Dr. David E. Knauss
Learning to teach effectively, called the Art of Teaching, requires that teachers progress through three phases of development. Phase 1: “Will I make it through this class?” Phase 2: “Did I cover all the lesson correctly?” Phase 3: “Have the students learned the skills? To what level of competence?” Have you asked yourself these questions? At which one are you teaching?
These Three Phases Comprise a General Timeline of About 10 Years. The first phase is commonly experienced during undergraduate, pre-service teaching, and into the first few years of professional employment. The second phase may happen around the five-year point, and the third phase should be continuous thereafter throughout one’s entire career. The art and act of teaching is not optimally successful unless the third phase is reached and maintained through continuous expanding of one’s knowledge and teaching skills through purposeful, professional development. If you currently teach, what plans have you made for your professional development? Effective teaching is life-long learning!
Phase 1: Focus on Self. “Will I Make It Through This Class?” A beginning teacher first focuses totally on his or her self, “Will I get through this class without my knees knocking each other and causing bodily damage?” They are usually “shaking in their boots” as they subconsciously or consciously ponder these questions. “Will I make it alive through this?” “I know I'm just going die of fright!” “What if my mind goes totally blank?” “What if the students riot?” “I have to enthusiastically cover over the fear so the students can’t tell!”
Phase 2: Focus on Lesson Content. “Did I Teach All the Lesson Correctly?” A developing teacher focuses on the material and content, “Did I cover all the lesson?” “Oh no, I forgot to say… I forgot to explain… I lost their attention when…” At the close of a lesson, (s)he tends to experience regrets for having missed a part or for having realized (s)he could have said something better. A phase 2 teacher focuses on what is being taught (the subject content).
Phase 3: Focus on Students’ Learning. “Have the Students Learned the Skills? To What Level of Competence?” An expert teacher, having mastered self and the content, focuses instead on his/her students’ quality of learning. (S)he immediately knows how to remediate weaknesses or inaccuracies as needed, as well as how to extend excellences that occur. An expert teacher continuously thinks forwards and backwards during the act of teaching. “Have my students shown me they learned the skill(s) and at what level of competence?” “Is this an acceptable demonstration of excellence?” “How will I immediately remediate whatever is not?” “What skill correctives have I planned?” “If the students are spectacular, how will I creatively extend what they did to a higher skill competency?”
Self-Reflection and Self-Assessment: Continuously Evaluate. Anyone who is a teacher, involved in any kind of teaching situation, must continuously ask him/herself several evaluative questions, “At which phase do I presently teach?” “What are my plans for progressing to the next phase?” “How do I determine, and am I determining, if my students are learning skills successfully?” “At what competence level are they performing the music skills?” Many teachers progress successfully to phase 2, but seem to stay there, never entering phase 3. Not only should a teacher enter phase 3, focusing on the students’ skill-competence levels, but should also guide the students from basic discrimination learning into the highest artistic inferential learning levels of playing, performing, creating, arranging, improvising, composing, notating, and beyond that, the Aesthetic Experience.
Do you, as a teacher, know what discrimination levels of teaching and learning are? Inference levels of teaching and learning? How to define a music aesthetic experience? How to teach for an aesthetic experience? These answers and more will follow in future articles.
Please feel free to contact me at any time, as often as you please, with any mentoring, music teaching, music curriculum, or classroom management questions.
Dr. Knauss mentors student teachers and regular teachers into teaching excellence. He taught for 3 decades in inner-city public schools, winning over street kids into being like family, became one of the principle curriculum writers for an award-winning, internationally-recognized music department. He retired from public schools, completed a Ph.D. in Music Education, and presently is an adjunct music education professor at Baptist Bible College.
David E. Knauss
Ph.D. in Music Education.
Contact me through my website at:
www.classroom-music.info
Learning to teach effectively, called the Art of Teaching, requires that teachers progress through three phases of development. Phase 1: “Will I make it through this class?” Phase 2: “Did I cover all the lesson correctly?” Phase 3: “Have the students learned the skills? To what level of competence?” Have you asked yourself these questions? At which one are you teaching?
These Three Phases Comprise a General Timeline of About 10 Years. The first phase is commonly experienced during undergraduate, pre-service teaching, and into the first few years of professional employment. The second phase may happen around the five-year point, and the third phase should be continuous thereafter throughout one’s entire career. The art and act of teaching is not optimally successful unless the third phase is reached and maintained through continuous expanding of one’s knowledge and teaching skills through purposeful, professional development. If you currently teach, what plans have you made for your professional development? Effective teaching is life-long learning!
Phase 1: Focus on Self. “Will I Make It Through This Class?” A beginning teacher first focuses totally on his or her self, “Will I get through this class without my knees knocking each other and causing bodily damage?” They are usually “shaking in their boots” as they subconsciously or consciously ponder these questions. “Will I make it alive through this?” “I know I'm just going die of fright!” “What if my mind goes totally blank?” “What if the students riot?” “I have to enthusiastically cover over the fear so the students can’t tell!”
Phase 2: Focus on Lesson Content. “Did I Teach All the Lesson Correctly?” A developing teacher focuses on the material and content, “Did I cover all the lesson?” “Oh no, I forgot to say… I forgot to explain… I lost their attention when…” At the close of a lesson, (s)he tends to experience regrets for having missed a part or for having realized (s)he could have said something better. A phase 2 teacher focuses on what is being taught (the subject content).
Phase 3: Focus on Students’ Learning. “Have the Students Learned the Skills? To What Level of Competence?” An expert teacher, having mastered self and the content, focuses instead on his/her students’ quality of learning. (S)he immediately knows how to remediate weaknesses or inaccuracies as needed, as well as how to extend excellences that occur. An expert teacher continuously thinks forwards and backwards during the act of teaching. “Have my students shown me they learned the skill(s) and at what level of competence?” “Is this an acceptable demonstration of excellence?” “How will I immediately remediate whatever is not?” “What skill correctives have I planned?” “If the students are spectacular, how will I creatively extend what they did to a higher skill competency?”
Self-Reflection and Self-Assessment: Continuously Evaluate. Anyone who is a teacher, involved in any kind of teaching situation, must continuously ask him/herself several evaluative questions, “At which phase do I presently teach?” “What are my plans for progressing to the next phase?” “How do I determine, and am I determining, if my students are learning skills successfully?” “At what competence level are they performing the music skills?” Many teachers progress successfully to phase 2, but seem to stay there, never entering phase 3. Not only should a teacher enter phase 3, focusing on the students’ skill-competence levels, but should also guide the students from basic discrimination learning into the highest artistic inferential learning levels of playing, performing, creating, arranging, improvising, composing, notating, and beyond that, the Aesthetic Experience.
Do you, as a teacher, know what discrimination levels of teaching and learning are? Inference levels of teaching and learning? How to define a music aesthetic experience? How to teach for an aesthetic experience? These answers and more will follow in future articles.
Please feel free to contact me at any time, as often as you please, with any mentoring, music teaching, music curriculum, or classroom management questions.
Dr. Knauss mentors student teachers and regular teachers into teaching excellence. He taught for 3 decades in inner-city public schools, winning over street kids into being like family, became one of the principle curriculum writers for an award-winning, internationally-recognized music department. He retired from public schools, completed a Ph.D. in Music Education, and presently is an adjunct music education professor at Baptist Bible College.
David E. Knauss
Ph.D. in Music Education.
Contact me through my website at:
www.classroom-music.info
