Anna Friars
Sociology Chapter 1
Why do you think more students aspire to be more freelancing musicians and artists in the studio setting, but don’t always want to translate that into the classroom.
Froehlich explains that many musicians aspire to associate themselves more with studio teaching for the freedom, and classroom teaching for financial security. As students in the music education department, we all know that we should not enter this field for money, because it really isn’t always there, and this is an occupation that you really have to love to be able to continue doing.
I feel that so many education majors in music are people who really want to perform, but chose the safe road to humor parents, peers or themselves. So many students fall in love with the studio, that they realize they may never want to teach music to children.
Froehlich explores options as to how to incorporate all the of the things you love about teaching music into one classroom, and into one life. The things that you may not get to do at your job on a regular basis might be easily accommodated into your weekend schedule with another group, ensemble, or extra job. She also touches on real life problems that many music students don’t notice until late in life; not every student is going to devoting their life to music. We too often take for granted that we personally gave up a lot to ensure that music would be a huge part of our lives forever.
She also talks about high aspirations and how detrimental they can be for first year student who aspire to be working with professional choirs, serving as conductor. These goals can be realistic, but Froehlich points out that this gap between reality and their dreams is often too big for them to continue onward. This could possibly lead to the high rate of students who have dropped out of classroom teaching within the first 5 years. Often times, these teachers find studio job as a supplement for their old job, but often have to accompany that with another job for financial reasons. To me, Froechlich is digging up the dirt on the alternative motives future educators can have that result in them leaving the profession very quickly.
I believe so many future educators set their dreams too far away, and forget to give themselves life checkpoints to asses their progress in their life-term goals. This can be a very detrimental thing to someone who just spent years getting their degree when they realize they only want to use it in a studio setting where a degree is not necessarily required.
