Our Intro to Music Education course was blessed to have the brilliant Dr. Kevin Watson in for a guest lecture on a beginner jazz lesson, on Monday March 20th, 2017. We began by listening to three selections of different 12 bar blues pieces, writing down the various instruments or techniques that we heard in each. Then we discussed the similarities and differences within the pieces. This activity acted as somewhat of a warm-up to get our brains thinking and our ears listening, to get us ready and in the right mind-set for what was to come next.
Dr. Watson then played us a short melody, and had us figure out how to play it back to him – without knowing what note he started on, but rather by relying solely on our ears. He taught the melody using a call and response method, which is very effective because of the number of repetitions that the listener gets. The melody revolved around a blues scale, although he did not tell us this at the time. Next he had us try improvising around those same few notes that we had just used in our short melody, in time to a backing 12 bar blues track. After we felt comfortable doing this, Watson went around the circle and had us each improvise one on one to him. Some students seemed frustrated with this request, most-likely being more comfortable with reading music, however eventually everyone was able to create their own melody and trust their instincts to feel the style of the music. This activity can teach students not only the basics of how to create their own melody, but is also ear training them to incorporate stylistic decisions like phrasing and accents into their playing as well, though they may not realize it at the time. I feel this lesson to be much more effective, stylistically, than a more traditional lesson of verbally explaining expressive techniques, and would definitely include an activity such as this in my classrooms! At one point, Dr. Watson made a comment that I really appreciated. He said “you need to experience music concretely, before you experience it abstractly,” with ‘abstract’ being note names, symbols, clefs, etc. I love this philosophy and agree with it whole-heartedly, that music is something to be felt, and is best explained through music itself, rather than inadequate verbal descriptions. Though the application of this idea may be tricky if you have multiple students in your classroom with a great deal of prior music lesson experiences, it can still act as a great lesson or technique to help students play more expressively and be more in sync with their emotions, just as Dr. Watson demonstrated to me in a mere two hours. Lastly, Dr. Watson professed his take on assessment. To him, that word is not simultaneous with ‘test,’ but rather it can be done mostly during class time, watching students’ progression and the way they are engaged in class. This, I believe to be more accurate as a measurement of improvement and understanding than a test, because there is far less pressure and short-term memory work, and far more engagement and worth-while experiences. I learned a lot from Dr. Watson, both to do with musical improvisation, and music teaching methods in general. Dr. Watson is a remarkable person and I certainly hope to be applying his teaching techniques into my classroom someday. On March 6th, our class had the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Ruth Wright to visit our introductory Music Education course and speak with us about her innovative music teaching methods, currently being piloted in several schools across Canada and the UK.
Ruth Wright began her lecture by bringing many important points into the topics of discussion. She affirmed that music is for everyone, and that anyone can be a musician. As a teacher, it is essential that we all have open minds coming into our classrooms and never forget that fact. Next, Dr. Wright stressed that in order for students to be engaged, we must help them to make real connections between music class, and where their passions in music actually lie. Music class cannot be a simulacrum. This was a new word for me – it means at unsatisfactory imitation or substitution – and it fits this context perfectly. Quite often, too many students loose interest in music class because they do not feel it to be a meaningful enough experience for them, or have any resonance in their lives. Yet we know without asking that every child or teen will relate to some sort of music in some way. Ruth Wright shared many techniques with us to help bridge this gap and diminish the musical simulacrum effect. One activity she does with her students, is gets them to pick out a CD or song, listening to it very analytically, and has them try to re-create what they hear on their own instruments. This will develop excellent ear training skills while still allowing students to listen to and play their favourite styles of music. Another activity she arranges for her students is getting professional or semi-professional musicians in the classroom to run sessions with the students. This would be a fun activity for them and possibly inspire them to pursue their instruments further. I also like Dr. Wright’s idea of allowing students to trade instruments and teach each other, stirring enthusiasm and pride within the students. Personally, while I think this would be a great learning opportunity and an enjoyable experience for the kids, as a teacher I would limit the amount of times we tried this activity, simply so that the student have an opportunity to progress a substantial amount on their main instrument. Along with all of these fun and engaging learning opportunities, I believe it is still very important to have a healthy balance of music theory and reading music as well. The high-achievers in the class will appreciate it, and those skills will go hand in hand with the ear training skills to help develop more well-rounded musicians. Lastly, Dr. Wright gave us the opportunity to experiment on secondary instruments and create a small cover song, just as one of her classes would – it was a very exciting and enjoyable learning experience, and one that I would definitely like to incorporate into my future classrooms! On Monday, Jan 22nd 2017, our class was privileged in having the opportunity of speaking with Lesley Dawe, 5-year elementary music teacher and writer of “Fumbling Towards Vulnerability: Moving Out of the Familiar for Music Education’s Sake”, in a skype interview to learn more about her methods of teaching. After having read her article and speaking with her over skype, I believe that Dawe shows an exemplar model of teaching in terms of both her methods and her mindset. She works hard to create a student-centred environment, recognizing that teacher’s themselves are always on a process of learning and can always become better teachers, knowing that the ‘teachers’ can be taught a lot from the kids as well, and understanding that the true reason in which teacher’s teach is for the love of the kids and the fostering of curiosity and the desire to learn within them. In Dawe’s words, “this is opposite to the ‘you have to practice x amount of hours, or there will be no gold at the Kiwanis,’” sort of situation.
In our interview, Dawe stated how she feels that “sometimes we don’t give students enough credit,” and I would have to agree with this statement. I am in favour of Dawe’s teaching methods – she explained how she doesn’t start with methods books, music notation, or the elements of music terminology, but rather gets them to first make sounds on their instruments, do rhythm exercises, and has them participate in numerous listenings in class (a method of teaching that I found had many similarities with Mark Hopkins curriculum). Then the students continue to build their knowledge from there as she introduces the treble and bass clefs and staff, note names, etc and eventually even gets her students to help in the repertoire selection process. Having experienced a similar method of teaching, I personally found this structure of the class to be very effective as well as enjoyable. I think it is great that she lets her students help pick repertoire – it can turn into a great learning experience for them, being able to analyse music and finding specific qualities as to why it could be a beneficial learning experience that they cover a particular song. I also love that she focuses on popular music in her listenings and even repertoire. This, to me, is extremely important, because it gets kids engaged. It makes it so that they look forward to music class, when they get to learn about things they are interested in and make connections from the music they love to understanding form, rhythms, harmonies, etc in that music. Thus, when students are engaged, it sets them up for success. I think teachers should work to give traditional and classical listening examples as well, so that students are introduced to a wide variety of music, and may even discover new personal favourites in other genres. Dawe raised a good point, that in order to get students to be their most creative selves, you must be patient, and flexible. As she mentioned both in her article and our interview, there is comfort in the familiar, and being told what to do and how to do it. Not every student responds well to a creative teaching approach, or to being asked to improvise on their instrument or make decisions about how a piece should be expressed. For those students, it is important not to push them to be more creative than what they are ready for, or a feeling of vulnerability will settle and they can start thinking that they are not qualified enough to experiment musically or be their creative selves. Similarly, teachers can also struggle with explaining their methods to administrators or even parents if these people do not feel that the classroom has enough structure to it. It is a difficult concept for some people to grasp, and some may say that this style of a classroom appears too chaotic, but if we expect students to be creative and constantly question and think deeper, then we must allow them the opportunity and space to do so, otherwise they will never learn how to or grow in this way. I like Dawe’s method of talking in groups, getting students to work things out using their own capabilities, then coming back together as a class to discuss. Some teachers do not like giving students this little extra sense of freedom, for fear that they get “off-track” when they’re talking amongst themselves. Yes, it is perfectly true that in most cases, when students are asked to discuss something with each other, they will also be solidifying recess plans or chatting about siblings or other off-topic things. However, it is also true, that when given x amount of time to discuss a classroom topic and try to think deeper or problem solve, most students will complete the task at hand in addition to the little social conversations that they have before or after. So as a teacher, one must think, which is better: discussing class materials in addition to other pleasantries while developing social skills, and possibly even developing new friendships, or, discussing only the class topic, coming to conclusions, and then sitting in silence for the remainder of the time given? In my opinion, the latter option is setting society up to be filled with soulless robots who lack in social skills as well as many signs of emotion. Therefore, as I teacher, I would regularly implement Dawe’s methods of teaching, because I believe them to be more realistic in terms of student expectation, in addition to encouraging creativity and inquiry-based thinking. Lastly, Dawe reminded us that an elementary music class may be the only formal musical training some students ever receive. This is partly why it is so important to get students engaged, so that they have an enjoyable experience and learn skills that they can return to whenever they like. For instance, say you have a student who never studies music past grade 8. Then, in later years, that person gets the notion that they want to pick up a guitar again to play a few songs or maybe even write their own music. What are they more likely to remember, enjoy, and use down the road: chord positions to their favourite tunes and a basic understanding of musical form, or classical composer history…? Dawe stated, and I completely agree, that “any basic understanding that they can take outside of the classroom, is great.” On Wednesday, January 18th, 2017, our class was privileged to have Mark Hopkins speak with us about his new curriculum in place for grades 7-8 instrumental band students in Nova Scotia. I found his ideas to be quite innovative and liked the sounds of his approach to music education.
One of the first points Hopkins touched on, was the pros and cons of using a method book to teach music. A pro is that it unifies the experience for every student, and sets standards for them to achieve. On the other hand, method books lack in creativity, and there are very few opportunities for students to be expressive or grow as a musician. Unfortunately, once a textbook-style approach to learning music becomes habit to students, it is difficult for them to break those habits and stray away from their comfort zone to start playing expressively, or to even try creatively improvising or writing their own melodies. I do believe that music is a unique form of language, simply because it is a means of communication, and it not only conveys emotions, but also fosters them within people. There is both a deliverance and a reaction in the production of music. Therefore I find Hopkins’ theories of music education to be quite profound, teaching music as one would a language. Hopkins made a good point, in that you wouldn’t scold a toddler for saying small words without the ability to spell them, so why should you do so if a child can make beautiful sounds on their instrument but not read music notation? I find Hopkins curriculum to be quite innovative, however it does pose some questions for me. Are we, as teachers, to assume that when these students are old enough to be starting instruments that they have already had experience with solfege singing? What about reading key signatures? If at first, we do not use any sheet music, and teach students how to play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ on their instruments together using solfege (for which we know, ‘Do’ is concert Bb), then will that not confuse them when they move on to reading sheet music in various different keys, where suddenly ‘Do’ isn’t always the concert Bb fingering as they had originally learned? It is a constant struggle to teach music in a way that isn’t contradictory or confusing at first. As Hopkin’s said, it is truly equivalent to teaching a new language, and so I agree that expression and creativity need to be more of a focus than what most teachers are currently giving it. Some people think of musical education in terms of a linear spectrum, but I prefer Mark Hopkin’s spiral concept. It suggests that you do not master one element and then move on from it, never to focus on it again, but rather that you are constantly learning to incorporate all of the elements into your technique as you go, since they all affect one another and since that is part of the creative process of learning to play expressively. The challenge, then, becomes our learning curve as teachers, to teach with a spiral path in mind, and to constantly encourage creativity in our music students specifically by recognizing and giving them the opportunities to do so. |