery methods (audio, visual, kinesthetic), to encourage retention. Whew. More to come.

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.

11/19
The kids got to learn the two notes of ‘Do’ and ‘Sol’ on the staff and they also get to learn the solfege. It was interesting that learning the notes on the staff required three actions. The things would be seeing, hearing and memorizing. Kids got to see the notes that’s on either line or space. They will determine the notes according to which line or space. Then they will be introduced what it’s sounding. Once they get to know the notes, they will think about the pitch. Based on the two things, they would memorize them. Each kids would have different pace to absorb the teaching. I though their acquire ability might be related to agility. Depending on how fast they can connet the three actions, they will get it fast or slow. For some kids, the things would be easy to learn but for others, it would be a hard task that’s hard to get.

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.

11/12
I got to meet Andrew for the first time at the meeting on Thursday and today I got to watch his teaching for the first time. It was interesting that he brought some real fruits for the class. The concept of it was similar to the last week’s singing block things. He used the rhythm/syllables of Le(1)-mon(2), Lime(1-2). I think It’s the way to teach them duration. Both words are saying in 2 beats but for Lemon, there are two saperated beats in Le and Mon. For Lime one should hold the word to be connected, so the word Lime is like a half notes duration while Le-Mon is like having two quarter notes in two. Even though I’m not a native speaker, I could clearly feel the duration and rhythm and could get to understand the concept. It was like a finding music elements in our actually life.