Teaching Philosophy:
I am an educator because I want to make a difference in our society. As an elementary music
teacher, I have the unique opportunity to work with the entire student body for over the course of
six years! Within this time frame I am able to build relationships with my students and their
parents unique to other teachers in my building. I am able to personally watch them grow as I
take part in molding their path along the way. I teach children to discover who they are and
develop them culturally. Through my students I am forming relationships with parents and the
community and helping them see music through the eyes of their children. This impact on a
community is not taken lightly. I not only teach my students the skills necessary to meet and
exceed music standards, I am also teaching them the value of cooperation, teamwork, success,
failure, problem solving, creative thinking, and critical thinking while tying in relevance from
across the curriculum. Music is culture and lends toward developing the whole child in a way
that academics cannot possibly compete. I strive to educate the community to become more
culturally well rounded. I also aspire to continue to bring the global community into my
classroom with music professionals from all around the world while sharing our work with the
world as well.
As a music educator in today’s heavily academic driven world, our time is often spent
demonstrating and advocating for the placement of music in our schools. To our advantage,
research supports that musically trained students show gains in math and spatial reasoning,
reading and verbal skills, as well as social and emotional development. Music truly is the
universal language as well as an outlet for cross curricular learning. Not a moment goes by in
my classroom where we aren’t making some connection to language arts, math, science, or
social studies. These connections are a natural fit and make learning more meaningful to my
students.
What you might not know is music is most commonly displayed through performance elements
and project based learning. What is unique about music class, is the ability to master a
concept. The only way to truly show mastery is to practice, adjust, evaluate, analyze and finally
perform a polished production for an authentic audience. I am proud to say that each child in my
school has this opportunity on a regular basis to perform for an authentic audience.
If you aren’t familiar with music performing arts, you may not realize that in order to successfully
make music, you must first learn to work together. To prepare my students for this collaborative
effort, I start from the kindergarten up with musical performances. Each student has a special
role, costuming, and part assignment from the very beginning. We learn to work together as a
team to present a perfected, well-rehearsed performance for the student body and the parents.
Music defines collaboration. Mutual respect among classmates builds a collaborative team,
allowing students to make connections with one another in a unique way different from their
classroom environment. This common goal creates an inviting, nonthreatening classroom
environment in which students are able to take risks without feeling failure while building
teamwork and developing interpersonal skills. Among the one hundred and twenty fourth and
fifth grade student volunteers in my after school choral group, teamwork is evident as we look
out for each other, we build each other up, and we talk through Edmodo to provide support for
one another much like a family. We are our biggest cheerleaders. You know that students are
part of a true community when they clap for each other during rehearsals to show their support.
I consistently strive to lead my students toward success through creating a personalized
learning environment. This is no simple task. I teach over seven hundred students for forty-five
minutes once a week. Finding unique ways to ensure the appropriate learning style per child is
key. As a Fulton County Vanguard member and elementary lead coach for the NLC, I have the
responsibility of mentoring teachers toward seamlessly incorporating technology in their
classroom, but more importantly fostering a personalized learning environment. Through
research and experimentation on what works in the classroom, I was able to “invent” a new
innovative music classroom. I focus on varied strategies through appropriate tech tools, direct
versus indirect instruction, voice and choice by letting the students choose tools to lead toward
success of mastery, leveled instruction with embedded flexible pacing, and focus on
collaboration and letting the students drive instruction. I live for including professionals in the
field in my classroom through Skype sessions, video messages, and live guest artists. The
music education world is behind on creating and providing music educators with these tools;
therefore, I often create most of my classroom resources from scratch. I am consistently finding
new unique ways to understand each of my students more deeply through assessment pieces
and have found unique ways to combine assessments with student reflection on their learning to
create a true picture of actual student learning. My students are exposed to authentic learning
and the use of professional tools to provide an edge in today’s music production and market.
Musicians often focus on cross curricular tasks; however, I work toward the bigger picture. How
can I lead my students toward future success in middle and high school and their career path
regardless if music is their primary focus? This has proven successful through teaching my
students how to combine music standards to create an authentic student created soundtrack
through Garage band. Students can take their track and use it as a background track for their
projects without taking copyrighted music. I guide them through creating, processing, and
uploading these tracks into various presentation programs. Taking all of this into account has
caused leaders in Fulton County as well as the state of Georgia and the Georgia Music
Association, to request that I host sessions and facilitate professional learning opportunities for
music teachers on incorporating technology, project based learning, and more importantly, how
to innovate the music classroom through personalized learning without sacrificing the sanctity of
music creation and performance. In addition, Kennesaw State University and the University of
Georgia have most recently reached out to see if I would teach a class or session to aid in
successful tech integration for future music educators.
Most of my notable activities can be included from serving as a mentor for teachers in my
building in support of the Fulton County Vanguard mission. Most specifically, my work has
included helping teachers reach out to professionals or notable public figures in the field to bring
the world into our students’ classrooms through Twitter messages and videos. I was able to
directly contact Ken Nesbit, poet, for our first grader’s poetry unit and Vice President Biden for
the kindergarten’s President study. This year, I am working toward reaching an Olympic athlete
for the first grade unit on the Olympics. Sharing my knowledge with others is a passion;
therefore, I have also helped plan varied strategies for personalizing teacher staff development
and have presented the concept at Fulton County’s Summer Summit and Building Our Future in
hopes to excite and engage our leaders in grasping the concept of personalizing for their staff. I
have presented at the Georgia Technology Conference on how to personalize learning with the
popular app, Nearpod. This concept has been picked up by the Fulton County Professional
Learning Department and developed into a course and now will be presented at Bear Creek’s
Redefine Learning Conference and the International Technology conference, ISTE. I am
currently working closely with the Professional Learning department to create additional
personalized learning courses for both classroom teachers and music educators.
As a selected member of the Fulton County Vanguard Team, I aid in offering tech sessions after
school to serve as enrichment for teachers interested in playing with additional tools for student
projects. Earning my master’s degree in educational technology has increased the scope of my
knowledge to “push” into classrooms to offer a team taught or teacher modeled approach to
incorporating technology into classrooms in a personalized manner that matches the style and
academics of the individual classes.
A new initiative in my classroom this year has been including stakeholders in activities within my
classroom and within my school, as well as reaching out to the global community to prove to my
student’s relevance of each concept. In my classroom specifically, I have been collaborating
with professionals in the field through Skype, video message, or visits to my classroom. What
has been fascinating is how these professionals speak on behalf of both those with interest in
participating in music and how the concept will still impact those who chose not to hold a career
in music. Outside of my music room, one specific activity I am teaming with a teacher to take
her class’s persuasive writing unit to promote a product they would like to sell. They will take
their ideas and create some way of marketing their project; whether it be an iMovie trailer or a
website. Then in a shark tank scenario equipped with local businessmen feedback will be given
in regard to the students’ products as well as their advertising scheme. We would then like to
go more globally outside of our community and present our top student proposal to professional
well-known entrepreneurs for feedback.
We must never take what we do for granted. We must live each day to our fullest. What we do
DOES matter. We are building our future. It is my dream that my passion for teaching spreads
to other educators so that we have a strong network of leaders to care for the next generation. It
starts with us!
teacher, I have the unique opportunity to work with the entire student body for over the course of
six years! Within this time frame I am able to build relationships with my students and their
parents unique to other teachers in my building. I am able to personally watch them grow as I
take part in molding their path along the way. I teach children to discover who they are and
develop them culturally. Through my students I am forming relationships with parents and the
community and helping them see music through the eyes of their children. This impact on a
community is not taken lightly. I not only teach my students the skills necessary to meet and
exceed music standards, I am also teaching them the value of cooperation, teamwork, success,
failure, problem solving, creative thinking, and critical thinking while tying in relevance from
across the curriculum. Music is culture and lends toward developing the whole child in a way
that academics cannot possibly compete. I strive to educate the community to become more
culturally well rounded. I also aspire to continue to bring the global community into my
classroom with music professionals from all around the world while sharing our work with the
world as well.
As a music educator in today’s heavily academic driven world, our time is often spent
demonstrating and advocating for the placement of music in our schools. To our advantage,
research supports that musically trained students show gains in math and spatial reasoning,
reading and verbal skills, as well as social and emotional development. Music truly is the
universal language as well as an outlet for cross curricular learning. Not a moment goes by in
my classroom where we aren’t making some connection to language arts, math, science, or
social studies. These connections are a natural fit and make learning more meaningful to my
students.
What you might not know is music is most commonly displayed through performance elements
and project based learning. What is unique about music class, is the ability to master a
concept. The only way to truly show mastery is to practice, adjust, evaluate, analyze and finally
perform a polished production for an authentic audience. I am proud to say that each child in my
school has this opportunity on a regular basis to perform for an authentic audience.
If you aren’t familiar with music performing arts, you may not realize that in order to successfully
make music, you must first learn to work together. To prepare my students for this collaborative
effort, I start from the kindergarten up with musical performances. Each student has a special
role, costuming, and part assignment from the very beginning. We learn to work together as a
team to present a perfected, well-rehearsed performance for the student body and the parents.
Music defines collaboration. Mutual respect among classmates builds a collaborative team,
allowing students to make connections with one another in a unique way different from their
classroom environment. This common goal creates an inviting, nonthreatening classroom
environment in which students are able to take risks without feeling failure while building
teamwork and developing interpersonal skills. Among the one hundred and twenty fourth and
fifth grade student volunteers in my after school choral group, teamwork is evident as we look
out for each other, we build each other up, and we talk through Edmodo to provide support for
one another much like a family. We are our biggest cheerleaders. You know that students are
part of a true community when they clap for each other during rehearsals to show their support.
I consistently strive to lead my students toward success through creating a personalized
learning environment. This is no simple task. I teach over seven hundred students for forty-five
minutes once a week. Finding unique ways to ensure the appropriate learning style per child is
key. As a Fulton County Vanguard member and elementary lead coach for the NLC, I have the
responsibility of mentoring teachers toward seamlessly incorporating technology in their
classroom, but more importantly fostering a personalized learning environment. Through
research and experimentation on what works in the classroom, I was able to “invent” a new
innovative music classroom. I focus on varied strategies through appropriate tech tools, direct
versus indirect instruction, voice and choice by letting the students choose tools to lead toward
success of mastery, leveled instruction with embedded flexible pacing, and focus on
collaboration and letting the students drive instruction. I live for including professionals in the
field in my classroom through Skype sessions, video messages, and live guest artists. The
music education world is behind on creating and providing music educators with these tools;
therefore, I often create most of my classroom resources from scratch. I am consistently finding
new unique ways to understand each of my students more deeply through assessment pieces
and have found unique ways to combine assessments with student reflection on their learning to
create a true picture of actual student learning. My students are exposed to authentic learning
and the use of professional tools to provide an edge in today’s music production and market.
Musicians often focus on cross curricular tasks; however, I work toward the bigger picture. How
can I lead my students toward future success in middle and high school and their career path
regardless if music is their primary focus? This has proven successful through teaching my
students how to combine music standards to create an authentic student created soundtrack
through Garage band. Students can take their track and use it as a background track for their
projects without taking copyrighted music. I guide them through creating, processing, and
uploading these tracks into various presentation programs. Taking all of this into account has
caused leaders in Fulton County as well as the state of Georgia and the Georgia Music
Association, to request that I host sessions and facilitate professional learning opportunities for
music teachers on incorporating technology, project based learning, and more importantly, how
to innovate the music classroom through personalized learning without sacrificing the sanctity of
music creation and performance. In addition, Kennesaw State University and the University of
Georgia have most recently reached out to see if I would teach a class or session to aid in
successful tech integration for future music educators.
Most of my notable activities can be included from serving as a mentor for teachers in my
building in support of the Fulton County Vanguard mission. Most specifically, my work has
included helping teachers reach out to professionals or notable public figures in the field to bring
the world into our students’ classrooms through Twitter messages and videos. I was able to
directly contact Ken Nesbit, poet, for our first grader’s poetry unit and Vice President Biden for
the kindergarten’s President study. This year, I am working toward reaching an Olympic athlete
for the first grade unit on the Olympics. Sharing my knowledge with others is a passion;
therefore, I have also helped plan varied strategies for personalizing teacher staff development
and have presented the concept at Fulton County’s Summer Summit and Building Our Future in
hopes to excite and engage our leaders in grasping the concept of personalizing for their staff. I
have presented at the Georgia Technology Conference on how to personalize learning with the
popular app, Nearpod. This concept has been picked up by the Fulton County Professional
Learning Department and developed into a course and now will be presented at Bear Creek’s
Redefine Learning Conference and the International Technology conference, ISTE. I am
currently working closely with the Professional Learning department to create additional
personalized learning courses for both classroom teachers and music educators.
As a selected member of the Fulton County Vanguard Team, I aid in offering tech sessions after
school to serve as enrichment for teachers interested in playing with additional tools for student
projects. Earning my master’s degree in educational technology has increased the scope of my
knowledge to “push” into classrooms to offer a team taught or teacher modeled approach to
incorporating technology into classrooms in a personalized manner that matches the style and
academics of the individual classes.
A new initiative in my classroom this year has been including stakeholders in activities within my
classroom and within my school, as well as reaching out to the global community to prove to my
student’s relevance of each concept. In my classroom specifically, I have been collaborating
with professionals in the field through Skype, video message, or visits to my classroom. What
has been fascinating is how these professionals speak on behalf of both those with interest in
participating in music and how the concept will still impact those who chose not to hold a career
in music. Outside of my music room, one specific activity I am teaming with a teacher to take
her class’s persuasive writing unit to promote a product they would like to sell. They will take
their ideas and create some way of marketing their project; whether it be an iMovie trailer or a
website. Then in a shark tank scenario equipped with local businessmen feedback will be given
in regard to the students’ products as well as their advertising scheme. We would then like to
go more globally outside of our community and present our top student proposal to professional
well-known entrepreneurs for feedback.
We must never take what we do for granted. We must live each day to our fullest. What we do
DOES matter. We are building our future. It is my dream that my passion for teaching spreads
to other educators so that we have a strong network of leaders to care for the next generation. It
starts with us!