1. "A music curriculum may be established for teachers by a state or a local school district" (pg. 303). It frustrates me that certain school districts mandate such strict expectations for their teachers. Are teachers meant to be a machine at the end of an assembly line? Are they meant to be the means whereby politicians and other officials carry out their agendas? My father has been in business his entire life, and he has taught me some good principles - the principles of delegation and trust. Of course the opposite of this would be the scary world of micromanagement. I believe that if you higher a professional to do a job, like a teacher, you should let them do what they're trained to do. You place trust in the teacher by hiring and paying them. You don't need to micromanage everything that teachers do. Not only is this aggravating, infuriating, and frustrating, it doesn't show trust or proper management skill. I agree with a system of checks and balances to make sure that the teacher you hired for general music isn't teaching the children how to smoke marijuana, but administrators should let their teachers design their own curriculum. I say, let the teachers earn the money that they don't make.
2. "When planning a curriculum, teachers need to have a big picture and a specific picture in mind" (pg. 306). I like how this sentence is worded. I think it's another way of saying, "Reach for the stars, but keep your feet on the ground." Although I don't agree with this quote in every instance, I think it applies well here. As teachers, we all have grandiose visions of what we want to accomplish. We want to teach 100% of the students 100% of the time. But in real life we know that this never really works. There needs to be some sort of compromise. So we need to think big, but we also need to think realistically. Another thing I think the author is trying to say is that educators need to plan practically for how they are going to teach their lessons. How do we turn a proactive scholar into a practitioner? I think that this is the most important thing that I'm going to have to learn in order to be a successful teacher. Although going to college is one way of learning this craft, I think nothing can substitute for the experience of teaching in the schools. So, in other words, this will come as I mature and learn by experience.
3. "The result of trying to do a little bit of everything can be that children receive a superficial experience, rather than an in-depth experience, leaving them mentally impoverished" (pg. 321). As I look back on my experiences in middle school and high school, it doesn't take me long to remember experiences I had when teachers would try to cram down every last lesson in the text book into our heads. The result was just as the quote said: I felt "mentally impoverished." This always seemed to happen in math class too. I think there was a lot of pressure for the teachers to get through every math lesson in the book, which is hard because math is full of complicated concepts and procedures that take awhile for some students to grasp (like me). I don't think we have nearly the same problem in the world of music education. However, we too need to be careful of balance and flow. For example, I thought it was a good thing in world music how we only had a couple of specific units. How can you possibly cover the entire world in a semester? Obviously you cannot. But I strongly believe that presenting a large unit on one area makes a lot more sense than trying to teach a little bit of everything.
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