Report on 2011 Society for Music Teacher Education (SMTE) Symposium


The fourth bi-annual national Society for Music Teacher Education (SMTE) Symposium took place this past September at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, School of Music, Theatre and Dance. Established in 2005 for members of MENC who had an interest in teacher education, the conference has grown and the demographics of attendees ranged from professors, to current graduate students, and public school teachers. The conference chair, Dr. Janet Barrett welcomed the attendees and introduced the conference theme: Intersections of Practice, Research, and Policy. The theme set the tone for three days of presentations and discussions surrounding the interconnectivity of music teacher recruitment, preparation, and professional development.


Dr. Barrett prefaced her introduction to the conference keynote by asking three questions: “What kind of schools are we sending our students to teach? What kinds of opening for creativity will our students find? Where can students find clarity of voice?” With these overarching questions, she went on to introduce the keynote speaker Deborah Meier. A veteran public school educator, Meier has spent the last four decades working in the capacities of teacher, principal, writer, and advocate in the New York City and Boston area. Much of Meier’s work has been in low income, urban schools. Meier currently serves as the principal emeritus of Mission Hill School in Boston and is a senior scholar the Steinhart School of Education, New York University. Meier’s books: In Schools We Trust and Many Children Left Behind; Playing for Keeps; and The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem, all speak to her keen interest in examining the current state of education in America, teacher preparation, and the relationships between master and apprentice teachers.


In her address, Meier opened by stating: “Art is the first language of humanity”. Using this statement as a theme to her speech she went on to discuss the current climate in our schools and asserted that the crisis in education (low test scores) is fabricated, and rather the crisis facing the nation is poverty. With this in mind, Meier asked: “How can we prepare teacher for what they will face? What does it mean to be an educated person?” Drawing on examples from the 17th


and 18th century,


Meier answered her questions by citing the need to revert back to the practice of personal investment and the opportunity for leisure. She stated the importance of the human capacity for creativity and story telling. In actively participating in the arts, humans engage, communicate and respond to the world around them. Meier expressed the relationship between educating the whole child and educating the whole teacher. The symbiotic relationship between the two, in Meier’s view, is integral to the process of ameliorating the relationship between student and teacher. To Meier, the importance of modeling is key and students must be in the presence of whole adults who participate in a range of activities, including leisure. She concluded by offering a differentiated approach to arts


22


Sommer H. Forrester


education; wherein students engage in the arts in multiple ways throughout their year of schooling.


From this invigorating call to action, the 2011 STME conference was underway. The myriad of activities included: Presentations of Research and Best Practice Papers, Focused Roundtable Discussions (“Intersections”), Research Poster Sessions, and the Areas for Strategic Planning and Action (ASPA) meetings. The session topics ranged from current research trends, undergraduate curriculum, technology workshops, to philosophical and sociological issues in music education. The twelve ASPA groups were established in 2005 and have subsequently become a place where substantial scholarly literature, presentations, and projects have come to fruition from the focused energies of the members involved. The stated goals of the ASPAs include:


To foster collaborative efforts among music teacher educators and those interested in the recruitment, preparation, and professional development of music teachers; ii) To promote activities in research, the identification and dissemination of best practices, and policy analysis on behalf of music teacher education; iii) To sustain these activities in order to build a cohort and systematic base of knowledge in music teacher education (convening on a regular basis at the SMTE Symposia in odd-numbered years and during the NAfME Biennial Conference in even-numbered years); and iv) To produce substantive and useful work that can be disseminated within the SMTE and to broader audiences.


New attendees were welcomed and encouraged to “speed date” through the ASPA groups to learn more about research topics and projects in progress. Following this initial exposure, new attendees were welcomed to select which ASPA they wanted to be a part of. Participation in the ASPA groups is not limited to conference attendees, music educators looking to become involved can participate through the online resources at: www. http://smte.us/aspas. The twelve ASPAs and description of focus include:


i) Teacher Recruitment: To examine teacher recruitment strategies for non-traditional music classes in the K-12 setting; ii) Program Admission, Assessment, and Alignment: To address program structure and key milestones in the undergraduate curriculum, including admission to music education, assessment of student progress, and collaborative efforts between music education faculty and other colleagues within schools of music; iii) Music Teacher Socialization: To address the undergraduate student’s transformation from student to teacher through program components and experiences; iv) Critical Examination of the Curriculum: To examine the assumptions on which the music teacher education curriculum is founded by analyzing current curricular practices and proposing new avenues for consideration; v)


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29