Blog #8 – Reflections

This class has definitely been a learning experience for me on several levels. We learned about various sources that exist in the world, read quite a few articles on a number of scholarly/research topics, delved deep into APA citations styles, and had the opportunity to to research sources on a topic of our choosing.

While going through all the sources that exist in an abstract setting doesn’t seem to be the most practical in terms of what I’m going to do in the classroom when I go back to Fargo, I’m still glad to have learned those things. I think that as a professional music educator I should know where to find specific information that I don’t know, besides just googling it. That said it’s really nice that we’ll have access to Grove for the next few years. I think that will be my go-to source for all my music-related questions. If I can’t find it there then I will have to go deeper. The corollary to that is Naxos, which will be great for showing my students examples of particular instruments. It was also good to find out that you can register for Naxos by signing up for the paid version of IMSLP. I know we learned about a ton of other sources, but those I think will come up primarily for academic research purposes here at IC rather than something that I would want to consult in preparation for a lesson at school.

The readings for the blog posts I enjoyed for the most part. They were interesting and provided good starting points for discussion, or internal dialogue. I wish that we could have had more time for talking about them as a group. The first few sets I think were most relevant to our process in Bib class – thinking about a topic, navigating plagiarism, writing concisely, and looking out for sketchy sources. The readings that followed that went a little deeper into doing research, and what it means to be a musician/researcher in the digital age. I found the ideas about the validity/invalidity of an “Urtext” to be quite fascinating as well as the ephemeral nature of the internet which is something we perceive as eternal.

Doing the annotated bibliography is of course the keystone of this course. Just going through that process I think has made me a better student, a better researcher. I’m able to find things more readily using the tools at my disposal, and I feel more comfortable navigating the world of articles, books, journals, dissertations, in print and online to find what I’m looking for. There’s so much out there and to be forced to sift through it is really useful. For me I feel lucky that I picked a topic that I think will influence my teaching in a meaningful way. I hope to incorporate some of Gordon’s strategies into my classroom this coming year. I especially plan on re-reading a few select articles completely so that I can absorb everything they have to offer, rather than just skimming. The bib project also gave me an appreciation for how one should design a new research project, or a new article proposal. Having done the leg work for a literature review of a topic I can see how creating new work on that topic could be done, and how re-writing a previous work could be avoided. It is at once daunting and reassuring. All of the work out there really was created by other people just like me, and I can do that too. That doesn’t mean I won’t have to work hard, but it does mean that it’s possible. There’s no superhuman element separating me from “authors” and “scholars.” If I put in the work, think about my ideas, and carefully craft something, that can be me too.

Coming into my first term at IC I certainly was nervous that it would be too much for me to handle. I had heard that it was a crazy program and I should be prepared...Now that I have one summer just about finished I feel confident that it will be just fine. Yes it was quite a bit of work, but I feel capable of taking it on. Also, I think it has already had a positive impact on me as a teacher. It’s great to be in an environment where classmates and colleagues are passionate about teaching, passionate about music, and passionate about getting better. I feel like I’m ready to go band and try out new things already after this year. I’m excited to document the things I try and see how it goes. I hope they all will work, but I’m ready to learn from the failures that I do have. And the third-year students this year have made a clear impression on me to document, document, document. Even if it’s just taking out my phone and videoing the class for a minute or two. That can be powerful in a presentation later on down the road. It’s been a good summer and I’m looking forward to a productive year teaching and coming back for round two.