<p>Hello everyone. =) I'm a high school senior percussionist and drummer that is interested in going into Music Education. I have been actively involved in almost all of my school's band programs for all my years of high school, and I'm entering my second year of piano. =) I've had experience being able to teach/instruct during my school's summer music camp, and I've been able to teach/lead rehearsals during the marching band season with the battery section and the front ensemble section; so I know Music Ed is something I'm truly passionate about and interested in! =) I'm an honor student with ~3.8 unweighted GPA, and an SAT score of 1280, and I'm not sure exactly where I am, but I know I at least in the Top 10% of my class.</p>
<p>Next year I'm going to be taking marching band, concert band, government/econ, Spanish 4 (means fourth year), English 4 Honors, Trig/Pre-Calc Honors, and Class Piano. So that means 3 music classes, which I am excited to be taking all three again. =)</p>
<p>Okay, so I'm very good at Spanish. My teacher last year consistently complimented me, asking after the first few weeks if I "spoke Spanish at home." I just absorb things really fast with the language, and can pronounce words with a convincing accent. Now, since I live in a border state (and am planning on attending an in-state university), my Spanish really comes in handy! =) I believe being almost bilingual is a great thing to put down on a college or job application.</p>
<p>Now what I need help with: Should I drop my fourth year of Spanish for another music class? I feel like being close to being bilingual would be a great thing to put down when applying as any kind of Education major, including Music. =) Mostly just because the high number of Spanish-speaking students in my state. But I also feel like having another music class during the day where I would get an hour of practice per day on any equipment would benefit me and my audition pieces. I could always just ask my band director to stay after school to practice anything, and can also have a bit of time during lunch everyday. </p>
<p>But I don't know what I should do. =) I kind of want to just hear everyone's own opinion. Maybe someone will make a great point that I wouldn't have thought of. =) Just know that my HS counselor encourages the 4th year of Spanish, but the counselors are not always right haha. So I appreciate any opinions that are shared!</p>
<p>Depending on the schools that you want to apply, having a 4th year of language will help your general college application be stronger. If you are only planning on applying to music conservatories, then not so much unless you are majoring in opera, and even then German or Italian would probably have been better languages anyway. As a percussionist, the language in a conservatory environment is less important. Since your interest is music education and not music performance, I would suggest taking the 4th year of the same language. Who knows … maybe your future bi-lingual-ness will also open up doors for teaching Spanish? My data point is our local state flagship university … to apply for the college of arts and sciences they recommend 4 years of language. If you were applying for engineering or agricultural, then the recommendation is only 3 years. I’m guessing music education is closer to the 4 year requirement, but it would depend on the school list you have and their requirements. And looking at your list of music classes, you have plenty of music for your senior year.</p>
<p>RandomAc, it’s hard to look into a crystal ball and know which is going to turn out to be more useful for you in the long run. Could you try out the Spanish class for the first week, and then decide?</p>
<p>You didn’t mention a particular interest in Latin music. But if that is a musical genre you’re interested in, and if the Spanish 4 teacher is particularly good, then Spanish 4 might help you further develop your intuitive feel for Latin music.</p>
<p>Looking at your conundrum from another point of view: on the one hand, one learns the most from classes that one enjoys the most; on the other hand, I’ve heard it said that you get smarter at using one side of your brain if you also develop the other side.</p>
<p>Finally, a practical comment. Everybody needs a back-up plan. I’ve learned that the hard way! In your case – suppose you graduate five years from now with a very nice music ed degree, but you don’t find a job right away. Can you see yourself teaching Spanish while the right opening appears?</p>
<p>Random,
Definitely look through the requirements for graduation at the colleges you are targeting. With 4 years of high school language at SUNY schools, you have fulfilled your language requirement for your bachelors (except for vocal majors). Then you can decide if you wish to continue language in college. So, 3 years might be enough for admission to college but you might have to take more at the college level which as a music ed major will mean you can do fewer music classes at college. Plus, if you are planning on being a teacher being able to speak more than one language is always a plus!</p>
<p>At my son’s college they had to take a language placement test, regardless of how long they took language in high school, and they were placed into classes or exempted based up on that score.</p>
<p>You may want to take that fourth year since you feel that you have some talent for foreign languages just to perfect that skill. If you did, you might be able to exempt out of foreign language all-together in college, while it is unlikely that another high school music class would exempt you from anything. </p>
<p>Just something to keep in mind for years down the road, but some music grad programs (particularly for Ph.D. programs) require either German or Italian proficiency (before completion of the grad program). If you could exempt out of Spanish, you could use those credit hours (they usually have to be filled with something even if you exempt out of courses) to take another foreign language. Italian is very similar to Spanish, mostly the same grammer and a lot of similarity in the vocabulary. If you became bilingual easily, it seems like you might could become trilingual easily, and if you were an expert in Spanish, then learning Italian might be a breeze (easy A). Accomplishing that could be a huge advantage in grad school.</p>
<p>Of course you may already be good enough in Spanish to exempt out of college. It comes down to the risk/reward ratio.</p>
<p>A similar question along these lines… My son is entering his Senior year in high-school and is currently looking at music schools for vocal performance. When signing up for classes, he had intended to opt out of AP Spanish (has Spanish 1-4 under his belt already) but was considering taking Italian 1. He needed to fill up credits anyway and figured it would give him a leg up knowing he would have to take French, Italian and German diction in college for a vocal performance degree anyway. </p>
<p>It sounded like decent logic to me, but his Guidance Counselor rather pressured him to stick with the AP Spanish saying it would look better on his transcripts. With other degrees, I would be able to see this logic, but when looking into vocal performance? </p>
<p>Hindsight being 20/20, he should have likely taken Italian to start with but he figured a working knowledge of Spanish would be great to have.</p>
<p>All his other courses are pretty challenging, all honors and AP courses. 4.1 weighted GPA. Just wondering what others thought?</p>
<p>Thats the really unfortunate thing. We don’t realize stuff like that until it is to late.</p>
<p>The thing that you may need to remember about high school guidance counselors is that they are not experts in every field and may very well not realize all the peculiarities of specific careers and/or majors.</p>
<p>Now I’m just wondering, but could he take both? Especially since the Italian may be of value to him in his major, it may be worthwhile to drop a class that doesn’t have a lot of college/career value. At the same time, it takes a long time and a heck of a lot of repetition to learn a foreign lanquage and I woud be worried that skipping Spanish would be a lost opportunity for him to firm up (as in to perminately etch Spanish into his brain) his Spanish skills.</p>
<p>imagep (how <em>do</em> you pronounced that?) is right. Guidance counselors will try to be helpful, but they really don’t understand conservatory admissions. I realize that vocalists spend fewer hours practicing than instrumentalists; even so, if he is applying to conservatory, he is probably already well ahead of the curve in terms of his academic transcript. Italian is obviously more useful for a vocalist, and would be a good use of his credit. Unless he adores Spanish and really wants the AP course, it seems that taking Italian would be a better use of his time, not to mention somewhat easier on him during what is to be a grueling year.</p>
<p>As a mom of a VP major who excels in languages I am going to weigh in very differently on the the AP Spanish vs. Italian 1 matter- the guidance counselor was completely correct. It looks a lot better to have completed a language track and that kind of fluency in the language opens up a whole other area of art song (and there is a lot of Spanish music out there!). It also provided a great foundation for grammar in French and Italian that needed to be taken in college. A one year Italian course would have counted for one semester of Italian in college (for VP majors) so, the entire class would have had to be taken over again. Certainly, if a student takes through AP level in French, Italian or German in high school, they may be able to test out of (or have their AP test grade count for) said language in conservatory, but do not for a moment underestimate the importance of Spanish in the world of song- even Placido Domingo’s famous “Operalia” competition has a Zarzuela(for lack of a better term, it’s considered Spanish operetta) element and most competitors do enter both sections.</p>
<p>Ah, glassharmonica, you flatter me! Your advice makes great sense if it wasn’t the senior year and if the student could have taken at least two years of Italian and continued the Spanish. For VP majors, a school likes to see a mastery of a language if at all possible and although Spanish isn’t a part of the VP curriculum and diction classes, the grammar is so similar to Italian that it can be a huge help.
Zarzuela has come more to the forefront thanks to Elina Garanca, who loves to sing it and has included pieces on her latest CDs. See what happens when you sing “Carmen”?!!
Oh, and AVA now requires Spanish and Russian!</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your two cents! I really appreciate having others’ viewpoints. The more I think about it, the more I realize that Spanish 4 will be more beneficial. I’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice in the band room on all of the equipment! Spanish is truly an important part of communicating with students in my area these days, so I guess being almost bilingual will really help. =) I also think it would be fun to speak about music to students in Spanish.</p>
<p>Teaching, instructing, running rehearsals, and sharing the joy of music are things that I am very passionate about, and having another language to do that in I think will be a great asset. So thank you everyone for helping me make my decision! =)</p>
<p>Ditto to Mezzomama’s comments about Spanish and Italian having similar grammar. Another romance language that Spanish will help with is French. Recently, we took OS and his girlfriend to Montreal. Son’s girlfriend was so excited that she could understand the written form of French with her 4 years of high school spanish.</p>
<p>Wow… Thanks all… an incredible amount of good information going on there. Not to mention good arguments for and against!</p>
<p>To a degree, the other reason I was considering allowing him to change AP Spanish is the volume of work. He’s currently in AP Lit, AP Psych, AP Spanish, AP Env Sci, AP Music Theory and a number of other courses. The amount of homework this kid typically gets is impressive to say the least (4hrs minimum). Add to that putting together audition repertoire and taking off time from school to do auditions etc. this spring? I also don’t want his grades to suffer.</p>
<p>Can you take the Spanish at school and do more music outside of school, to replace the music class you would be dropping? In junior and senior year, my daughter faced this type of conflict and ended up doing most of her music outside of school (conservatory prep program in nearby city, but also local entrepreneurial efforts that she got involved in, such as informal ensembles).</p>
<p>He was part of the chamber choir at school the past three years. Made all state all three years and was hoping to qualify for the MENC National Choir this year. He dropped the course because it’s the only block that also offered AP Lit which he really wanted. To ask him to drop AP Music Theory also probably wouldn’t work. He considered “them man” vocally at school and as it is he won’t get to sing at his own HS Graduation since he’s dropped the chamber choir.</p>
<p>He’s taken private vocal lessons since he was 8 and is always involved in some community theater project, so he gets plenty of music outside school. But performing music and learning the theory behind it are two different things. I wouldn’t know how to get him the music theory outside school.</p>
<p>RandomAc, I think you should definitely take the Spanish. Your senior year classes and grades will be looked at closely by universities, and I think having only 3 “academic” subjects is too light. Certainly you don’t want to overdo it to prepare for auditions, but it sounds like Spanish is not too much of a struggle for you. If you have specific universities in mind you could call them and double check this also. I know here in California the decision may not matter as much for some of the state universities as long as you meet the requirements, but for some of the more competitive university programs I think it will make a difference.</p>
<p>MrFritz99: Wow your son definitely seems to be an over achiever! I agree he should stay in AP Music theory because it will give him a solid foundation for his college theory courses. (Convential wisdom and most music schools will recommend that he start in theory 1 in college anyway.) I second your concern that he has an extremely full academic schedule for his senior year especially once audition season starts. My son did end up dropping an AP math course once he started getting ready for auditions since he didn’t have lunch and wanted to spend 2 hours practising instead of doing 2 hours of homework for that class alone. Since admissions to conservatories and most music schools hinges on the audition, he wants to have time to concentrate on the auditions. Maybe your son could look at dropping the science course if he isn’t thinking of double majoring. Once the school year starts, it will become apparent if he can handle it all and you can see what course needs to go.</p>
<p>MrFritz99, that heavy an AP load during audition season will be a challenge. BTW for voice, the stress and travel can take a toll on voice. DD dropped all activities in senior year that stressed out or overexposed her. She missed out on some things, but the goal she had in mind stayed front and foremost and she was successful. </p>
<p>He needs to have a discussion with his AP teachers in the beginning of the school year and get them on board with a plan to manage the work and missing classes. At least with voice there are not as many hours in practice, but the prep time is important, too. Does he have his audition rep settled with his voice teacher and is he getting ready for his pre-screening DVD? That is the first challenge and he cannot skimp on prep for that. With a heavy AP load, his first months of classes will be demanding, too and he needs to have a stellar DVD. What kind of schools is he interested in? </p>
<p>I hope your school is better than ours was. We were an IB school and the IB teachers were not very forgiving for missing anything. DD dropped almost all of those courses senior year. Her future was a good audition. She went to Rice, so not having a heavy IB class load senior year did not hurt her. She did not take the second IB music class either. She changed languages, too, in her senior year HS to get an intro to French (we did not have Italian).</p>
<p>Truth be told I was rather surprised when he came home with that AP Env. Science as he only needs three years of a science and he has them. But he also didn’t want to get caught having universities see him as having too few academic courses and too light a senior schedule. Who knows… maybe he was feeling a little too “oatsy” the day he met with his counselor.</p>
<p>I don’t want to step on any toes here… but this is also the reason I’m rather hesitant in him seeking a performance degree. If I look at the course outlines for many performance programs, it’s “all” music. My son is a pretty talented performer and music is definitely his thing, but I also want him to have a well rounded education academically. It’s also the reason I’m encouraging him much more towards Universities than towards Conservatories for his undergrad.</p>
<p>So I want him to challenge himself academically but I’m looking for him to drop high school courses so he can prepare for an audition… lol… Sounds rather silly when I put it that way!</p>