Summary of MUED

This semester I was thrown into the more philosophical side of music education. I got to experience a variety of guest speakers.  My favorite speaker was Alice Hammel.  We were able to discuss her book about learning disabilities in the classroom.  Some of the concepts included inclusion, isolation, learning environment, music, friend groups, and personality.  These concepts helped form some individualized perceptions on how to form a classroom.  Her views on an individualized classroom are how I believe all teachers should form their classroom.  Each classroom has different types of students.  How are students supposed to succeed if they aren't given individual attention and care?  Alice Hamel talked about recognizing disability and how to go about testing or recommending students for a disabilities test.  Dr. Hammels "Label-Free" approach is what all teacher should strive to achieve.  These procedures of changing methods of learning, and different groups of people are vital to the success of students.  Dr. Ryan Bledsoe taught me how music can be taught in non traditional ways and forms that not every person will communicate or agree with.  In regards to ethics we dove into JMU’s Eight Key Questions: those of fairness, outcomes, responsibilities, character, liberty, empathy, authority, and rights. We applied these questions to situations we will experience as teachers.  have expanded on these concepts after attending the MUED night this week.  This past Wednesday I attended a night of fun displays of research and innovations in music technology.  Some of the most phenomenal displays of research that inspired me included information on dyslexia in music and the differences and difficulties in music in rural areas.  These topics interested me because they are areas that are not explored or talked about enough in our profession.  Some of the interesting ideas that were expressed to help students with dyslexia were changing the color of paper music is printed on, recording yourself, emphasizing listening before playing to help analyze what the music is supposed to sound like.  I personally have used all of the methods to help me memorize and read music better.  On the rural poster some things that were talked about were issues not prevalent in more urban areas.  Some of these topics included a lack of enrollment, lack of funding, and adaptation to isolation (lack of diversity).  In rural areas funding is an extreme issues.  Some people can't afford instruments and the schools systems don't get a lot of funding to buy instruments.   This decreases enrollment and interest in music.  The adaptation to isolation includes including middle school programs in marching bands, joint concerts, and additional community outreach.  I then attended multiple music education technology innovation presentations.  I had a lot of fun playing with the different devices primarily made of makeymakey and other conductive materials such as tinfoil, liquids, and metal objects.    Lastly I attended a music education debate about the inclusion of music education in public school systems.  I was very intrigued by both sides of the debate but ultimately sided with the inclusion of music education as a core subject required every year in pre-k to 12.  The other side (no inclusion of music education in public schools, music education should be a community learning experience) made good strong points in their argument but were ultimately trumped by the other side.  I created a FB poll online to see how many people who participated in music would or wouldn't have participated in music if it weren't in public schools. 
Reference List
Allsup, R. (2016). Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education. 

Eight Key Questions. (n.d.). Retrieved December 06, 2017, from https://www.jmu.edu/mc/8-key-questions.shtml

​Hammel, A., & Hourigan, R. M. (2017). Teaching music to students with special needs: a label-free approach. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.