This has been quite the semester, and as such my weekly blog posts have really suffered. So, in lieu of the weekly posts that fell off rather quickly into the semester, I am posting one massive blog post as a final reflection on this project and process.

I’ll do the positive part first, and below are the two videos of my ukulele songs that were chosen for this project: Octopus’ Garden by the Beatles and Auld Lang Syne.

They are not perfect, by any means, but I’ve found that the process of trying to find my old ukulele skills has been a nice brain break moment in the day. I’ve taken to just keeping my ukulele near my desk, so that I can grab it in class if I need something to do – microphone and camera off to keep from distracting obviously – that helps keep me centered and focused. A lot of our classes have had hard discussions and the option to let myself play ukulele or embroider – do something with my hands – has been really useful for helping me navigate my discomfort.

I’ve found YouTube has been the most helpful resource for me in this learning experience. I loved the video tutorials from Stephanie Douglass because she also modeled how I could teach this in my own classroom, which I really loved. I also loved having a multitude of playing options available, as I was able to choose simpler strumming patterns or picking patterns based on my comfort level. For each of the videos, I chose to strum, and for Octopus’ Garden I chose the strumming pattern of D D D.

I chose only to do a portion of Octopus’ Garden, rather than the entire thing. I was finding that, when I recorded this, the bar chord Bb was hurting quite a bit to do, and was having trouble with it.

As you can see in this video, I’m still struggling with the very ending of Auld Lang Syne, where it goes from E7 to am to F, G7, and ends on C.

This is a practice that I’m going to continue, with Tallulah’s little home being by my desk from now on. She will travel home with me for Christmas break as well, I think.

So now, for the more negative. I have found that I definitely was a little overly ambitious in my planning of this growth plan, at least for the time period of the semester. The portion of my growth plan that focused on Glow by Eric Whitacre completely fell off. I think that going forward with this, it will be a continued plan to work on this piece for the future. I think having a few pieces that I’m super familiar with by the time I start my practicum, as I know at least one I will likely be teaching choir, will be really helpful for me and for my anxiety levels. I’ve really loved this medium of goal setting and being super deliberate with it, and so I want to continue on with this. I’m going to set my goal for Glow to be done by June, with everything that I had outlined. I want to do something similar with another piece after that, perhaps one that’s appropriate at the middle school level so that I have a variety in my arsenal. Had I done this process before, I definitely would have broken it down into much smaller pieces, particularly for the time for the assignment, and have done just the ukulele portion with a couple of more songs.