About Student Teaching (music ed) + practice time

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>I plan on asking my school about this, but I wanted some opinions from here.</p>

<p>How much of a strain is student teaching upon a Music Ed major's senior year? How much time can be expected to be spent in the act of student teaching? Can any of you relate about the experience of student teaching somewhat?</p>

<p>For you current Music Ed students (or parents of), how much time do you generally spend practicing a day? Especially interested in string players. Do the requirements of a BM-E mean you are unable to do, say, the 5-6 hours a day Performance people put in?</p>

2

<p>Son is a freshman music ed/ performance major. He is happy when he gets in 3hrs/day. The studio teacher requires 2 hrs. In addition to the bass, he is taking piano, cello and violin this semester and each of those instruments are requiring 1 hr/day of practice. He is in 3 ensembles (2 for credit). If he was determined, he could increase practice time but I think 5-6hrs would be very difficult. Son did say that he noticed that most of the music students are starting to look very pale since they spend all day in the building and only emerge at night.</p>

3

<p>My freshman son’s experiance is similar, to Momofbassist’s, even my son he plays a wind instrument. Fifteen hours a week of individual practice on his primary instrument is pretty much the norm for him and is what his studio professor recommends. But when you add in the 3 ensembles (2 for credit) and secondary instrument classes and practice, he is actually playing some time of instrument closer to 30 hours a week.</p>

<p>Of course we haven’t any experiance with student teaching yet, but we did work out a sample curriculum/schedule in which he will only do student teaching his last semester - with no other classes.</p>

4

<p>Thank you!</p>

<p>I ask because I had a long heart-to-heart conversation with my applied instrumental instructor the other day. I am currently a BA, dual-majoring in Anthropology.</p>

<p>My teacher has been pushing me lately to switch from a BA into Music Ed for various reasons…in this school at least, he thinks the Mus Ed degree will give one more skills than just the BA, such as conducting, which is certainly useful. I will also have access to more scholarship money (since BM students are prioritized over BAs in this regard), and will be ‘forced’ to give a Junior and Senior recital (I was planning on one anyway as a BA, but this will be more formal).</p>

<p>However, my ultimate goal is to end up in a good grad school for an MM in Performance and MA in Ethnomusicology. He supports me in this, but at the same time is wanting me to have more possibilities for the future by pursuing a Mus Ed during undergrad, which will end up in certification for a possible career path regardless of whether or not I follow it, while the BA is just a piece of paper…in his opinion.</p>

<p>He is a top pro in the field, and was relating to me how difficult things are even for musicians like him who have been groomed for this since birth, practically, and have always had the best teachers, education, and experiences. He says I do have a great deal of ability on the instrument, but there are indeed some significant hurdles I need to overcome before getting into a good MM program…and I should just give myself as many options as possible.</p>

<p>I feel like I need to prove myself in a cello performance MM program of good calibre, even though I’ll likely be making most of my living from the Ethnomusicology side of that and getting a doctorate, and such. It’s something I need to do, a goal I’ve had for a long, long time…and I recognise the difficulty.</p>

<p>It’s just…while he is a mentor to me and obviously knows what he is talking about, and I want to take his advice, at the same time I am now afraid that I won’t have significant time to prepare for the MM Performance audition if I do the Mus Ed and Anthro double-degree, due to Mus Ed’s student teaching and various gen ed requirements.</p>

<p>I am set to talk with the head of the BME program here on Monday…but I feel a bit lost now in which avenue I should take. Do I follow my expert teacher’s heartfelt advice and do the Mus Ed in place of the BA, or do I stick with the BA for fear that I won’t have enough time to practice to get to the level I need to be in 2-3 years…and then miss out on all the valuable training of a Mus Ed…</p>

<p>(also, do not get me wrong…I love to teach and plan to teach at least my instrument indefinitely, but perhaps not in a k-12 environment right now)</p>

5

<p>Music education students generally do not have as much time to practice as performance majors. It would be rare for a mus ed student to practice more than about 15 hours per week (although possible, especially if one can fit in 5 or 6 hours per day on weekends). Because of the heavy couseload, a BMusEd has been a 5-year program at my local university for a number of years (while all of the other undergrad degrees in music are 4-year degrees).</p>

<p>If you an practice efficiently for 20 or so hours per week, then you will be ahead of many of those that practice 30 or more–it just becomes more difficult to maintain one’s focus once you pass the 3-hour per day mark. Use your summers wisely (get into the best summer programs possible), and you could still find yourself in good shape for an MM.</p>

6

<p>Would you share what school you are attending?</p>

7

<p>It’s the flagship university of our state, but we more known for our jazz than classical strings.</p>

<p>I’m not comfortable sharing more than that…by all means, it’s not a magnet for inspiring undergrad performers, though we do have a nice grad school for string players. I’m attending it for in-state tuition, as I am of the firm belief that one should not go in to a huge load of debt for one’s undergrad years…
Staying an extra year is not of concern. :)</p>

<p>I do feel slightly better about everything today. What violindad said seems to ring true among Mus Ed students, but I could definitely be more efficient with my time. I’m still a bit worried about the student teaching bit. But perhaps it will be good experience at managing a classroom of pupils rather than just a one-on-one environment. If ever I manage to land a teaching job at a university, whether or not I’m there as a performing instructor, odds are I will be asked to teach other courses. So getting exposure to a bigger classroom environment might be helpful…even though they will be children.</p>

8

<p>Well keep in mind nebel that if you want a mature environment you can always choose a high school to do your student teaching at. Not sure about other high schools, but my high school regularly has had an average of 2 student teachers each year.</p>

<p>If you’re worried about keeping things under control (like getting them to stop talking) whether it be high or elementary schoolers, I think if you pick carefully enough which school you teach at, you will be fine. I feel my band teacher is virtually perfect for a human; talking problems are almost nonexistent. He does a great job (from what I see) guiding student teachers and helping them maintain order in the classroom.</p>

<p>Though, I don’t think student teaching is limited to any specific kind of class, so maybe you could teach a music theory or music history/appreciation class (where talking problems should be much less without instruments around) instead?</p>

<p>( If the concern was more just because of the time it takes having to student teach or something else, then please nevermind this post ^^; )</p>