As stated in my blog previous, this journey has been very challenging! While I have been trying to keep a positive attitude in sticking to my Musical Growth Plan, I also realized that this a personal experience. I have control over my success and how challenging I make this process for myself.  That being said, after giving a solid effort to put together the notes and of “O Canada”, I came to the conclusion that this was too big a commitment, or perhaps to difficult of a song to approach as an absolute beginner! So I began brainstorming, instead of getting discouraged, to find a song that met my novice needs but also incorporated the notes that I had already been learning and practicing. Then I found it – Happy Birthday! An easy and safe place to start for a beginner that also allows for success and mastery.

I promised to be kind to myself during this project, even though I am often my own worst critic and in the past I would have seen this demotion as a failure. Moving forward is all I am hoping to do, even if that means bumps in the road and a change to the original contract I made with myself. The good news is, I have learned through this half of the process that properly scaffolding your learning is so important – especially when learning an instrument!  I can confidently say that this is something I will be taking into my future classroom, and could have only learned its importance by experiencing it first hand. I will also now have a better understanding of different progress levels, and learning rates in different students. Everyone learns differently and at different paces, and that is ok! So from here, I will be posting a video of me playing “Happy Birthday”, a compilation of notes I have been practicing in preparation for recording “O Canada”,  but was unsuccessful in learning that quickly.

“Happy Birthday” consists of the notes: D, E, G, F, A, B, and C. Personally, I think that this a great place to start in terms of note difficulty, transitions, song size, and familiarity. So now that I have restructured my learning plan, I will be able to continue on the journey by adapting to what I need personally form this experience, and what realistic goals look like in the future. I will edit my hard copy of my Musical Growth Plan, and evaluate this after reviewing my Midterm submissions!

As I reflect back on our visit to Campus View, it is helpful to remember that these students started out very small, but with consistent practice and proper scaffolding, were able to play beautiful songs! This is something I like to keep in mind as I look forward to experiencing these moments with my future students!

Happy Birthday – Recorder Recording

P.S. Please excuse my sick self in this video!