But last semester was a different experience from all of these. In the fall of 2013, I lectured to a large-enrollment undergraduate class for the first time. I had the opportunity to teach about Malagasy music and about the Kenyan nyatiti.
The size of the class was perhaps the most notable difference- at 90 students, there were four times as many humans as there were in any of the previous teaching environments in which I'd previously taught. I was not the primary professor, but there were a handful of times, when the professor was out of town for academic conferences, that I was able to teach. It was wonderful and fulfilling and I loved every second.
This semester, I teach a discussion section with students every Friday. Each week I lead the class in learning about music and it's role in culture, society, and history. I get to read their term papers and help students with the writing process. It is my hope that I can be a resource for these students and help them, in a small way, achieve their goal of graduating college with a music degree, and maybe even help foster a love for the subject of music history. After all, as musicians, the students I teach are all writing the next chapter in music history. It's good to know where you come from.
In many ways this is a (or at least it is my) dream job. So, I want to learn how to be the very best teacher I can possibly be.
With large enrollment undergraduate courses, there are some challenges. How do you lead a discussion with sixty people in the room? How do you help student improve their writing when every writing assignment requires detailed feedback on sixty+ papers? How do you keep a crowded room full of students engaged in the topic of Baroque keyboard music for 60 minutes when many young people today are accustomed to consuming information on a conglomeration of topics simultaneously and at lightning speed? How do you teach students to acquire the skills necessary to retain information and to take adequate notes and to understand the big picture when the education system they just graduated from has, in some cases, trained them to perform well on standardized tests but perhaps not to assimilate information from a wide variety of scholarly sources and then use that newly acquired knowledge to come up with original conclusions of their own? How do you motivate students to want to do these things for themselves, and on their own?
These are some of the questions I would like to address over the course of this semester. I hope that perhaps a community may be developed as a result of this blog, and that perhaps other books, ideas, or resources might be provided via discussion in the comment section. Please do feel free to comment and share your own ideas and contributions!
As a starting point, I will be reading and commenting the following books and their ideas:
They are: Drive, by Daniel Pink
Contemplative Practices in Higher Education by Daniel P. Barbezat and Mirabai Bush
Learner Centered Teaching by Maryellen Weimer
The Music History Classroom by James A. Davis
Also on my shortlist are the following two books:
What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain
Vitalizing Music History Teaching, James Briscoe, ed.
Thank you for stopping by. I encourage you to leave feedback on your perspective on these issues. I would also love to hear about your personal experiences or book recommendations.
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