My personal teaching philosophy is geared first and foremost to the creation and implementation of appropriate musical challenges. Such challenges enable students to enter optimal experiences of flow – experiences which build greater skills and knowledge that make them into more complex, competent, rounded, interesting, and social persons familiar with the innate rewards of meaningful, focused work. The renowned psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has generated and influenced scholarship that has strongly inspired this philosophy. The ideas of Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey – as well as those found in the deeply connected movements for multicultural, culturally relevant, and popular music pedagogy – add additional inspiration.
I will cultivate authentic educational experiences in which students collaborate with me, each other, and a carefully considered learning environment. By exploring and affirming students’ identities, while expanding their musical world-views, students can find the learning process so engaging that time and all other matters fall away from awareness. I believe that such experiences engender lifelong love of and facilities with musical activities, and motivate learning and purpose-seeking generally. I take personal responsibility for anticipating certain values students, the cultures from which they emerge, and the society into which they will mature may and should hold dear. These values include not only musical skills and experiences, but also the development of these students’ character. Furthermore, I must value the skills and experiences of students, strive to understand them and their cultural contexts, and relay this understanding as thoroughly and sensitively as possible throughout the educational community.