NAME:
Mrs. Semones
SCHOOL:
SCHOOL
CLASS:
CLASS
SCHOOL PHONE:
SCHOOL PHONE
The 2009-2010 school year will be my third year in the Bristol TN City
School System and my fifth year teaching. I am originally
from Clearwater, Florida, where I lived until I was 15. I then moved to
Knoxville, were I lived until I went to college at East TN State University
in Johnson City. While in college studying music education, I was a clarinet
player and drum major for the Marching Bucs band. My husband David and I
were drum majors together, which is how we got to know each other! David is
a band director in Washington County, Virginia at Patrick Henry High School.
We have a son, Miles David, who was born on April 4, 2008. He loves music!
We also have a black cat named Bruiser whom I've had since I was in college.
He's the coolest cat you'll ever meet! The newest addition to our family is
a kitten my husband has named "The Devastator." (We just call her Tator.)
She lives up to it!
Besides playing and listening to music, I love to read, write, and travel to
new places. I love working in the Bristol TN school system and teaching
music to my students. I am truly blessed to have a great job!
My goal for the 7th grade students in general music is that by the end of
the semester, they will have gained a deeper understanding and appreciation
for music of all kinds, from every age and place. My hope is to use music as
a tool to show a diverse group of students some of the things they have in
common, and how they can respect and appreciate their differences. Music is
a positive outlet for emotion and communication that I feel everyone should
be able to access. Music is one of the great loves of my life, and I hope to
pass that love on to each of my students.
**I recently recevied the following from a fellow teacher at school and
wanted to share it here!**
"Why I Teach Music"
~Music is mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time
into fractions which must be done instantaneously in the mind, not worked
out on paper.
~Music is a foreign language. Most of the terms are in German, Italian, or
French; and the notation is certainly not English but a highly developed
type of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of
music is the most complete and universal language.
~Music is history. Music usually tells the story of the environment and
times of its creation, and often the national and/or cultural background of
its composer.
~Music is physical education. It requires fantastic coordination of fingers,
hands, arms, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of
diaphragmatic, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to
the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.
~Music is art. It allows a human being to take difficult, yet technically
dry and boring techniques, and use them to create emotion. That is one thing
science cannot duplicate: humanism, emotion, call it what you will.
This is why I teach Music.
Not because I expect all of my students to go to college and major in music.
Not because because I expect them to sing or play all their life.
Not just so they can relax, or have fun.
But so they will be human.
So they will recognize beauty.
So they will be sensitive.
So they will be closer to an infinite beyond this world.
So they will have something to cling to.
So they will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good,
more understanding, more diversity...in short, more life.
Of what value would it be to make a prosperous living if you didn't really
know how to live?
This is why I teach music.
