For many students, music classes are a welcome relief from the daily routines of school subjects and traditional classrooms. Whether it be practicing a new instrument, listening to historically and culturally significant pieces from around the world, or engaging with music through movement and dance, students learn crucial social and academic skills in these courses. Music teachers, as well, must adapt their usual teaching styles to account for an entirely different sort of curriculum, often while having a lot of fun!
Robert’s Road to Music
Katie Robert, Selah Intermediate School’s newest music teacher, used to dream of working in music education. “All through my school experience, I was in choirs or musicals and singing anytime I got the chance,” she shares. Now, midway through her sixth year of teaching, she has spent time with several grades encompassing a variety of subjects. “I started my first year teaching in a first-grade classroom, where I taught for two years before moving out of state.” Shortly after the move, she decided to come back to Central Washington, finding an academic home teaching the fourth and fifth grades in Selah.
Katie Robert’s Passion Informing Teaching Philosophy
“When I got the opportunity to teach music, I realized it would be a good fit,” Robert says. “I was really excited that this job was able to bring me back to my passion for music and connect it to teaching.” Her vocal background throughout school has inspired Robert to pick up more instruments as an adult, and she enjoys the process of challenging herself to learn something new, just as she encourages students to do in the classroom.
This ongoing passion for music inspires and informs Robert’s teaching philosophy as well. “My main goal is to give the students a time for structured fun with music,” she says. Robert knows firsthand how incorporating different learning styles into her classroom can help students engage with the course content on a more personal level.
“As an elementary specialist teacher, I find it really important to make my class as fun and movement-focused as possible,” she shares. “We start each day with a song and dance to a different style of music, and we try to play one music-centered game every day.” Not only does this help students release some energy and get blood flowing after a long day of sitting in desks, but it also helps them make positive associations with new styles of music and retain information better in the long term.
Music Curriculum Built for Each Class
The music classroom at Selah Intermediate School is also organized to encourage an activity-based curriculum. “I don’t use desks,” Robert says. “I try to limit worksheets to only one or two a week. Music class should be different from the regular classroom, and I want students to enjoy it as much as possible.”
Of course, each student will respond to music in their own way. Robert encourages students in each class to try something new and expand their personal music tastes. Sometimes this encouragement comes in the form of building “hype” around a particular subject or musical era.
“If students don’t seem interested at first, I try to make myself as excited about it as possible,” she says. Giving historical background on songs also helps students understand why a song could be ‘cool,’ showing them a window into music history or guiding them to learn something new about music theory.
Although the monumental 100th Day of School has come and gone, Robert has big plans to finish out the school year strong with her classroom. She is also looking forward to next year’s music classes so she can continue to incorporate what she’s learned this year and enhance her teaching style as she inspires and encourages future Selah Intermediate students to follow– or find– their passion for music.
