Matt Joyner

December 4, 2018

Internship Observation #13

This week at Fike was rather boring for me since I spent the majority of my time behind the

piano accompanying the students for their choreographed show numbers that they perform

on the second half of their concert. However, I was able to lead the ensembles in warm-ups,

and they had loads of fun.

I started warm-ups with the mind game of “mirror me” where you tap out patterns on your

head, shoulder, thighs, incorporating snaps and vocal sirens within the patterns. The

students had never done this before, and as a result they were very focused on what was

going on. However, a few students took this opportunity to talk about how “hard it was” or

how “confused they were.” I ignored these students, as the reasoning behind these

complaints was their lack of desire to participate. They were not on board with the rest of

the class at the beginning, so they did not fully participate later on. I would like to figure out

how to better gather the attention of every student in the classroom to ensure that we are all

on the same page later on in warm-ups.

The sopranos in our choir are struggling with finding a tall space to sing with, aka singing

with a raised soft palate. I incorporate warm-ups to combat this such as singing on [a] and

[u] and going from [u] to [a], and they seem to help. However, when we went to a tuning

exercise, they tended to lose this space. I hope to more accurately relate these activities

together in a way that every student understands the concepts and can implement them in

their singing and performing.

 Matt Joyner
December 4, 2018

I have so enjoyed working with the high school here at Fike and I cannot wait to come back

in February and to learn more about myself as a teacher. Mrs. Sherrod is giving me the

opportunity to teach and conduct the newly formed treble ensemble next semester. We

picked out the repertoire (Jubilate Deo by Peter Angela and Under the Willow arr. by Susan

LaBarr) and I am really excited to teach this to our sopranos and altos.