I'm in between final exams (giving, not taking), and reflecting on the semester. It's definitely been my best semester of teaching. It's amazing how much there is to learn about teaching musical skills (sight reading, musical dictation, identification of chord and interval qualities, keyboard harmony). My first two semesters, often when I'd have a student who couldn't even tell when the melody goes up or down or whether it's stepping or leaping I'd just have no clue what to tell them. Now I feel like I have suggestions for any situation I could possibly be in. (Students are forever surprising, though, so I'm sure that's not quite true.)

So that, I think, is the success of my time as coordinator of this course. The things I perceive as successes of this semester stem from that and my always-increasing understanding of where the students are coming from, what their goals are (if any), and what my goals are. I know the dogmas that are important to me (for example, a consistency of approach: scale degrees OR solfege but not both, lots of structure in pace of learning, etc.) and when they're not useful. I often know when students will think material is too hard or irrelevant to them, and how to preface it in such a way that they understand its usefulness and how to approach it. Because of that, I have had very few student problems this semester. (That's not quite true. I had a few cases of academic dishonesty, and the inevitable attendance problems. But nothing directly relating to the content of the course or student attitudes towards me.) In the past, I've had students get very upset about my stances in the class: not allowing people to use perfect pitch as a crutch, using scale degrees instead of solfege, expecting them to do work outside of class. But I've had no big complaints this semester. What few I've had have been reasonable requests and presented as constructive criticism. That may be because the class is bigger than ever (about 70 at 8 AM and just under 100 at 10:10) and they feel less connected to me. But it could also be because I frame the material better now than I used to, or because I introduced myself one-on-one to at least a majority of them and they are more amenable to seeing where I'm coming from.

Most heartening of all have been comments from students as the end of the semester grows near. In all of my cases of academic dishonesty, I've met with the students, heard them out fully, and let them suggest an appropriate penalty before making my decision and sending it out by email. In response to that email, most of them wrote me back. That was mostly to tell me that they found my decision acceptable, but many also wanted to make sure I know that they got a lot out of the course. Today after the exam, another student came up to me and said, "I think I'm actually starting to get better at this aural skills thing. But I don't want to lose it over the summer. What can I do to keep it up?"

I'm sure getting my evaluations will give me a more discerning view of how the semester went and reveal both some good things and some bad things that I've overlooked. But right now I'm quite happy with how it's gone. I've learned a ton being in charge of this class, and I really look forward to bringing that knowledge with me next year as I teach honors sophomore music theory. Those honors students had better be ready to sing!