<p>I have read some threads lately about either getting a BM in performance or a BA in Music and the MAT in Music Ed. My daughter likes the idea, because she really would love to concentrate on performance on her instrument 100% undergrad, and go into Education in grad school.</p>
<p>I have an MAT in Social Studies Education, having majored in history and Political Science undergrad. I like that I did it this way because I feel I had a stronger background in the subject matter I used to teach, and this helped my students. Now I work in Business/Writing but that's another story...</p>
<p>I guess my question is, how do you have time in an Instrumental Music MAT program to take the required Education courses as well as to learn all of the instruments you need to teach instrumental music? I know when I got my MAT, I only had to take two history courses, the rest was all Education classes. Is it assumed that if you have a performance degree undergrad you will be able to pick up a competency on other instruments in a few classes? Or is the program longer then your Social Studies or other subject area MAT? Also, is it really possible to go BA in Music to MAT in Music Ed?</p>
<p>Thanks, SpiritManager. That looks like a really interesting program! She thinks she’d want to teach in NY so we’d have to make sure we’d meet NY certification requirements, which I would think it would.</p>
<p>The only caveat I would add is that the music admins who review the resumes know the “good” music ed schools in their area. Son just went to a clinic offered by a local school district which focused on the hiring and audition process to obtain a music ed job. The music admin said that for every opening he receives 80 resumes in his district. The process starts by reviewing the resumes. They will discard resumes from any school they are not familiar with and generally only keep the resumes from 4 schools in the NY area: Crane, Fredonia, Hartt and Ithaca. Next they look at GPA, 3.0 is the minimum and recommendations. They only offer an interview to 6 of the applicants. They will audition on their primary instrument, the major secondaries (for strings: cello and violin), piano and conducting.
So if you are waiting to add music ed at the grad level your child will need to be certain that she is competitive not only on her primary instrument but the secondaries as well. She might want to consider performance and music ed as her majors so that she can be the best on her primary but very strong on the secondaries as well. Unfortunately, music ed jobs are very competitive in this market.</p>
<p>I think that everyone is missing the major portion of the OP. The OP is wondering how in just a year and a half masters program that is packed full of teaching classes, how is a student supposed to gain proficiency on multiple instruments. And that’s a darned good and very important question.</p>
<p>redeye41, you might want to look up some MAT-music programs, and compare the instrument classes to that of a BM in education. </p>
<p>In my son’s BM ed program (wind instrument emphasis), he is required to take:</p>
<p>(1) one credit hour class in the brass instrument of his choice
(1) one credit hour class in the woodwind instrument of his choice
(1) two credit hour class in percussion
(1) two credit hour class in voice
(1) two credit hour class in woodwinds
(1) two credit hour class in brass instruments
(1) two credit hour class in strings
(2) two credit hour classes in piano</p>
<p>Plus of course lots of classes in his primary instrument. Personally, don’t really think that’s enough, it’s only a total of 14 required credit hour to learn dozens of instruments. He may be taking several extra classes (above and beyond the degree requirements) in those little one semester hour individual instrument courses just so that he has at least a semesters of hands on training on as many instruments as possible.</p>
<p>BA students generally have lot’s of electives, it’s very possible that they could use these electives to gain experience on as many different instruments as possible. The college that my son goes to has a non-audition wind ensemble that they encourage music students to play secondary instruments in.</p>
<p>I’m also assuming that many music ed students may have some experience with more than one instrument prior to entering into college. My son had a little guitar experience, was a fairly good piano player, and also played violin and trumpet before he entered college.</p>
<p>on the positive side of things, for a solid musician to learn additional instruments is fairly easy. My son took clarinet last semester, admittedly never practiced outside of class (he learned all the finger positions in about two hours the day before his first class), and he now plays clarinet probably as good as the average high school band senior. Once you learn to read music and understand music and develop some aural skills, new instruments almost come naturally (piano probably being the hardest to become proficient at).</p>
<p>Momofbassist, I understand that you are mostly talking about string teacher positions. But in my part of the woods, and in the field that my son is studying (wind instruments), it’s a different world.</p>
<p>I am assuming that most of the time it is going to be a principle doing the interviewing and probably making recommendations to the superintendent or a personnel manager at the district level. I am wondering just how much knowlege of music schools that those people really have. The average joe on the street doesn’t know anything about music schools. </p>
<p>if you mentioned those schools to to most non-musicians, probably none of those names would be recognizable. most people don’t know any music school other than Juliard (and many people probably don’t even know of that one).</p>
<p>I’m suspecting that for a public school teacher, just attending any school that has a lot of local name recognition has just as much value as attending a famous music school that isn’t going to be well known to the hiring decision makers. I’m not saying that you are wrong about those 4 famous music schools that are in your part of the country, but around my parts, we don’t have any famous music schools, and while those schools are only famous among the music community. </p>
<p>Also, for band teachers, going to a college that has marching band, since thats part of the job of band teachers, may actually have more value than a famous music school or conservatory that doesn’t have marching band. At many high schools marching band is very competitive and can be a big deal. Marching band at my son’s school was pretty much a competitive sport and they usually travel over thousands of miles each year competing. Principles want to have winning extracurriculars, and the last person that they want to hire is someone that they perceive to be a stuffy bow tie wearing concert band person.</p>
<p>A while back I got an email from a band parent in a neighboring county who was upset that their district hired a band director fresh out of college, who went to a college that didn’t even have marching band. he felt like it was a huge mistake on the part of the school district.</p>
<p>I’m mostly talking about wind instrument teachers, for voice or strings it might be a totally different situation.</p>
<p>I agree with everything imagep is saying. I too wondered how you could fit in all of the music ed classes in such a short time. I took so many credit hours that were specifically music ed (not including the regular ed classes/psychology classes we had to take), and they definitely were way more than a year’s worth of classes…and I can’t really think of any that weren’t necessary. What specifically would your D want to teach? What is her instrument (or voice)? I would check very carefully to see what classes one must take for a MAT to see if it covers enough music to make one proficient as a music teacher. </p>
<p>And there is so much more involved than just learning the instruments, such as conducting, band/orch/choral literature, misc. classes such as jazz techniques and marching band techniques, etc. And I also had to take a separate guitar methods class too (which isn’t mentioned in imagep’s post), along with all the other instruments.</p>
<p>Actually, the clinic was for all instrumentalists, band and strings. I just mentioned the string audition criteria as an example since son was most familiar with it. Yes, marching band is a big factor outside the Northeast and son’s school does offer it. As imagep and saxlady pointed out, it is very difficult to take all the tech classes necessary to be proficient. Son also is taking voice, woodwinds, brass and percussion tech classes as well as 4 semesters of piano and 2 semesters of conducting along with the required education classes. One can get a master’s in music ed but might not be as well prepared as the students who worked for 4 years on the requirements during their undergrad years.</p>
<p>Yes, imagep, that’s what I was thinking-- how do you become proficient in all of the wind instruments (in my daughter’s case) while taking education courses, psychology, etc?</p>
<p>We live in the NE where Marching Band is very popular. I know a woman that got her teaching job because when she interviewed (she was a flute player) they ended the interview by handing her a trombone and having her sight read their marching music! The district told her even with all of the resumes they received and interviews they had, they had a hard time finding those that could play all the instruments they needed taught at least at a NYS level 3.</p>
<p>redeye41, that would be a great question for someone who is already a band director. Although my kid is no longer in high school, I still stay in contact with several local high school band directors, I’ll ask one the next time I see one.</p>
<p>Personally, I think it would be exceptionally difficult, but a student interested in the BA+MAT route could possibly take some of those secondary instrument classes as electives for the BA, plus then take a few more during that MAT program. They still might need to spend summers privately studying secondary instruments with a local teacher though.</p>
<p>I just looked up the MAT/music program at my son’s school, it looks to me that they expect MAT students to already have skills in multiple secondary instruments before enrolling in the program, or possibly alternatively to gain those skills on their own during the program:</p>
<p>“Students must satisfy prerequisite skills in wind and percussion pedagogy, secondary instruments, conducting, and piano.”</p>