Stories from the Front

Abstract

This narrative gives an account of a professor’s reflections on her recent experience of full-time K-6 music teaching in an elementary school. The account is recreated from data she collected during that time (field notes and artefacts) and from memories of typical events. It also includes fictional interjections of what students might have been thinking during the events. As the teacher/researcher reflects on events that occurred in that elementary setting, she ponders their relationship to broader educational and societal issues such as the purposes of music education, specifically, and education in general, the role of schools in the emotional development of children, how teachers and students experience the same events differently, and what constitutes success in music education.