Chapter 12: Developing Future Music Teacher Educators Through Authentic Context Learning and Near-Peer Mentorship

A growing teacher shortage threatens the vitality of schools in Colorado and throughout the Nation (Darling-Hammond & Podolsky, 2019). The shortage is particularly acute in relation to the development of music teacher educators (Teachout, 2019). This chapter will highlight the processes of the Trying-on-Teaching (ToT) program designed to address these shortages by fostering near-peer mentorship between Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and music teacher candidates with the goal of improving access to leadership training and authentic context learning for both populations. Led by GTAs in music education, ToT is a yearly semester-long extra-curricular community music project designed to recruit pre-collegiate students by giving them the chance to work side-by-side with music teacher candidates to deliver music instruction to middle school students.