While I may not have much time in the public classroom, I have gained quite a bit of experience in teaching musical techniques and musical concepts. The time I have spent one on one with students, and the time I have spent personally discussing their experiences with them has changed my view as to why we love to learn music. I have asked so many peers, colleagues, and former teachers of mine about what it means to teach music, and there were so many answers regarding the music-making process, but very few of those answers mentioned the most important thing about teaching.
The kids.
So many teachers create this idea of what the classroom will look like, act like, and what kind of music we will learn. What they fail to remember, is that our job is to teach these students what they need to know to prosper. We don’t give these students much opportunity to explore or navigate the music world that they are entering, in fact, we spend most of our time exploring musical worlds that hold a very minute level of relevance in culture today. Teachers today have a tendency to use outdated lesson plans without actually thinking about how it applies to or engage the students at hand. Brent Gault writes in his book that this dogmatic approach leaves teachers stuck in the pattern of teaching as they were taught, and stops us from diversifying and creating culturally responsive music programs.
To generate these classrooms, we have to apply a social constructivist classroom environment. Jackie Wiggins writes in the book Teaching General Music, That “Teaching music with a social constructivist vision of learning means teaching music in ways that are conducive to and connected with the ways people learn.” We can see that kids have moved on from standard notation using slash charts, and Nashville Notation. This generation of students has moved on to a world of music that quite a few educators are not quite prepared for. So I have to ask the question, Where does that leave the students.
I find myself befuddled when I talk to others about this because the argument always becomes about what they “see as important”, and the phrase “That’s not real music”, and never involves a genuine discussion about opening our minds to the cultural relevance of all the different kinds of music we’re teaching, programming, and reinforcing to our students. Teaching music shouldn’t mean sucking the expression, joy, and creativity out of students by dogmatically pushing your vision of what music is on them.
It’s about the kids
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