Sigma Alpha Iota

14 Winter 2025 • sai-national.org Profeial Develment I was a recipient of a Sigma Alpha Iota Professional Development Education Grant in 2023, which I used to help pay for my last semester of graduate school at Texas Tech University. My degree was one that allowed me to do summer semesters only, but I was also able to take classes throughout the years as I was teaching. I began to feel the need to attend graduate school my third year working as a band director at Morton Ranch High School. I had always known I wanted to pursue graduate school, but was unsure of when or how I would go about doing it. It felt like the right time for me because I had some experience under my belt, and knew that that would help make my education more applicable and meaningful. In the two years of school, I took classes in Conducting, Music History, Research, Students with Exceptionalities, and Teaching Music in Urban Settings, to name a few. These courses and others have already been utilized in my classroom, and myself and my students are better for it. Each of the classes were extremely useful in my daily teaching practice. I particularly appreciated the conducting courses with Dr. Eric Allen, which allowed me to practice studying a wide variety of scores and expand my knowledge and awareness of the music my ensembles had available to them. My classmates and professor also took measures to ensure that we discussed music written by female and BIPOC composers. A great resource that I still use when looking for music or works is the Institute for Composer Diversity (composerdiversity.com), which allows you to search for historically excluded groups within the database. This is a resource I encourage everyone to utilize, because it allows us to serve diverse populations within (and outside of ) our communities and expand performers' world view. A project I completed for this class each summer was an annotated bibliography using pieces from the Texas PML, where I listened to and analyzed ten pieces that I was not previously aware of. I discussed how I would go about teaching it, and things to keep in mind when programming it for an ensemble. is is an exercise I still use when looking for music for my own ensemble to perform, and I also reference my lists of pieces from time to time. I also found particular use with my Students with Exceptionalities course, taught by Professor Jenny Dees. In this course, we read various exceptionalities that we can encounter in classrooms. This includes what to look for in students, how to best serve them, and case studies to provide context to our teaching. We also had very productive discussions about our own experiences teaching and learning in classrooms with exceptional learners. I immediately felt like I was better equipped to fit the needs of all of my students within and outside of my band hall. In this class, we were also given clarification to many of the laws regarding paperwork that we receive for our exceptional students, as well as how to apply accommodations that they receive in their general education classes. A book we used that I still reference is Teaching Music to Students With Special Needs: A Practical Resource by Ryan Hourigan and Alice Hammel. A very useful project I had in this course was interviewing students, parents, and teachers with experience teaching students with exceptionalities. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn from others with more and different experiences than my own. I also took the course Teaching Music in Urban Settings, taught by Dr. Jaqueline Henninger. This gave me great insight into the unique experiences that teaching Title 1 can give us, as well as providing context for situations that we may not have been previously aware of. In this class, we had many productive discussions that drew from each of our life experiences. I was able to immediately apply the information from this class to my own school, which had been given the Title 1 distinction for the subsequent year, and felt better prepared to serve my community. Both of the required texts for this class are ones I used as a resource this past year: Urban Music Education: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Kathleen Fitzpatrick-Karnish, and Culturally Responsive Teaching in Music Education: From Understanding to Application (2nd ed) by Constance McKoy and Vicki Lind. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that encouraged me to go to graduate school, the wonderful faculty at Texas Tech University, and my friends, who kept me sane throughout this entire process. It was challenging, but I am better for it. — Emma Wade Higher Education Beta Theta initiate and Houston Alumnae Beta Theta initiate and Houston Alumnae Chapter member Emma Wade Chapter member Emma Wade

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