Summary Statement

 

One of the most fulfilling aspects of being an educator is the fact that we never stop developing in our professional growth and there are always new challenges from different perspectives that await our expertise. I believe the 5 traits of NCS are a big part of who I am as an educator and the values that I strive for, and my goal is to be consistent in my actions and to persevere in my expectations for myself and my students. One of my personal goals that I’ve shared with my department, especially in the past 2-5 years, was to build a stronger program that provides our students with specific opportunities in developing their skill in a timely fashion, by having class choices and also being placed in the most appropriate class/ensemble. I was very excited when we were given this opportunity of opening three levels of classes for each side of the program, which is an asset to the overall quality and growth of our music department and it will be a developing process that will involve both students and directors.  

 

Part of my job and focus was/is to develop quality ensembles, by having a very clear strategy in choosing repertoire that will educate, inspire and motivate our musicians to strive and excel in their journey of becoming stronger with every performance and ensemble that they're participating in. I believe this has been one of my strengths that has developed in my earlier years spending time with my mentors in rehearsal settings and also in pedagogy courses, where choosing the appropriate repertoire is an essential key to holding musicians interested and to get the ensemble motivated to practice and develop musicianship. With this strategy in mind, we built our repertoire library over the past seven years, giving our students opportunities to sight-read and perform new music each year, which challenged their musical abilities. This is also an ongoing process that our department is looking into developing further. I also believe that the time my students are with me is invaluable, and for that reason I'm aware of the quality of material and the time it takes to master it.

 

My goal is to always use my class time vey efficiently. I want to make sure that students feel a sense of responsibility and accountability from the minute they walk in, using every moment to grow and mature. I like to set up expectations every day and goals that need to be met, even if it means small steps sometimes, students are able to see the progress at the end of the day. I’ve been in environments where the time was vey inefficient, the results were obvious, and the students noticed that as well. In order to avoid any waste, I’ve always been an advocate of productive preparation by studying the music scores and looking for difficult passages in the music that might cause problems along the way. This is not only a great way to teach the students how to fix those difficult passages, but also how to tackle life situations and problems that they might encounter outside school as well.

 

One of the aspects that I would like to improve as we move into the next phase of our program, is to keep challenging myself professionally by being involved in conferences, seminars and mentorship, and also by getting more involved in exposing our music department into our community and festivals abroad. Although our groups have participated at community venues in the past, performing for annual events, I believe that there are many other opportunities to involve our musicians and keep them motivated to achieve greater results and to represent our school to a greater audience.

 

 

Sincerely,

Cornelius Cata