Extended Reflection on 4Mat

While I was enrolled in the University of Alabama at Birmingham's EHS 600 class, I began to think less like a student and feel what it was like to think more like a teacher. Part of this process of maturation is to realize that not everyone in the world is going to learn the same way you learned. I saw this in the training I received in Bernice McCarthy's 4Mat system. A teacher planning units in the 4Mat system includes differentiation by default. It breaks the unit planning up into a straightforward order that when followed, the unit systematically takes the learner through each layer of Bloom's taxonomy. Not only is it excellent for the student, but it gives back a lot of the wasted time spent making decisions about in what order the lessons should take place. Had I started my student teaching stint without 4Mat training, my instruction would mirror exactly the style most of my graduate classes have been: a reading assignment and then a lecture the next day. I would have made my curriculum this way not because it is excellently effective for high and middle school students, but because when you are in your fourth year of graduate school, that is the only kind of classroom instruction you've experienced day after day. Thankfully, I feel that I have a better tool in my arsenal. Even in my ensemble classes, 4Mat training will be useful. There are lots of opportunities to get the kids engaged with learning the nuts and bolts of music without their instruments in their faces. With 4Mat, I get a wonderful spot to plug in some critical listening, some music theory, and some ear training. It is important that kids in a music class can do more than just play a clarinet once they've graduated: I want them to get a well rounded music education so they can listen to music intuitively and have a heightened awareness of its magnificence, ultimately ending with them having a more pleasurable experience and heightened quality of life. The 4Mat unit planning system can be a tremendous resource for achieving this level of musical cognition in my students.