Introducing Trumpet Take Over

Hello Everyone, 
My name is Monique Pearce, and over the next few weeks you will be getting to know me through reflections of what I am learning in my Post Graduate of Learning and Teaching.  More Specifically, my ICT's for Learning Design classes.  I completed my Bachelor in Jazz and Popular Music (specializing on Trumpet) in 2014 and have been fortunate in landing teaching jobs in primary schools in Gladstone and the surrounding towns.  I hope to put all of my learnings into practice as I get ready for the practicums to come within the Graduate Diploma at these schools and look forward to testing different strategies to find what helps students learn best.
Before I start reflecting on each weeks topics, I'll provide a bit of a background about myself. 

I am a born and bred Gladstone-ite and didn't want to be a music teacher until grade 9/10 of high school.  No, I wanted to be an actor.  And yes I mean actor, I see no reason why we label silver screen workers in gender specified classifications.  That's like splitting doctors into doctors and doctoress's. It doesn't make sense to me.  Anyway, realization hit me in the face one day when I was telling some friends what I wanted to be my career choice and got shot down (hard).  I started to re-evaluate my life choices, and the only constant that I kept going back to was music.  Music was my everything.  It had the ability to change my moods, to make me happy or sad or angry or empowered.  I could turn to music in my times of need and forget the world.  My best moments in high school (besides drama) was when I was surrounded by music, whether I was in band, or class or lessons.  It was music that made me smile.  

And so the path to music teacher began.  It consumed me, it was all I wanted.  I didn't have the drive to be a constant performer.  But I could teach.  I love helping others, whether it's my sister with her TAFE work, or my friends with their UNI assignments.  I was a student mentor at the University last year, and helping students with their assignments (which 90% of the time I didn't understand the content) made me feel good.  Seeing them happy that they received good marks for their assignments and kept on track every week so they weren't behind in their studies.  I feel good knowing that I'm helping another open their brain to more information; helping them succeed at what they want to do.  

And music does that!  There has been so much research into music and the brain, experiments with people who have Parkinson's disease.  Autistic children.  Students from all backgrounds.  Music is something that connects people from so many different ethnic backgrounds because it's a non-verbal form of communication that forces the emotion that you feel from it bring you closer to others.  It doesn't matter if your Spanish or German or Indian.  If a good song comes on that is full of happiness, everyone will be dancing and smiling.  

Music is that powerful.  And I want to rally behind that power and teach others to experience the life that music can give you, that so many other things cannot.