Journee Smith December, 2018

A Personal Philosophy of Music Education

Our tiny feet dangle off of the edge of the cold bus seats as we embark on our
first field trip in elementary school. Energy and excitement fill the hearts of the
kindergarten class as each student talks about what they are going to do at the pumpkin
patch. To distract us from the long bus ride, I turn to my new friend and ask her if she
would like to sing a song. We sing all the way to the pumpkin patch. To this day, I have
no recollection of the pumpkin patch experience, but I still remember the song and
made a lifelong friendship in the process. Music creates precious moments that awaken
the heart to empathy and bonding.
Music connects people to one another because it is a universal language that
everyone has the potential to understand. The teacher’s mission is to ensure the
music’s diversity is received by students of all cultures. The classroom must be a place
of openness when listening to new music. Guided questions positively influence the
receptiveness of students by teaching them how to react to music to music that is
unfamiliar to their ears.
This unfamiliarity is due to the unique perspective that every artist has with their
own life. Music education provides a chance for human expression and empowerment.
Music channels this perspective, providing students with bountiful amounts of creativity
that are beautifully unique to them. As a music educator, it’s important to respect and
value students’ varying points of view. In order to do this, the teacher must be a radical
listener and hike the horizontal; instead of viewing the classroom as a hierarchy where
the students are below the teacher, the teacher works with the students to help them
access all corners of their creativity and musicianship, always putting the students first.
Music education helps to provide the technique for students to enhance their own self
expression and provide their voice with clarity to the world around them.
Not only has music provided a connection to people in the present, but it has also
connected people in the present to the perspectives of those from the past. African
American spirituals have given the perspective of a people who were once enslaved.
They have provided those in the present with a developed understanding of the
emotional pain, strength and wit through music. Traditional western music has strongly
influenced music that exists today. It is essential that the music classroom
acknowledges the history of music while simultaneously ensuring that the music learned
doesn’t solely come from the past. As educators, it’s important to live presently with
students and their interests and needs. They must know how to take the roots of music
and shape it into their own perspective of what music is to them in the present. Instead
of molding the students around the teachers, we mold the teachers around the students.
By celebrating independent thinkers we learn from the past and live in the present to
create a more powerful and thought-provoking future.
Journee Smith December, 2018

All of this is possible by providing a positive learning environment for students to

work comfortably without judgement of others. It’s essential that within the music
classroom, competition is limited because it has the potential to inhibit students from
music by creating an environment polluted with judgement and scrutiny based off of
extrinsic motivation. Positive learning environments exonerate intrinsic motivation that
allows students to feel comfortable to grow, collaborate and work together. Music
education is about discovering one’s own intrinsic motivation for creativity, self-
expression and independent thinking to create long-lasting relationships and bonds with
the community around us.

Hammel, A. M., & Hourigan, R. M. (2011). Teaching music to students with special
needs: A label-free approach. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hammel, A. M., Hickox, R. Y., & Hourigan, R. M. (Eds.). (2016). Winding it Back:
Teaching to Individual Differences in Music Classroom and Ensemble Settings.
Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, M., Clinton, K., & Robison, A. J.
(2009).Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for
the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Stauffer, S. L. (2017, September 26). Whose Imaginings? Whose Future? Speech

presented at Society for Music Teacher Education 2017 Conference Imagining
Possible Futures in Arizona State University, Minneapolis.

Tobias, E. S. (2013). Toward Convergence: Adapting Music Education to Contemporary

Society and Participatory Culture. Music Educators Journal,99(4), 29-36.