Music is indefinable because it means something different to everyone who encounters it. Music is inherently a personal and vulnerable activity. To overcome the hardships that come with this reality, a safe and nurturing environment must be created for the students. I believe that acknowledging mistakes as opportunities to grow and improve begins the path to overcoming vulnerability and creating an uplifting environment. The music educator’s role on the individual level is to show students the resources that they already have within themselves to grow on their own. Once the physical component to learning music is complete, the educator’s role on the individual level is heavily reduced and relies solely on the student’s mental components. Creating mentally strong musicians and individuals leads to the beginning of the collective where the teacher’s main role lies.

            The collective is the other component in the musician’s path to success. In the group setting, every individual is needed and is vital to its success. A sense of inclusion is the cornerstone to a group’s success. The same efforts in creating a safe and nurturing environment must be made in the group context as well. The teacher’s role is to encourage growth together and to provide the resources that cannot be achieved at the individual level. The teacher must also provide opportunities for collaboration, discussions, and feedback through the group setting. This is where students can learn from one another and hear/see things from other’s perspectives whether that be about the music at hand, practicing, music in general, or life altogether. The group setting should also be a place of understanding both musically and personally for the students. The educator’s role in this setting is to show how these skills and resources can be applied to all aspects of life outside of music making.

Music revolves around both the individual and the collective at the same time. One must rely and trust in both in order to obtain success. The individual and the collective create a give and take and feed into one another. The collective depends upon the individual being strong enough to support it while the individual depends on the collective to keep sustaining their growth and strength. The abandonment of one creates the destructing of the whole. With this, students must learn to both grow as individuals and as a group.

This is what makes music unique to other subjects in the school system. This is also what makes it vital in the education system. Music education not only teaches proper technique and how to read music, but it also teaches about history, society, creativity, life skills, morals, us as individuals, and how to understand each other.