Music Education Major
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About the Major
The music education program prepares graduates with the essential knowledge, skills and cultural awareness to teach in the diverse 21st century classroom. It instills and nurtures a commitment to first-rate teaching, lifelong creative expression, and the willingness to be enriched by and value the many and varied musical cultures found in the communities in which students will serve.
Jobs in Music Education
- Music teacher
- Composer
- Music arranger
- Applied piano teacher
- Applied voice teacher
Past Elon Music Education Internships
- Williams High School
- Western Alamance Middle School
- Eastern High School
- Highland Park Elementary School
- Graham High School
Related Majors
Elon set music educator up for success in the classroom
When Samantha Childers stepped into her first classroom in 2018 after graduating from Elon University with a degree in music education, she had a big challenge ahead of her. There had been a lot of turnover at her new high school, which meant she was going to need to create structure and stability for the choral program and its students.
But armed with the vast amounts of experience she gained while attending Elon, she was able to hit the ground running.
“I can’t overstate the gift that that was, having the training, and not just in music theory, history and technology, but also in education, assessment, classroom management and working with students of all backgrounds,” she said. “I had the skills leaving Elon to be able to go into a school and run a program, and that’s exactly what I did. … You’re just set up for success.”
Childers grew up with music in her life. She started taking piano lessons at the age of 6 and sang in choirs all through her schooling, including as a member of the honors chorus in high school. She admired the music teachers who contributed so much to her learning and considered becoming one herself. But when she started looking into colleges, she wasn’t completely sure what she wanted to study.
“I think for a while I was hesitant to study music in college because it was something I enjoyed very much, and I didn’t want it to become a job in a negative sense, a task that I didn’t want to do,” she said. But as she started touring colleges, she found herself drawn to the music schools. “It became more obvious that this might be a good career path for me, spending my day working with people who enjoy this art form.”
She auditioned at six colleges — and Elon in particular stood out. Unlike the other schools she considered, Elon’s audition lasted a full day, with a tour, time to rehearse with her accompanist, the audition itself and a performance by Elon students. She was able to get the best idea of what it would be like to be a student there, and she was impressed.
“That’s really when I fell in love with Elon,” Childers said.
She also was accepted as a Teaching Fellow at Elon, which was a big draw, as it provided a complementary program to her major of music education. It also offered unique opportunities that not a lot of other students get, she said.
As part of the program, Childers had the opportunity to travel often, including a semester abroad in Costa Rica and two Winter Terms traveling on the East Coast. The American History Study Tour gave the Fellows a chance to see how history is presented from the South to the North, and a leadership experience in Washington, D.C., had the students meeting with prominent politicians and attending the 2017 inauguration.
“It was nice to be able to supplement this intense music education with general education,” she said. “At Elon, you’re essentially getting two degrees — one in music performance and one in education. A music education degree is a comprehensive training of how to teach in a classroom setting.”
And there were many other opportunities at Elon. For a year and a half, she lived in one of the university’s LLCs, or Living Learning Communities, hers being devoted to music and the arts. She was also a member of the a cappella group Sweet Signatures, and because she had to join an ensemble as part of her major, she played synthesizer in the marching band — a new experience for her.
But key to her time at Elon were the opportunities she had inside classrooms. Each semester, she had some type of classroom placement, including practicums in the sociology of education, diverse learners, educational psychology and 21st century learners. She spent time in elementary, middle and high schools — some traditional and some charter. Then, in the fall of her senior year, she did a music methods practicum at Western Alamance High School, the same place she would student teach that spring. In addition to the traditional classroom choral program, Western Alamance has a strong musical theater program and a strong a cappella program, and Childers found herself volunteering to help with each.
“It was important to me that I spent my time in a way that I felt passionately about,” she said.
Childers had other opportunities to teach while on campus, including through the Music in the Village program on Sunday afternoons, where for four years she led different music classes for children in the community. The service-learning community outreach program is a branch of Elon’s Village Project, for which she also participated by tutoring local students. Elon gave her countless ways to get hands-on experience as a teacher, she said.
“Elon has all of the required courses of what every music education program should be, but the biggest thing about Elon are the additional opportunities, things I was able to participate in like Music in the Village, the Village Project, Teaching Fellows and a cappella,” she said. “It’s a place where if you invest your time well and are open to those opportunities, they will come to you. You can kind of tailor that experience to what you would like it to be.”
One thing that Childers said stands out about her education at Elon were the many support systems she had — those in Teaching Fellows and the Music Department and the cohort of music education majors, not to mention the many mentors and professors who gave her individualized attention thanks to Elon’s small class sizes.
Many of the lessons she learned from her professors ended up in her own classrooms — from specific vocal warmups and how to run a rehearsal to where she should seat her students so they get the best experience and are not vocally competing with someone else.
After graduating from Elon in 2018 with licensure in K-12 general, orchestra, band and choral music education, Childers started working as a chorus teacher at North Brunswick High School, just outside Wilmington, North Carolina. For six years, she taught classes, coordinated concerts, and auditioned and directed musicals. During that time, she also gave private voice and piano lessons; taught music at summer camps in Cary; and for two years worked as a music director for the Thalian Association Community Theatre’s youth shows and musical camps.
She concluded her final year at North Brunswick in 2024, leaving only after being accepted into a graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University, where she plans to earn a master’s degree in arts management. As someone who has spent much of her life in community arts centers — either as a student, an assistant or a teacher — she wants to learn new skills on how to run music and arts organizations. While she’s excited to build upon her education and increase her impact as an educator and an artist, she knows leaving the classroom will be hard.
“It’s important work, the amount of support a music teacher can provide,” she said. “And the effect you can have on a child’s life is absolutely profound. It’s going to make it really hard for me to leave.”
Did You Know?
- Music education offers a comprehensive curriculum moving through theory, conducting and methods courses. Students take courses in both the Music Department and the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education.
- There are many opportunities for hands-on learning. Students begin practicum experiences in the public schools in their sophomore year and are able to list at least four practicum experiences on their resumes when applying for jobs. They can also participate and teach in the Elon community outreach program “Music in the Village” for elementary and middle school children and their parents.
- Auditions are required for admission to the music education program as students learn in an environment that fosters high levels of musicianship and performance ability. Students work with full-time professional accompanists who are available for practice/coaching and applied lessons, and they are required to perform with a variety of ensembles.