Interview with Alicia Mueller

Alicia Mueller graduated from Tennessee Technological University in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in music education. Doctor Mueller taught in K through 6 music programs for

five years before accepting her first teaching position in higher education. She joined the music department at Towson University in 2000 to serve as Music Education division leader.

These are her reflections. Doctor Mueller, thank you so much for taking some of your time to be with us this morning and talk about your preparation to become a teacher and your subsequent career and education.

This will help us broaden our understanding of teacher education at Towson University across time. I think a good place to start is in the beginning, and that would be, could you tell us a little bit about your early social

context, where you grew up, what kinds of thoughts you were having as you went through school, certainly high school, about what career you might pursue? Certainly.

I was born in West Point, New York, in the West Point Army hospital. My father was in the West Point Army Band, but I was there less than a year before my parents moved us to Indiana. My parents are both music educators.

I do come from a family of musicians and educators, not just my own parents. We were in Indiana for several years. My father was a band director.

We made our way to Bloomington, Indiana, where he did his master's and doctoral degrees at Indiana University. My mother taught piano in the small apartment where we lived. I had a younger brother and sister.

Then we moved to Tennessee. My father taught at Tennessee Technological University, my mother part time, and that seemed to be the place where I would fall into.

I took private piano lessons from my mother since I was five, started taking flute lessons around fifth grade. I was also taking dance lessons. All of those types of experiences led me to the

decision, to why not follow into my parents' paths of what they had chosen in their career? So I decided when I was in high school to... I didn't really think of any other university besides the one where my parents taught

and where we lived. So I had several scholarships and I started out in piano and flute as a double major, music education major. And I ended up just focusing on the piano pathway, practice time

being as it was for the two instruments, it was hours a day. And I graduated in four years from Tennessee Technological University. The degree at that point did certify me to teach K through 12

marching band, choral vocal areas and general music. So I could be the marching band director. That would be a bit scary. As it turned out, I ended up moving on to my master's degree

right away and that's where I started my teaching, immediately after that. Uh huh. When you were in college and you were preparing to become a music

educator, can you tell us a little bit about, and do you recall, I guess is a better question, what that coursework was like? Were you out in schools at all?

Certainly I would think that you would have done some kind of student teaching, but were there experiences even before student teaching where you were involved with students, K-12? I have some experience in the schools prior to student

teaching. Not nearly as much as, looking back, as I know I should have had due to the nature of, the way the program was settled at the university.

Not to be negative about anything, but I really think that I didn't have enough preparation prior to my student teaching. My student teaching, however, was at the high school level.

It was only at the high school level. It was in a county that was probably 45 minutes away, which is not unusual for the Baltimore metropolitan area, but in a somewhat geographically challenging type of part of

Middle Tennessee, it was a bigger situation to travel up a mountain, which is where I went with a friend of mine who was also student teaching at the same school.

My student teaching was an entire semester. It was... High school at that time period was grades ten, eleven, and twelve. My schooling was elementary, K through six, then I went to the junior high level,

seventh, eighth, ninth, and then ten through twelve was high school level. That was where my student teaching level was. I was working with the choir teacher.

It was a fairly good experience, but it didn't have enough with working with the younger ages at all. So a lot of what I did with younger students though, during that time of my life and even in high school, was due to my

experiences with my own family and my own dance experience. My mother, as I said, was my piano teacher. As such, I did some playing of organ in our church. I was a dancer.

As such, I had a school of dance. I was fifteen and sixteen years old and I had Alicia's School of Dance in a neighboring town. I had probably 60 students...

Did you really? ...from about ages four through adult in the classes I taught. Wow. And so that gave me great experience working with younger

kids, but that wasn't directly related to my university situation. I also worked with Children's Playhouse summer theater in the summers in conjunction with my mother, who was a musical

theater person as well. So I'd say more my extracurricular activities helped me boot up my skills with the younger ages. And then my student teaching was with the older ages or school-

age students. And so when you graduated, you were nonetheless certified? I was certified kindergarten through 12th grade in all music areas.

Wow, interesting. And so you said after you completed your undergraduate, you went right into Graduate School? I did. I went straight into my master's degree.

During my senior year of college, my father and I took a trip up to two major universities. My parents are originally from Wisconsin. Both my parents were graduates of University of Wisconsin in

Madison, so that was one of the places where I auditioned, and I also auditioned at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Oddly enough, though, I ended up attending the University of

Illinois at Champaign Urbana without having visited the university. I received a full teaching assistantship and moved there to the summer right after my undergraduate finished and

launched right into the graduate program where I started teaching much more formally, school-aged children, elementary-aged children. And I guess I never really gave it a thought that I would not go

right into my graduate degree. And I know that there are some criticisms and even now, 31 years later, I hesitate to advise my students to go on right away, to go on to graduate s

But the nature of where my life was and my experience or lack thereof, led me to go right into my master's program at that point. And what was the track or the emphasis?

My track was music education, and it was more specifically general choral vocal music education. It was becoming a little bit more funneled at that point. Still didn't know exactly what age I wanted to teach, which was

fine. I was 21 years old. I was always a little bit young for my age. I was one of the youngest people in the entire graduate program

because we had classes that combined doctoral and master's level students at University of Illinois. Some of my best friends were folks who had taught 15, 20 years. I had a fabulous twelve months of solid coursework,

teaching assistantship in a private laboratory school, and then I felt very ready to move on into public school teaching. My assistantship at the University of Illinois involved

teaching second and third grade music, and my classes served as the demonstration classes for the undergraduate students who came in. No pressure there. (laughing)

So that was a strict learning... And you hadn't had... No, I had not direct experience doing that. But I had children experience and I somehow did well and that spoke to my own education

prior to that, even though I didn't have the pedagogical skills, I was able to to do quite well in my master's degree. So you get to the end of this program and you did this

lickety split in a year. I did. And what are you thinking that you might want to get involved in? Well, I knew at that point that I wanted to teach in the public

schools. I had some personal connections in the Northern Virginia, Washington, DC metropolitan area. So that gave me a place to look for a job.

I went out for a couple of weeks in May, stayed with some friends, and I set up job interviews in and around the entire Northern Virginia DC area. This is before computers, so I had to get something called a

map out and literally look at the map and determine the places that I might be willing to drive out to, not really being very familiar with traffic situations or navigating the routes.

I set up job interviews over the course of two weeks. Slept on the couch of a friend's in their apartment and went back to Tennessee, at that point where my family lived, without a job, not really expecting one right away. Right.

About a week after I got back I received a phone call to go up and interview for one county and then another county and they both actually offered me a job. Oh my, a choice.

They were Prince William County Public Schools and Frederick County, which in 1983, '84, were fairly small rural communities and nothing compared to what they are today. So I actually accepted the job in Prince William County

Public Schools. Just by a quirk, that happened to be an elementary position. So that's where my first teaching job was. I did interview for a private school, K through eight.

I did interview for high school and did not receive... Actually, the private school could not even have paid my rent at that time. Oh my.

So I took the job for Prince William County, which barely paid my rent anyway, and got a place to live and moved up and started on my first year of teaching. I had three elementary schools.

I was considered an itinerant elementary music teacher. And I travelled two or three days a week and I saw all the children at two of the schools. And then I saw kindergarten, fourth and fifth grade at my third

school. And so that was a part time, shared with another music teacher who I never really met because that person was not there when I was there.

Well, no, I guess not, which is kind of crazy, but hey. So that was my first year of teaching. Uh huh. In terms of full-time teaching.

And what were you doing at the schools? I mean, were you doing chorus? I was the general music teacher. I was teaching kindergarten through fifth grade general music

classes. So I saw all the children in kindergarten who would come to music 30 to 45 minutes a week. And I saw every every class in each of the schools for

one period of music a week. I had, I believe at one of the schools I had a fifth grade choir. I see. But the assignment was general music.

And what does general music entail? Oh, I knew you were going to ask that. What do you do in that precious 45 minutes a week you get to spend with students?

General music is the idea of music for all. All children are required at the elementary level and even in today's schools to come into a general music class as well as art and gym classes.

I would go through development of music skills such as singing, chanting, movement, dance, playing general classroom instruments which are basically simple percussion types of instruments.

We did lots of listening activities. The focus was on cognitive development with the music elements, rhythm, melody, harmony, those types of concepts.

The age and development appropriateness was very important because as a general music teacher, you see all children. You have to know what their capabilities are from ages four to

five through nine, ten, eleven years old. Those children then will be feeding into the the junior high, middle school situation. So you had to also have your good connections with secondary

level teachers and the collaborative types of situations were very important. There were a couple of times that I had groups of children that were invited into the middle of the high schools for

feeder school concerts or actually just to attend and to observe some of the performing groups at the middle and high schools, junior highs, high schools, for the purposes of just exposing my own children to the types of performing venues that

they would have available to them at the older ages. Well, it certainly was good that you had gone on and gotten the master's degree and had the experience with young children, because if you had just left your undergraduate, you would

have had not a lot. It would have been more of a blind groping of becoming acquainted with my environmental music setting. So how long did you stay in Prince George's County?

It was Prince William County... Oh, Prince William. ...and my first year I was assigned, I was the low person on the totem pole. Had three schools, had a pretty good year.

It was a pretty strong learning curve. I taught about 1,000 children a week. Oh my heavens. My second year teaching, I had three different schools assigned to me.

So much for continuity of getting to know your children and getting to know your faculty and your staff. So I went to the three other schools and had another very good year.

I was young, I had lots of energy. I was living in Fairfax County and commuting down south to Prince William County, so it wasn't a very bad commute. My third year of teaching, I had the opportunity to teach in a

brand new school and that was fabulous. I had the opportunity to have one of my schools repeated in my third year of teaching, so I had a little bit of continuity. When I first was applying to jobs in Northern Virginia,

one of the counties I wanted to obtain a job in was actually Fairfax County, such a large, well known, strong county. I decided that after a few years of teaching in Prince William County that I wanted to see what my chances might be

of getting a job in Fairfax County. At the time that I originally was applying in Fairfax, they were destaffing, probably similar to excessing teachers and moving them on to other schools

that's done today a lot in the schools. So then in my fourth year of teaching, I did obtain a job in Fairfax County. I had one school and that was great.

I was there only two years. My second year that I was there, they had a new addition that they had built and I'd been blessed with the good fortune of being able to purchase sizable quality of music materials and

instruments to go into the school. I had a great experience for the two years that I was there. However, I knew when I first started teaching that I would want to continue on and receive my doctorate so that I would be

qualified to go into higher education. So in fact, one of my mentors at the University of Illinois said Alicia, if you want to teach at the higher ed level, you've got to get at least a good four to five years of public school

teaching before you move on. So I did that. I did exactly that. And in my fifth year of teaching, I started applying to

doctoral programs around the country and took a couple of trips to interview. And at the same time, I was engaged to be married and my husband-to-be was willing to go with me at that point of my

career. And so we ended up at Arizona State University. And that was a big move. We were married in May and by the end of June, early July, we had

moved to Phoenix and back to the bottom of the barrel in terms of graduate program and living on ramen noodles and those types of things, in a very different climate. Now, what was the doctorate in?

My doctorate was actually an EDD. It was a doctorate in education. I was put into two different programs. One was music education and my teaching assistantship

was elementary music education and then one was secondary education. So I had a mentor for my doctoral program in secondary ed and one in music ed, and it stayed that way all the way

through the four years that I was there. I always like to say I got the best of both worlds because I did have great focus on curriculum, instruction, pedagogy, and research in the context of secondary ed and

music ed. The classes that I taught were to undergraduate students and they were the music for the classroom teacher. That is a class I've taught ever since in my various higher

ed institutions and in Arizona State, since it's such a large graduate program, they had their teaching assistants who taught the music for the classroom teacher classes, and so I taught that class every semester for a couple of years.

My teaching assistantship then ran out, which was fine. I had two other jobs at the time that we acquired residency so that we could pay in state residency my third year. My third year of teaching, of attending graduate

level classes at the doctoral program, I went into a job share situation with another elementary music teacher and she was starting her doctorate. I was finishing mine, so I had a .55 position as an elementary

music teacher in the school, so that worked out great. That was also the place where I was able to carry out my dissertation research study. So in that sense, the flow from higher ed back down to

elementary level for purposes of my dissertation worked out wonderfully. It does sound like... My other two jobs, I was teaching private piano in my apartment and I was an Orff

music instrument director at a fairly well-off church in the area and I was hired to work alongside a children's choir director. So another kind of side training that I was receiving these years

was in my Orff certification. Tell us a little bit about that. When I started my master's program at the University of Illinois, I started the first part of my Orff certification.

They call it the levels training. Went back the following year after my first year of teaching in Northern Virginia, did my second levels training, continued with my final and third levels training in the Orff Schulwerk Method,

and it was at George Mason University. So when I went to Arizona State to work on my doctorate, I was already what's called Orff certified and that gave me stronger qualifications for working with certain

methodologies of music and movement with the general music at the elementary level. That also played itself out more when I was doing more with teaching in the higher education with my next job after I receive

my doctorate. So what is Orff? The Orff Schulwerk Method as it's called was named after Carl Orff. It is a music and movement education program developed in

the mid-20th century by Carl Orff in Germany where whereby children are actively engaged, children and teacher alike, in learning the music elements through experiencing the music skills.

At one point in the '80s when whole language was very strong of a focus and regular education programs, there were lots of links that could be made with the Orff method because of the concept of working with literacy, whole

language development. I have over the years done a lot with integration of music into the academic and the related art subjects. And so my training in the Orff method has also assisted in the

development of curricular programs for music, literacy, movement, early childhood, some of my main areas in research that have surfaced in the last twenty years or so. So we're seeing things across curriculum.

Yes. Some integration there. Yes, I've done a lot with music integration in various subject areas, movement, art, theater and then language arts areas as well.

Interesting. Now you are completing this program? My doctoral program is complete. I have graduated 1993.

During that year, I started applying to institutions of higher learning and I took a few interviews around the country and we ended up moving to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington in Southeastern Washington.

And I was hired as the general music K through 12 specialist in general choral vocal music. Primarily I was working at the elementary level because I did have a

secondary counterpart. I see. The position involved my teaching large sections of music for the classroom teacher. I had 35 to 40 students in three different sections every single

semester as well as my summers because it was required for the students to take music for the classroom teacher and we had a very large education program. I also supervised student teachers around the state.

We had three different branch campuses at Washington State University, and so it was not unlike me at all to drive across the state, put my car in a ferry, go out to Whidbey Island and observe a student teacher.

I'm sorry, this we will cut out. I'm going to get a drink of water. You OK? Yeah.

I just sort of inhaled something. My heavens. I'm having a hard time keeping track of you. You're just all over the country.

You're just on the ferry. I'm probably rambling. No, you're not. And so we're talking about your going out and supervising

student teachers while teaching at Washington State University. We had branch campuses that were affiliated with Washington State University because parts of Washington State were so remote that the students who came to Pullman, Washington, unlike Baltimore

area where, you know, we're very urban, metropolitan, it's nothing for a student to come up from Anne Arundel County and take classes and live at home. That really wasn't a possibility in Washington state.

Their homes might be 100 miles over a wheat field terrain so they were living and breathing the university 24/7. When they student taught they had the option of going home. If they were living in another part of the state that was maybe

close to one of our three other branch... I think it was three other branch campuses, then they could student teach there. They had an on-site supervisor through the branch campus, an educational supervisor who would come out and do most of the

supervising. But then someone like myself, it was my job to see them once or twice a semester. I see. That was a pretty big trip.

That was. I might have one person on an island. The very first time I ever, ever supervised a student teacher was when I, and I had not met the person, was when I physically got a car from the from the university, drove 300 miles

across the state. Oh my Lord! Got on a ferry, something I'd never done before, took the ferry to Whidbey Island, checked into a bed and

breakfast because they did not have any hotels there, got up at the crack of dawn, found the school in the dark and observed a 6 AM zero-hour jazz band. Well, there you go. With someone I had never met before.

Welcome to student teaching supervision. It was a great experience, but it got to be quite the scheduling challenge because I had to... I was teaching full time and so this was something that I would

fit in in addition to that. Sometimes I could drive. It wasn't anything to drive 200 miles to go to observe a student teacher and come back in the same day because we had a campus

in the Tri-City area in the middle of the state. That was about 150 miles away, and it was nothing to get up at five, drive there, observe, drive back. That was just the norm. Yes, the expectation.

But that was fine. It was fine. That was what we did. And I, frankly, I enjoyed it.

I didn't have a lot of ties yet, didn't have kids yet. So it was fine at the time. It worked out just fine. So...

And how long were you there? We were there seven years. I was tenured. When you live and work at a place like

Washington State University, it was a wonderful situation. There are two things, however, that you need to be able to function well in when you live there, you're either going to

function well in conjunction with your job with the university or you're going to function well in conjunction with the farming community. Interesting.

Well, it was a wheat field country. I see. It was, our backyard of our house was a wheat field and it was a thriving agricultural field.

My husband, it was a bit of a challenge. He's in recreation and parks. To kind of find the niche that was going to work, he needed a larger metropolitan area.

So we agreed ahead of time if for some reason we both weren't functioning well in our separate professional careers, that we needed to consider looking in a larger metropolitan area.

So that's where the decisions were made to do that in my seventh year, which was the year right after I'd been tenured. I, you know, it was very unfortunate in that regard.

I was very upfront with my colleagues and we made dear, dear friends, but we decided that that was the next step that we needed to do. Yes.

My children were born in Pullman, Washington. When I was pregnant with my second child, I was taking interviews around the country and that's how I ended up at Towson.

So I came here seven months pregnant. It was my last of several trips around the country to take job interviews, interviewed for the position. I went back to Washington state.

My doctor said you're done, you're done traveling. He grounded me. I guess so. Received a phone call the next week from my colleague, chair of the search committee, and said do you want the job?

So it worked out well in that regard and we moved here the following summer. And there was something in Parks and Recreation that worked for your husband? There was.

Well, he actually was working for the university at first. Because it was a larger metropolitan area, we were able to both function very well in our careers. There were some really strong draws that drew me to Towson,

and it was also a very good place to raise our children. And what were the things that brought you here? What drew you in? Some of the main things that drew me here were, #1, it was a

larger music education program. It was something where I would be able to do a lot more with an area that I really had not done much working in and that was working with the early childhood aspect of what I now do in my

job. There would be more opportunities to supervise student teachers, which I really enjoy doing. The traveling was getting to be a bit of a greater problem more

because of family. Another draw was the fact that Towson University prides itself on having the faculty, the full- time faculty who are the teachers of most, if not all, at least in our department, courses.

And I thought that was a remarkable feature for Towson to pride itself on teaching as a focus, the faculty as those who did teach all the types of classes that the undergraduates and graduates would take.

I also thought that there would be greater possibility of collaborating with the schools. We had a very, very narrow, narrow pool, understandably so, because we had one high school, one middle school, three

elementary schools in Pullman. So that was a whole other area which which speaks for itself that Towson drew, that drew me to Towson. Well, remarkably different.

I mean, Baltimore County has over 100 elementary schools. Yes. And that's just one of... I knew that that would be a good next step in terms of my professional development and working with

schools and collaborative types of projects and those types of things. So there were a number of features that drew me here. I also found it really interesting that of the people

who I met in my short interview time here, I noticed that people tended to come and stay, and that spoke to me. There must be something good that's happening here, that people are coming at various ages and stages of their careers

and they're staying. Some of those people are with me still, or most of those people are still with me. The age of our own music faculty is is quite large in terms of

the age range. And so we all bring a wealth of experience and a diversity of experience to the table. And then of course, we still, you know, in music, music

education, of course, we are working with the College of Education all the time. And I like doing that as well. Yes.

So those were some of the draws. You get here, and what is your assignment in terms of teaching and observing or whatever? My assignment was to teach the elementary early childhood

education classes. At that time the early childhood education department, this went on for several, several years, had as it's one of its requirements the music class.

I loved teaching that class. Now, I also had as a requirement to teach the elementary ed class, which I still teach now and I love teaching that class.

And then I had as a requirement to teach the music methods class for elementary music education methods students, which I still teach to this day. Love that class.

And then supervising student teachers. I also knew there'd be some opportunity for summer teaching. That's where I've been able to develop more of my Orff teaching. I did also carry that out a little bit more in Washington

state, but I've been able to be active in the summer graduate program here as well. It's interesting though, those who are familiar with the university more than a few years historically will know that we

had Lida Lee Tall, which existed as the old laboratory school, which closed way before we came, but it was the building in which I taught all my classes when I first moved here. All of my classes were right above the

daycare, the Towson University Student Daycare Center. My classes were in the one room that I believe was the music room from back in the days when it was a laboratory school. Since it was right next to Hawkins, you know, the College of

Education building, the proximity in working with the early childhood students and the daycare, it was almost a no-brainer on the collaborative possibilities there.

Now my daughter was two when she first started at the student daycare center. My son was still an infant so he was in another daycare setting. So I saw possibilities of... And it worked out.

I changed when my early childhood education classes were being taught so it worked with the Towson University Student daycare Center children coming up to music.

Oh, how wonderful. So after about the first one or two semesters, I was able to work it out where all of the children in the daycare came up to music during the times that I was teaching the early childhood

education classes, and I had three sections. We had to work it around nap time, breakfast time, those types of important things. So as it turned out, they all came up to music and that went

on for several years, worked really well. We had a wonderful collaborative partnership between those classes that I taught. I brought it a little bit into some of my other classes, but it

was mostly just for the early childhood ed classes. I had a great relationship with the other content area instructors in art, kinesiology. We had large scale interdisciplinary days that we

would do with the daycare children, with some of the regional schools. We had multicultural festivals and with all the early childhood education classes.

So that was a really nice segment of time, which I don't do anymore, but that existed. Right. Well, there's no Lida Lee Tall building anymore either. And there's, I also know, even more importantly than that,

there's no music in the early childhood education, only as a music-only class, as a separate class. So that was removed from my position and in the last few years,

I want to say eight years. This is our eighth year. We have an entire new curricular structure that we're working, that we've worked with in music education with their music

education majors. I see. They overlapped with the early childhood classes that I taught for quite a while. But we have a marvelous music ed structure and program that we

work with now where we are able to be in the schools with our students for 25 days in the fall prior to their student teaching in the spring. So that's part of the 100 days requirement for the MSDE that we

work with that's been very successful in our music department. And probably a good requirement. Yes, a very good requirement. We are... Senior music education students,

we've put them in a cohort modeled after the College of Education concept of cohorts and in the fall of their senior year before their student teaching, we are able to have their methods classes taught at the same time by the by the four of

us music education faculty. So does that happen out in schools? We teach them here on campus and we follow that up with field experiences on Wednesdays and Fridays in schools.

OK, so they're in schools before they student teach a couple days a week. Yes, they are. And what is that experience like?

Is that mostly observation? Do they actually get some hands- on with the kids? They do, at the very beginning of the semester we load them up in the vans and we drive them up to Cecil County

Public Schools. And the supervisor of music has been gracious enough to be able to work with a number of his music teachers where we bring them to a variety of schools.

They have a day of observation. We bring them back together at the end of the day for a plenary session to wrap things up and bring them back down here. Other experiences we have are observation days that we call

shadow days at the elementary, middle and high schools, mostly in Baltimore County public schools. We have worked a lot in the past with Howard County, Harford County, Carol, Ann Arundel, Prince George's, Baltimore City.

It's become more focused, which we're breaking out of a little bit with Baltimore County Public schools the last few years, just for mostly logistical reasons. We also have instrumentalists go into general

music scenarios, We'll have vocal general students go into instrumental scenarios. We have them across the board at all ages just to get a taste of observing, maybe doing short teaching segments with all

different ages. We'll have one-day or two- or three-day segments where they're in the same school. Right now, later in the semester we've funneled it into, they'll have

maybe five or six days at one elementary school. Same with middle, same with high school in their main areas of focus in the instrumental or the vocal general. At the end of the semester, we make a field trip down to Prince

George's County public schools. The contrast of the Cecil County atmosphere. We have a high school right inside the Washington, DC Beltway that we work with, and we bring our students down there

to see an example of a very strong music program at the high school level. And that's a larger program. Yes, it's a very large program. We also have a mock interview day and digital portfolio day at

the end of our fall semester. We count that as a field experience day. We invite in administrators, retired Fine Arts coordinators, to go through professional mock interviews with our students.

Very nice. So they dress up as if they're going to do the interviews. They bring their professional notebooks, they bring their

digital portfolios. It's their culmination day that we have at the end of the fall semester. And do they get feedback on that?

They do. It's quite successful. We have a rubric that we work with the administrators completing.

We all join together at the end and there's feedback that's given to the group as a whole and then one-on-one breakouts after that. Wonderful.

So it's quite successful. We have some field experience days during the intensive term, as we call it, where they are on campus and the four music education faculty are in charge of delivering certain topics

such as assessment, pedagogical skills just unique to general music, possibly working with technology-driven types of curriculums or students collaborating with each other on presentations, those types of things.

So all in all, it's 25 days of working with the field experiences in the schools. Right. Which is good. And that's immediately prior to their student teaching in the spring.

Now, for state certification as a music educator, is that one certification or does that break out into choral or instrumental or by grade level? Or is that K-12?

Well, it's actually pre-K through twelve. OK. The way that we are vetted in music education is as a content area in secondary education along with kinesiology, art, we

go through secondary yet even though our students then are certified to teach music pre-K through 12, I believe that the certificate is music pre-K through 12. But then in music, we divide them up into concentrations of

instrumental or general vocal choral, and it's still pre-K through 12. So when they get to student teaching, are they doing experiences at different grade levels?

They are. They're doing one elementary rotation. Usually it's recommended they do that first, and then they follow that up with a secondary rotation of seven or eight

weeks. If they have a strong desire to do middle school or high school, they are allowed to indicate that preference when they complete their application.

We have a very strong positive rapport with your Center for Professional Practice working with... It's a big job, of course, for the Center for Professional Practice to to place right now, 34 student teachers for the spring in music only settings.

Right. And it's a process that starts quite early. And I'm very, very impressed by the fact that they're able to work with the regional schools to find

successful placements for our students. Well, it must be difficult in that how many music teachers do you have in a school? One in the general. Maybe secondary,

you might have instrumental and choral. One general music teacher at the elementary level. A second instrumental only teacher who might be sharing with two or three other schools at the fourth and fifth grade level.

Some counties in the area, they are able, they have programs of instrumental music down to grade three. Generally speaking, for example, Baltimore County, they start with grade four for the instrumental.

So it's not uncommon to have four or five different schools assigned to you as an instrumental elementary instrumental teacher. Middle school and high school can have any number of two to

six music teachers, depending on the size of the school, of course. Some of our performing arts high schools in the county, I believe, have up to five or six full- time music teachers.

But that's lined up with the enrollment of the schools, which... Right. ...of course, you know, are quite large. Indeed. So this is a lot to orchestrate if you're a faculty member.

It is, but we have a fantastic collaborative partnership with each other, the four music education faculty. And we've had a little bit of turnover over the last few years, but it's all been for good, you know, retirements and

bringing in new people. The technology expertise is there between the four of us. I'm not... I'm probably on the lower end of that.

We have a wealth of teaching experience in working with students in the public schools between the four of us, which I believe is vital for a teacher educator to have is experience at the public schools, all grade levels and across the board of

experience across the country as well. Which is fun. That's nice because that does bring a breadth of experience that will be different. Absolutely. Yeah.

So you have now been at Towson for... This is my fourteenth year here at Towson. And have you seen changes in terms of pedagogy or curriculum related to music education?

Some of the changes that have directly impacted me and my position and then our music education program has been the mandates with the reading requirements by the Maryland State Department of Education, the requirements of

having the reading courses, six credits of reading courses taken by all students who are going to be certified. That's been a a good experience for me because actually after all is said and done, I'm actually the person who's

teaching those classes in our music education curriculum and it's worked out quite well. Other changes are related to... We're in the midst of working with the changes of the Common Core concepts, the

assessment requirements. We're building those in as appropriate and as we are able to into our own program. We're very happy with what we're able to do with

placing our students in field experiences in the schools. One thing I would like to be able to do, I speak for all of our music education area is to get the students in the schools at a younger age.

Honestly, they need to be in the schools as early as their freshman year, even if it's just a few hours a week, just to get the exposure going at a earlier age. So we're working on some possibilities. That's

difficult to do. But it certainly sounds as though that's sort of general consensus now is that you get them in earlier and more often. We are a a credit-driven, credit- heavy degree, music education,

and that's a whole other area that we are working with. It's very difficult for the students to to to get it all in in a four year time and students who want to have enriching

experiences with other types of performance opportunities, sometimes they decide to take the five-year path, the six-year path. Something else that we've seen changes in is the fact that we

have a larger number of students who are coming to us as post- baccalaureate students. We have a larger number of these non-traditional students who are coming to us with other life skills, other degrees, some of

them in music, yet they're coming to us to obtain the certification to teach in the public schools. So that's also... To teach music in the public schools. And they're coming in with no educational background.

It's not somebody who's in elementary who's now decided that she wants to be... Not generally, they're coming in with maybe a a degree in music, but it's not a teaching degree in music. They're coming to us with a liberal arts degree and they're

fairly strong in their music area. They're coming to us from out of state with another degree. Interesting. Sometimes they've come to us with master's degree in

performance, music performance, but they're coming to us to be certified. We had one particular student a few years ago who had just finished his PhD in music and he was moving back to, I think he

was originally from Howard County. He wanted to be certified in music. Wow. So we have a huge range of talent that we draw from in our

own non-traditional pool of students who come to be certified in music. Now do you have and how do they do that? Is that a post baccalaureate program?

Is that a master's degree in music education? The students have to decide how they want to go about that. They want to obtain a master's degree. Then they go through the MSN music ed and that gives some

certification as well. They still have to go the post- bac route where they are going to go through some of the same courses that our undergraduates are going through because they have to have those content

areas, those pedagogy areas, the experiences with student teaching. So I think that it works. I enjoy working with a broad range of ages of students

in the same classrooms because they work well together. Well, as you said, it's interesting to watch them, to see how they tap into each other's strengths and

weaknesses. And yeah, and that life experience adds a lot as well, as you had mentioned earlier. It is amazing.

Well, where are we? What haven't we talked about that you want to share with us? I'd say maybe one area that I feel is very much a part of my teaching philosophy

is the fact that as a teacher trainer, teacher educator, I find that it's important to also remain in touch with the children with whom you're teaching your students to teach. So for example, for me, I feel like it's important to still

work with children who are as young as age two and three and four. So I still do work with the Towson University Student Daycare Center.

You do. And I have been ever since I stopped teaching the early childhood education classes, right? That was such a longer part of the curriculum, correct?

I was. So we, I had such a strong collaboration with the the teachers and the director who just retired last year with Harriet at the daycare that I felt that as a teacher trainer,

I still needed to remain in collaboration with the daycare. So what I've been able to do is now I bring my music education students to the daycare and that's where they obtain their pre-K experience that they might not get in the regular

elementary schools. Pre-K is so important, that we're able to... Pre-K is so important that I think that even if they're not going to get at the elementary student teaching, that's something that I can work

with getting into the music methods courses. So this semester with my music ed students, we make the the walk over to the daycare center and the place where it's now located next on the athletic hill area.

Once a week for several weeks in the fall we go, all 19 of my students sit and had music circle time with the three and four year old children in one of the classes. I wish that I could work with all the classes there all the

time, but it just doesn't work out with the logistics of the time. I'm also able to still work with younger children at the elementary level through the reading one class

that I teach, So I'm able to still work with children. So it goes back to my philosophy of me as a professor, not in my ivory tower, still being in the schools, working with the children so the undergraduates can be there and observe and

need to assist them at the same time, separate from student teaching as part of field experiences. That's what I think is really important to keep going, and my colleagues do the same to the other large area that I believe

in is to always strengthen the ties I have with public and private school institutions of learning. Baltimore has such a huge diversity of private and parochial schools.

It's important that we tap into those resources as well as the public. Are you involved at all in professional organizations in music education?

And I am amazed at the number of connections, especially in areas like music and art and dance, where folks are connecting with people outside the university with regularity. I am.

I've always been heavily involved in our music education association, the national of which is called the National Association for Music Education. The state affiliate is the Maryland Music Educators

Association. I've always been very, very involved in that through my years here. I was the state collegiate advisor for several years.

I was the general music teachers president for several years. I still, we take our students there in the fall to the conferences that they have at the downtown. Anywhere from a regional high school to the downtown

Convention Center we have. I'm in charge of the exhibits that we have as part of the music department for the huge, ever-growing number of alumni from from Towson University Music.

I'm very proud to say that we have such a large growing group of music educators who have graduated from Towson. That, you know, that alone speaks volumes in terms of the fact that our program has remained very strong

and steadfast through the years. So yes, I'm very involved in our music education and our music education professional associations. Good.

We always have one last question, if you can't think of anything else, which is would you, what kind of advice, what kind of wisdom would you share with individuals who are considering a teaching career?

Basically, or certainly in music education, I think that one of my strongest suggestions would be to remain open. Keep your options open in terms of being willing to teach any

age pre-K through high school. Accept the opportunity to have experiences in working with all ages of children, maybe not necessarily in music subject areas that are most comfortable to you, and venture out of your

comfort zone. Remain in touch with your peers and your colleagues and always seek to learn from your students, which is something that I've always been able to...

I feel like I'm always learning from my own students. Good advice, thank you. Thank you. This has just been very informative and enjoyable.

Thank you, I've enjoyed the opportunity. Great.