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In the course of teaching music, I followed the valuable information from my predecessors and practiced on the spot. Because I did not know what I was doing and was worried that I would be labeled as an inappropriate Waldorf teacher, I mostly followed the same pattern for the first few years of my teaching career. As time went by I began to have doubts about myself and my own teaching. Later, I had the opportunity to study Steiner's books on music, the contents of which were very difficult for me to understand, and were different from the "music" I had known since I was a child. I was intrigued by Steiner's discussion of intervals, saying that giving third- and fourth-graders consistent experience with the major and minor thirds in a music program is beneficial to their development. So, I'm wondering if this is true? I took the self-narrative approach to find out why I was willing to teach in a Waldorf school despite my ambivalence. Another confusion was that I wanted to know if Steiner's statement of 100 years ago was still applicable to the children of Taiwan today. Before I conducted the Phonological Perception Test in three Waldorf schools, I thought that the results of the test would be a direct validation of Steiner's theory, but after one action research session after another, I found that the results were very diverse. At first, I suspected that there was a design error, and I adjusted the details of the design again and again, but after many testing sessions, I realized that the results still could not be verified directly. I also realized that by looking at the children's drawings, I was able to observe each child's current state of mind and needs because my understanding was supported by the results of my study of Steiner's theories. But I was still uncertain about the theories I had learned. In teaching, I see that everyone has their own unique spiritual qualities, including myself. In the process of teaching and inquiry, I try to organize the results in a coherent way. In the process, I've gained new insights over and over again, and of course, they've been the result of many layers of frustration. At this point, the focus was no longer on whether Steiner's statements were true or false; it was on what I was proving step by step in my teaching practice. Because in the process of practicing what he said, I received a living response from the students, "I see, that's how it is" continued to ring out, and the richness of these feelings far exceeded my confusion. |