Junior Tutoring: Music Ed

by Anthony Hingley (junior)

As with the spring semester of the freshman year and the whole sophomore year, junior Teaching Fellows and Maynard Scholars tutor one hour a week. For your junior year, you are placed according to your preferences for grade level and subject area. You are encouraged to select the grade level and subject area you want to teach when you graduate. As a Music Education major, I asked to be placed with a middle school band program, which is what I would like to teach.

When I arrived at my school to tutor, I discovered that the class was all percussion (students playing drums, bells, cymbals, etc.). I was glad to know that there was one student in the class who was a tuba player like myself but could not be in the class designated for brass players. It was decided that for an hour a week, I would basically give this student private lessons. I would come to the school, and as soon as class started, this student and I would head to the hallway where we would proceed to work on the concert music, scales, and all the fundamentals of playing tuba. This experience has been very good for me, and I feel that it is helping me to grow as a teacher as well as a musician.