Evan Parent - InTASC Standard 4

STANDARD 4: Content Knowledge

The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s)

he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline

accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of content.

The teacher should understand what they are teaching, and how to teach it effectively.

The teacher should have an in-depth understanding of the musical concepts they are teaching,

the style and context of the music their class is playing, and the intricacies of how to run an

effective rehearsal of the piece. The students should perform the music in a way that matches

these styles and the students should understand how the context of the music applies to

performance. The teachers should understand where issues can present themselves in a piece

and how to rehearse the music in a way that can fix these issues, all without compromising the

aspects of style and performance. This should also be partially catered to students who learn in

different ways and at different speeds.

I feel confident in my abilities with this standard at a lower level, but in a more advanced

classroom I might begin to see issues that I don’t know how to fix. I always want to know more

about styles and the context that surrounds music, but I can only apply that to a certain degree.

This is where I need to improve. I can do so by researching the music that my class is playing,

and making note of how the students are responding to my instruction to ensure that they

understand how to play things in the way that I intend them to.

An artifact of these concepts will be my theory and instrumental methods classes and

performance opportunities at Ball State. These in conjunction with one another will teach me

almost anything I need to know about performance and how to help students become highly

skilled at their instruments and perform at a high level.

Council of Chief State School Offices. (2011, April). Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support

Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards: A Resource for State Dialogue.

Washington, DC: Author.