Introduction

Hello everyone!

My name is Michael Mann. I am 25 years old and I currently live in Sacramento, CA. However, I am Pinole, a small town in the East San Francisco Bay Area. I graduated from UC Davis, majoring in Music and minoring in History. I have been a substitute teacher for the past three years, two years in the Bay Area and one year in Sacramento. I am in the process of getting my single-subject teaching credential in Music, along with my masters in Differentiated Instruction.

During my time substitute teaching, I have taught in many long-term teaching positions, some in music and some in history. This has been mostly at the high school level. At first, I rarely used differentiated instruction because I had not learned about it yet. I mostly lectured (especially in history) while the students took notes. Now, I realize the effectiveness and necessity of differentiating my instruction.

In the music classroom, I can do many things to differentiate instruction and make sure that ALL students have a chance to learn. For example:

• have students listen to a piece of music before they play it;
• study the piece individually and then discuss it as a class;
• students get into their different sections and practice the music together;
• record the whole band playing the piece, and then write about what they did well and what needs improvement;
• assess learning through performance assessments (this is especially useful in music);
• watch videos of professional bands playing the music at hand;
• bridge learning new content in music to prior knowledge of math;
• use of lots of collaborative work.