Statement of Faith-Based Teaching and Learning

I am a Christian student intern with a placement in a public high school. I havent found

myself having an issue with this. I havent felt my faith being tested or anything like that as a

result, and have actually found that one of my mentor teachers is Lutheran, like me. I have found

that my faith has influenced some of the choices I have made in what I teach in these five

lessons.

For my unit plan, I am doing a unit simply on preparation for the orchestras concert in

May. I am preparing five lessons. Three of the lessons are rehearsals, one of the lessons is an

interactive presentation on musician health, and the other lesson is research, performance, and

peer-teaching of a Baroque-style country dance.

The lesson that I think was most influenced by my faith worldview was the lesson on

musician health. In this lesson, I gave a presentation on how to prevent musician injury, and then

I taught students different exercises they could do to help release tension in their bodies. God

created our bodies in His image. Therefore, we should make efforts to take care of our bodies in

every way that we possibly can. One way for musicians to do this is to always practice

neuromuscular-skeletal or vocal health. By keeping our bodies healthy, not over-straining our

bodies or our voices while producing music, we honor God and His creation by taking care of

ourselves. Since I am placed at a public high school, this was not a part of my presentation to the

class. However, if I had been placed at a private school, this would have been a part of the

presentation.

Music in general is also an act of honoring God through what we do. The three lessons

that are rehearsals are meant to improve the sound of the orchestra to make them more unified

and reflect the notated sheet music. By perfecting the sound, we are using the musical gifts that
God has given each of us. Historically, music has been used for many different purposes. Some

of the main purposes of music have been for worship and as a means for human expression. I

believe that music is to be shared amongst humans (like playing a concert for an audience) and

shared with God to bring glory to Him and to worship Him. I believe that these can be

accomplished at the same time. We dont have to worship God just by singing in church. We can

worship by playing Beethovens Fifth really well, practicing our scales to develop our musical

skills, or singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Handels Messiah. We rehearse music because we

want it to sound pleasing to both of our audiences the actual audience and God. When we use

our musical gifts and talents well, we bring glory to the One who gave those gifts and talents to

us. My students may be motivated to use music as a means to glorify God, though my thought is

that a majority of their worldviews is much different than mine on why they play music. They

may perform and rehearse because they just think theyre good at it. They be motivated to

perform and rehearse because its fun, or it gives them a chance to express themselves in a

manner that is deeper than words can express. They may do it because their parents made them

be in orchestra. Whether their worldview aligns with mine or not, its apparent to me that

rehearsal is important to most of them.

The last section of my unit plan is talking about, researching, performing, and then

teaching different Baroque-style country dances since they will be playing a Baroque-style

country dance at their concert. I truly think one of the best ways to learn something is to learn

how to teach it. Students will have a majority of different country-style dances to choose from.

Students would then research the dance, and find out some information to provide some

historical context (which country its from, around what time was it popular, was it a peasant
dance or more popular among the aristocracy, etc). Students would perform the dance, and then

teach the dance to the rest of the class.