This reflection is depicting how these last couple of months have gone taking EDCI 306A, and my takeaways from the course. I really enjoyed learning and growing with each and every class thus far. I believe that my greatest professional strength as an educator who will teach music is having the capacity to understand how challenging different aspects of music are, and how everyone learns at different rates. This is something with music, I relate to because I remember in elementary school struggling to understand how each note flowed together when everyone else got it right away. I can use this strength to support my students and create a safe space for each individual to learn and grow. I believe that this is imperative for any educator to be successful, and make a good connection with their students. When I think about myself as a future educator teaching music, I can see myself really enjoying watching my students grow and progress with each lesson, and giving them the tools moving forward to be successful. With that being said, I am also looking forward to teaching the basics of rhythm and beat because I think it is a crucial part of learning music. My greatest area of growth during the year this course has been advancing my piano skills. I enjoyed diving deep into my previous knowledge of the piano and picking it back up again. I am still working toward my final progress report, and working toward perfecting ‘Drops of Jupiter’. Overall, I found this course very insightful and now I have the knowledge to move forward feeling more comfortable teaching music in an elementary school classroom.

Going into the dry run of teaching a lesson plan in front of the class it was overwhelming at first, but it turned out to be such a learning experience. There was eight of us in a group which made it difficult to split up roles, but it really gave me a good sense of how to collaborate with a big group of my peers creating a music lesson plan. We decided to take the “Rain Chant” and break it down to rhythm and beat. I found it beneficial to work with rhythm and beat because it made me more comfortable with it moving forward. During the lesson it was difficult to co-teach with seven other people, so I hope with our next lesson plan moving forward it won’t be so crowded. With that being said, I still leant so much from building the lesson plan, and the feedback form my peers. It was great to also see my peers step up and build other resources for us all to use and share in the future. I am excited to begin to work on our next lesson plan, and hopefully during practicum I have the opportunity to put these resources to work.