My Musical Journey at NIE

I am Mok Peck Yim, a recent graduate from the Teaching Scholars Programme at the National Institute of Education (NIE). I am from the Secondary Track and my two teaching subjects are Music and History. My four years at NIE, coupled with the numerous practicum stints, have been very fruitful. They played an integral role in shaping me to be the educator I am today. The chapter below thus serves to explore my teaching identity, teaching philosophy, my beliefs about learning, as well as to share about the Digital Portfolio at NIE.

Inspirational figures 

Music has always been my passion since young when I was exposed to the piano. I knew I wanted to embark on a job in a music-related field when I grew up. Although there was a variety of music-related options that were available, I chose teaching as I believe that teaching is the most meaningful way to share my passion with the younger generation and make a difference in my students’ lives. Through teaching, I can not only specialise in my expertise, but also cultivate students’ musicianship skills and instill a love of music in them. 

My music teachers from my secondary school and junior college have also been great role models for me, and they were the ones who inspired me to take the leap of faith and join teaching. During my schooling years, they not only deepened my understanding of music as a subject, but also nurtured me holistically and looked after my well-being despite having many things on their plate. Their constant encouragement and belief in me were what kept me going even when I sometimes struggled with my academics. I hope to be like them - to be proficient in my subject area, and to exude the same warmth and kindness to students who may need my guidance. As an educator, I take on many different hats. Teaching goes beyond just helping my students to achieve stellar grades. Not only am I responsible for that, I also need to be involved in their holistic development and well-being too.


My Teaching Philosophy

I believe that all students are valued individuals who can bloom and grow in a safe and nurturing environment. 

I believe that all students are valued individuals who can bloom and grow in a safe and nurturing environment. I have noticed through my past few experiences in schools that students can be quite self-conscious and afraid to make mistakes. They worry that their friends might laugh at them or that they may be perceived to be ‘dumb’ by the rest. This often results in students not speaking up in class even when they do not fully grasp the concept, or they may shy away from participating in class activities. Therefore, I believe in the importance of creating a nurturing and safe environment for students to express themselves. In such environments, students can view mistakes as paths for learning and improvement and are more receptive to participate without fearing that they may be laughed at. I also believe that each student is a valued individual as they each come from diverse backgrounds and have strengths in different areas that can be tapped on.

Through my lessons, I hope that students can acquire proficiencies in instruments that could be an outlet for them to express themselves or even explore further in the future. Additionally, I hope that students not only become better musicians, but that they can develop holistically. I hope that students will be inculcated with essential values such as teamwork and perseverance through their practices with their group members. Having these values would put them in good stead to navigate their future workplace or environment, even if it may not necessarily be music related.

Importance of Life-Long and Life-Wide Learning

In the vast and ever-changing world out there, I believe that there are always new things to learn and be fascinated by. The fast pace at which the world moves also means that if we do not keep up with the newest developments and trends, we would become ‘ancient’ and be left behind. I personally have been through one of such developments, which is the usage of technology in classrooms. When I was a student, I was fortunate enough to enroll in a secondary school that was considered one of the leading ‘future schools’ due to its school wide usage of personal learning devices in the classroom. I remember being introduced to collaborative online software that I used for group activities in class, whereby my friends and I eagerly participated and drew on the virtual whiteboards to share our ideas and learn from each other. Fast forward to a few years later, the presence of these personal learning devices has become a norm in school classrooms, with each student having their own personal learning device. Such a rapid change further strengthens my belief that we should always keep abreast of current developments and that learning is thus life-long, regardless of how old or what stage of life we may be at.

In relation to myself and my students, I strive to constantly explore new ways to engage my students with technology in their learning. This has borne fruit during practicum, where I gamified content in my history lessons. My students enjoyed interacting with and exploring the various options presented to them in the game, and the game further reinforced what they had learnt in previous lessons. Furthermore, I also noticed that students displayed better content retention after playing the game, and this also translated into improved work where they were able to provide concrete examples of the content that was covered.

In addition to life-long learning, I believe that students should also be exposed to life-wide learning. Even though music may be seen as an isolated arts subject, it is very interconnected with other disciplines. As a music and history lover myself, I have come to realise that music is often shaped by the current events of the times, and that I cannot look at things in individual silos. Hence, in my own lessons, I try to draw connections with other disciplines so that my students can see the links better. For instance, in my recent lessons, I got students to write lyrics to their own songs that they had created. I covered the aspects of song structure and took the opportunity to relate this to what students had learnt in literature lessons about stanzas and phrasing. Through this, students were better able to appreciate the connections between various subjects and be aware of connections that they previously would not have thought of. Students were also able to actively apply what they had learnt in other subjects in music lessons, and it helped to make lessons more interesting for them as well.


Inquiry and Reflection in the classroom

Classroom management was one of the main points that I reflected upon during my practicum journey. This can be further classified into three sections - monitoring students, repeated instructions, as well as routines.

As a music teacher, I have a greater scope of things to be aware of and manage as compared to other subjects. There is constantly a lot of movement happening in the music room as students are almost always involved in playing their instruments or partaking in group activities. Furthermore, with the flexible seating arrangement in the music room, students are not bound to their tables and chairs such as those of traditional classrooms. This makes it challenging to constantly keep an eye out for everybody and I can feel quite overwhelmed at times. To tackle this issue, I thought about how I could have more “eyes” in the classroom other than just mine. I hence decided to enlist my students’ help, such as the music representatives and group leaders. These trustworthy students were tasked with the responsibility to ensure that their group was on track during practice and to remind their friends if they were not paying attention. Additionally, I also emphasized the importance of peer reinforcement to all students. Even if they were not music representatives or group leaders, as a member of the class, they also played a role in ensuring that their classmates were focusing during the lesson so that everyone could have a fruitful, uninterrupted lesson. By bringing my students on board and giving them ownership of their own classroom, this greatly reduced the stress of having to constantly keep a lookout for students whilst also empowering my students.

By bringing my students on board and giving them ownership of their own classroom, this greatly reduced the stress of having to constantly keep a lookout for students whilst also empowering my students.

In terms of repeated instructions, I realised that some of my students were unable to catch what I was saying. The data I collected was when I looked through their worksheets, and some of them clearly did not follow the exact instructions given. For instance, they wrote in the wrong column or did not write down what was shown on the screen. I also noticed that students sometimes tended to raise their hands and ask me to repeat what I had said. With further observation, I realized that this was due to the presence of pockets of inattentive students. When I gave my instructions, if everyone was not listening attentively, they would miss out on the key points that I mentioned. To solve this and reduce the wastage of time from having to repeat instructions, I decided to address misbehavior immediately through verbal or non-verbal intervention depending on the severity of the misbehavior. This ranged from focusing my gaze at the misbehaving student, standing beside them, or calling them out if they were being especially disruptive. I also enlisted the help of peers, whereby students would proactively remind their friends to pay attention if they noticed them being off task.

The last point I would like to cover is on the implementation of routines. Prior to this, I always wondered how my mentors’ lessons seem to flow better compared to mine. I also noticed that most of the time in their lessons, students seemed to always be on the ball and know what to do next. Through further reflection and conversation with my mentors, I gleaned that their lessons could flow smoothly because there was a set of routines that students were used to following. With the standard routines set in place, students knew what was expected of them and what would normally come next. I have since then implemented my own set of routines in my classroom, and with practice, my students are also better prepared for lessons as they know what is expected of them and act accordingly. For instance, students would go to the cupboards to take their instruments in orderly groups, whilst the group leaders would come forward to take the score sheets from me. After taking their instruments, students would sit down and start practicing what was shown on the screen or chords that were taught to them from the previous lesson. I believe that setting routines is important and should be practiced in every lesson for reinforcement. Personally, one of the greatest testaments of the benefits of routine that I have seen was from my mentor. On one day, he was not present in school, and I had to take the relief class which I had never set foot in before. To my amazement, his students knew exactly what to do and the relief class ran like clockwork despite his absence. I hope to achieve that level of discipline and routine in my students as well.

Final Reflections

The Digital Portfolio has been useful in charting my journey through the four years. The prompts have helped in guiding my thoughts and from there, I was better able to articulate the key reflection points for each segment. Since the digital portfolio is structured in a clear manner, this makes it very accessible as well. I can easily find past resources that I previously uploaded, be it for my modules in NIE or practicum reflections. With the more recent feature of portfolio sharing that has been enabled, this allows me to view what my peers have written for their reflections. This in turn further cements my learning as I can glean new insights from their reflections that I may have missed out on previously.

As I complete my student journey in NIE and transition into becoming a full-fledged teacher, I have gained many precious takeaways that I can apply in the classroom. Even though I am no longer a student, learning continues, and I will continue to improve myself to be a well-rounded educator.