My Arts Bridge Experience

Lesson 2 One feat of the day was that I was able to memorize each student's name! We did a name game where we pretended we were packing our bag to go on a vacation together. We voted on the location and picked Japan. (This wasn't actually important for the game itself but made it a little more fun for the kids from the get-go.) Each student had to pick something to pack for our trip but it had to be an alliteration with their name. We brainstormed at first and helped each other think of a few items that we could pack that started with the same sound as our name. The last element we added was rhythm . We patted our knees and clapped to keep a steady (more or less) beat. I demonstrated " My name's Mrs. An derson, I'm packing an ap ple" in rhythm to which they responded " Her name's Mrs. An derson, she's packing an ap ple" in rhythm - after a few tries of course! We went around and many of the kids were able to speak in rhythm but it

Lesson 1 Today we started with a get-to-know-you game called " Jump in, jump out" Jump in, Jump Out turn yourself around I said Jump in, jump out Introduce yourself! My name is so and so (class says "Yeah!") And I like blank (yeah!) And I can blank (yeah!) Alright,Alright, alright When the person introducing themselves said what they can do, they made a gesture to help everyone remember. Then when the class said "alright, alright, alright" everyone did that gesture 3 times in rhythm. We had the whole class introduce themselves which was fun but a little longer than I expected. Many of them needed a little coaxing introducing themselves and picking a gesture simply because they felt kind of shy. This pushed their comfort zone a little bit, but the kids had fun. They certainly got a lot of wiggles out. Fun fact: A lot of the students said they like cake, pizza, and dogs. It's a good thing that we went over my atte

A little bit about me. I recently was married to my best friend, Ben and we're very happy together. I'm a singer/songwriter and vocal coach and he is a very skilled pianist and composer. We like to spend time outdoors and we like to get together with family often. I have a budget recording studio in our apartment that I use for recording demos of my voice students as well as capturing quality recordings of my own songs and those of friends and family. For a career I see myself teaching voice lessons with a specialization in Contemporary vocal styles and incorporating modern music technology into the curriculum with my students. I would love to lead master classes and teach lectures on vocal cross-training and vocal health. I would also like to have regular "jam labs" with my students where they can practice improvisation, interpretation, and band-leading as a jazz singer. I am applying for the commercial music degree here at BYU. I love teaching kids.

Observation Day Mrs. Bruce is a fabulous teacher. She was so enthusiastic and was able to be effective with class time without it feeling like it was regimented or militant in a boring way. She was very funny and had the kids actively involved to keep their attention and encourage deep processing in their learning. She had classroom management methods that promoted fun and positivity such as saying "How are you guys so awesome?" to which the students all replied "It's naaatural." I observed her class for only an hour and during that time I saw journal writing, book reports, new vocabulary practiced, fluency reading, and one other activity having to do with phonetics. Two activities I observed particularly stood out. One was when she read a paragraph about natural disasters but she did it twice with different background music each time. One sounded sad and the other intense and almost angry. She read it with dramatic intonations and used this to demonstrate how