Neag School music education majors recently had the opportunity to chat and network with experienced music teachers at the mini-conference \u201cBehind the Scenes of a Successful Program: a Professional Development Day for Aspiring Music Educators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organized by the UConn chapter of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), the annual event attracted approximately 30 UConn students to the program, which included the following talks:<\/p>\n
Music education junior and UConn NAfME chapter president Valerie Stickles was among those eager to take advantage of these professionals\u2019 insights.\u00a0 \u201cWe hoped all the members of the chapter would benefit from different perspectives and experience, regardless of whether they were an instrumentalist or a vocalist,\u201d Stickles said.<\/p>\n
Joseph Abramo, assistant clinical professor of Music Education and advisor of the UConn NAfME chapter, was particularly interested to hear Pierce\u2019s talk, as more students use computers, apps and other new technologies to make music. \u201cOne of my strains of research is finding the ways students engage with music outside of school,\u201d Abramo said. \u201cHow to incorporate these ideas into the classroom highly resonated with current trends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hoping to teach music in elementary or high school, Neag junior Allison Savage found the advice on how to land a job very helpful. \u201cI had no idea so much goes into the interview process,\u201d said Savage, who\u2019s majoring in vocal performance and music education. \u201cFor example, a cover letter or even your outfit can make or break your chance at getting the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sean\u00a0Sonntag, a freshman in pre-music education, said being able to hear from multiple educators in the field \u201callowed me to gain an understanding of different approaches to teaching, and gave me fresh ideas from people who have used and refined them.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his presentation, Smith said there is nothing more rewarding than encouraging students to think about the underlying reasons for teaching music. \u201cI fear there are too many teachers who don\u2019t have the time or support to stop and question why we are doing what we are doing,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe have stood on the shoulders of giants in defending music education. Just a short 25 years ago, music was not even a guarantee in public education. We must take what the generations before us did and continue having a dialogue with young people if we are going to promote music education as a viable course of study\u2014not\u00a0because\u00a0of the\u00a0extraneous\u00a0benefits it might add to the educational environment, but\u00a0because\u00a0music is\u00a0something\u00a0worthy of\u00a0studying\u00a0purely because it is music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abramo added: \u201cPre-service and practicing educators need to have exposure to a variety of ideas. In collaboration with other educators, we are able to learn best practices and new ways of conceiving what the goals and aims of music education can and should be, and find new and interesting projects to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Neag School music education majors recently had the opportunity to chat and network with experienced music teachers at the mini-conference \u201cBehind the Scenes of a Successful Program: a Professional Development Day for Aspiring Music Educators.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":204777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-204776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 05:32:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204779,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204776\/revisions\/204779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/204777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204776"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=204776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=204776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}