BRIDGING THE GAP IN THE MUSIC ROOM. 

Digital Platform Project.

 

Hi! I’m Dania and  I have been a proud chorus nerd since I was in elementary school. In high school, the chorus room was my home away from home.  In fact, by senior year I admit that I would skip some classes to get to spend even more time in the music wing and with my choral director.  When deciding what to study in college I never even considered anything other than music.  But throughout my undergraduate career, completely immersed in the community of the Nazarian Center at RIC, my only concern was performing, not teaching.

And yet, I was always the first person to sign up as a counselor for the high school summer music camp that RIC hosted.  And shortly after graduating with my performance degree,  I was elated to have the opportunity to work under my High School Chorus instructor as the assistant conductor of the Junior Providence Singers, an audition-based choir made up of high school students from all over RI.  

In this role I got to work closely with kids who chose to spend their free time singing with an extra-curricular choir.  Each year I had the opportunity of guiding the choir through a student-centered project where they got to collaborate together to arrange a contemporary song as an a cappella piece and perform it at the concert.  This always ended up being the song that the students were most excited about performing and I know that it was 100% because of the fact that they made it themselves.  

After years of, for some reason or another, denying the inevitable, I finally admitted to myself that I wanted nothing more than to be a music teacher and embarked on the Masters program at RIC.  

so……..WHY?

Why did I want to be a teacher?

Why did I want to teach music specifically?

And why did I think it was an essential part of a child’s education?

As Sir Ken Robinson states so beautifully, “the arts are important not just for improving math scores but because they speak to parts of childrens being that are otherwise untouched.”

Because as Michael Wesch asserts, “we are all interconnected” and we must “urge our students to recognize their own significance.”  I believe that creating music together is a sure way to experience that interconnectivity;  That it provides an opportunity for students to learn that literally every single voice matters.  Each voice in the choir is contributing to a grand sound that only exists in that moment. 

Because Dana Boyd taught me that “youth need opportunities to develop the skills and knowledge to engage effectively and meaningfully.” 

The music classroom is a place that facilitates engagement. Students are working together to create a final product.  They must be sensitive (in the sense that they are paying attention in an effective and meaningful way) to the music, to one another and to themselves. 

Wesch also believes that education should provide students with the resources that they need to learn how to live a life worth living.  Making music, listening to music, experiencing music has all made my life worth living and I think I can instill that in my students. 

I believe that students learn best when they care about the subject matter and are made to feel that their contribution is significant and impactful. 

I believe that learning occurs when a student can interact with the subject and are offered ample opportunity to recognize their own improvement. 

I believe that learning occurs when each student's individuality is recognized and their differences are taken into consideration when designing the curriculum.

I believe that learning occurs when student’s creativity and curiosity are being fostered.

And when encouragement is an essential tenet of the classroom environment 

What I want to solve

This latest round of formal education has forced me to reflect on the experiences I have already had in the music classroom and to view them with a more refined lens, to ask questions, and to ponder solutions.  

I think back on my work with the JPS.  I try to recall all of the key moments and rehearsals that led to our final concerts.  And I begin to scrutinize the success of the a cappella project. 

When I take the joyous nostalgic filter off I realize that there were in fact students who were struggling. 

There were a number of students who were comfortable shouting out suggestions and taking the lead with the arrangement, but there were also some who did not have a chance to contribute any of their own ideas. I remember seeing the heartbreak on the faces of the students who auditioned for solos and didn’t get them.   I did my best at the time to make sure that every decision we made was one that the entire choir approved, and certainly every student participated in performing the song.  But now I can’t help but feel like there was an opportunity there to have better engaged the students who weren’t as musically advanced as some of the others in order to improve their overall experience and enjoyment.   

I think back to even my own high school chorus which had almost 200 students involved.  The range of abilities was, as you can imagine, expansive.  

I worry that although for some students chorus rehearsal was an experience that was enriching and fulfilling, for others it was a struggle that they looked forward to leaving behind.  

With my Why established, I zoomed out to the next level of Sinek’s golden circle: How?

The questions that plague me and that in turn have inspired my project are:

How do you make sure that none of your students are being left behind?

How do you make sure that each student, regardless of their ability-level, leaves your classroom with a sense of accomplishment?

What could I do as their teacher to ensure that if a student is struggling, they feel seen?

How can I ensure that each student knows that their contribution and their progress is important to not only themselves but to their peers as well?

    

The platform

I decided that I could design a google site that would address all of these questions.

The site has 6 sections that when clicked will bring students to a resource meant to help them and enrich their musical experience.  

At the start of Semester the class is played a number of pieces that are all options for our repertoire. Links to these pieces can all be accessed on the "Watch" section of the google site. Students may also use this link to upload videos of choral pieces that they are interested in and would like to choir to consider working on.

The "Vote" tab is where students are asked to participate in a survey where they can vote on the 4 pieces that they would like to work on.  This is empowering because the students are the ones who are deciding on their curriculum.

The role generator and the Sectional exit ticket will be accessed when the choir is asked to break out into sectionals.  This is when the sopranos head into one room to work on their part, the altos another...and so on.  The role generator will randomly select names which will determine student roles within the sectional.  

Time keeper- makes sure the group stays on track given the time frame, so that all material gets covered

Conductor- plays starting pitches, sets tempo, gives entrance cues

Recorder- responsible for capturing an audio recording of the final take of the session, which the students and myself will be able to access and use for reflection and assessment. 

After each sectional the students will be prompted to take 5 minutes to fill out the sectional exit ticket, which asks the following questions:

On a scale of 1-5:

How comfortable do you feel singing your part on

(x piece)

(y Piece)
(z piece)

Which sections do you feel you could use more time practicing?

Do you feel comfortable spending time practicing this on your own?

Would you like outside help to practice your part?

Which aspect do you think your section could spend more time practicing?

-singing correct pitches

-singing correct rhythms

-blend

-observing dynamics

-articulation

What do you feel like you improved personally in this session?

What do you feel the section as a whole did best?

The peer tutor section is where students can sign up to offer their help to fellow students who may need assistance.  Their contact information and availability will be posted here, making it a safe and easy way for students to reach out when they need to.  

With this platform I will be able to hear the voice, literally and figuratively, of every student.  With every rehearsal they are being offered a chance to reach out for help.  Those that would like help will have an easy way to find a mentor to reach out to and connect with. They are also being asked to self-assess and encouraged to recognize their personal progress.  Each student has an opportunity to make suggestions that will better the sound of the group as a whole.  And they will all be involved in choosing their own repertoire which, in a music classroom, is the curriculum.  

There is a quote that one of my professors loves to share, “art is how we decorate space.  Music is how we decorate time.” 

With my why established, and my resource in action, I look forward to seeing all of the ways my future students will decorate time. 

The Google Site

Dissecting Disney

 

I am unashamedly one of those self-proclaimed Disney Adults.

I've been going to Disney World since I was a literal fetus.

I've gone as a toddler, a kid, a teen, a young adult, a full grown adult with one other adult friend (Twice.  Both times for 8 days. Completely unjustified and irresponsible.  The entire time she and I would look at each other and ask, "what are we even doing???". We were so happy). And now with my partner and his two kids who are just as much the Disney World fanatics as I am.  

It is our happiest place on earth.  And when we are there we are living in a state of unquestioned pure bliss.  

....Which is why I appreciate Lesley's stance that enjoyment and critique can coexist.  

Because I absolutely do have an issue with some of the messages that are being administered to our kids through Disney movies and characters.  

It's funny.  The yellow dress that Soph is wearing in the pictures above is one we picked out together for her to wear in Magic Kingdom because she'd look like a little "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast.  In that setting and in that context, I was all about her admiring and associating with Belle's character. 

But if she were to adapt that to her everyday life I know that I would be concerned.  

I was 5 years old when the original Aladdin was released.  I was obsessed because as an Arab girl I saw a Disney Princess who looked like me.

Well.......kind of.  I struggled... a lot... knowing that I would never have her shape or her figure.  The dark features, sure.  Got it.  The tiny waist and the belly that I'd be perfectly comfortable exposing....never.  Which to me meant that I would never be considered beautiful.  

Moana was released not too long ago and I can't help but reflect on a thought that jumped into my head after first seeing it.  

I noticed her body type and how it actually resembled a somewhat realistic frame.  I excitedly thought, it could be within the realm of possibility that if I lose some weight I could spend some time working in Disney World as a real-life Moana!

I have still yet to see a Disney female protagonist with my build.  The closest one still would require me to change the way I look in order to fit into her costume.  And the fact that it made me excited, now...well, just kind of makes me feel sad.  

Watching Moana this time with the princess convention chart in hand I was able to delve deeper into what exactly the writers were telling us through her story.  In the end I felt that although some messages were problematic, overall it was certainly a step in the right direction.

I'll Start with the Bad:

One of the most surprising things that hit me was the inference that is made relating to Te Ka and Te Fiti.  

Te Fiti is a mother goddess who holds the power to create life which she shares with the world.  Without her heart she becomes Te Ka, a demon of earth and fire.  The realization I had was that this story is telling us that a woman, when stripped of her ability to create life, becomes a being of terrible darkness.  

WOAH.

Our chart also asked us to notice the significance of Moana's hair, specifically when she put it up.  

I never would have noticed this without being prompted.  

Anytime Moana wanted to be taken seriously or present herself in a light of authority, such as when she was rehearsing her eventual confrontation with Maui, her hair was up. 

The very subtle, almost subliminal message here is that we should reduce our femininity in times when we want to be seen as "in charge".

Unfortunately, I feel as though this is very much a reality we all actually have to deal with in real life.  

Onto the Good!

As she clearly states over and over again throughout the movie, Moana is NOT a princess.  She is not a daughter of a king whose role is solely to be beautiful, marry a prince and live happily ever after.  She is expected to lead as a chief of her tribe. She is given true responsibility and must become the person that her community can turn to when in any kind of trouble, even though she's not a man!! (GASP!).  The fact that she is a daughter and not a son never even comes up, which is great.  There was no dialogue that either straight up stated or even inferred that she was a second choice as a girl and that she was only filling the role because she didn't have a male counterpart to do so.  

I think this is so important because I believe that sometimes it takes NOT talking about something in order to normalize it.  The fact that no one mentions her gender in the context of taking over as Chief gives us the impression that it was never even an issue.  It didn't need to be discussed or questioned because no one thought of it as out of the ordinary.  

Often times I notice in our society we will see messages of acceptance but they are paired with stating the differences that exist.  

For instance, a TV show where a couple has a son or daughter who is getting married to someone of the same gender.  They will state something like, "Our son is marrying his boyfriend, but we are so so happy for him."

As opposed to simply, "Our son is getting married and we are so happy for him."

The second phrase doesn't mention anything about the son being gay.  In this reality, why would they even need to mention it? It's completely normal.  Omitting it is not negating his sexuality, it's completely embracing it.  

I think the same idea applies to Moana and her gender.  

Moana is also a protagonist who is willing to risk her life to save all of humanity. Her pay off in the end is not the love of a romantic interest, it is that her island is restored and her tribe will continue to thrive.  

Even in Mulan, another story of a strong female character who is willing to sacrifice her life for her family, gets wrapped up nicely in the end with Mulan getting her man, the strong and handsome warrior. 

Not Moana.  Her happily ever after is simply saving her people.  

This fact alone is why I would be okay with little Soph rocking a Moana costume whether it be at Disney World or at home.   

   

Bandlab Tutorial!

Hey All,

I have had some experience working and creating with Bandlab with my music students and I'm excited to share a little bit about the platform with you.

I hope it inspires you to open it up for yourself and take a shot at creating something really fun!

Band Lab Tutorial

Six, Going on Sixteen

 

Rethinking Popular Culture and Media, Page 28

Geralyn McLaughlin has been a K-1 teacher for 18 years.  In her more recent years she has been entirely caught off guard by the problems she has been encountering around the over-sexualization of children who are her student's age (5,6,7 year olds). 

As she listened in on her students reciting lyrics to each other about partying in the club and drinking Hennessy, she realized that mainstream media was taking away their "chance to just be little kids".

In a class that she enrolled in called "Media Madness", she learned "how the corporate world deliberately targets vulnerable children," and how, "child development experts now work with marketing firms to optimize the impact of commercials according to the developmental stage of the target audience". 

McLaughlin explains the resulting age-compression which means that "children at ever younger ages are doing what older children used to do."

This age-compression which is spurred by the media has caused, "children [to] become involved in and learn about sexual issues and behavior they do not yet have the intellectual or emotional ability to understand and that can confuse and harm them."

After so many discussions with fellow teachers, parents, and past students she decided that the remedy existed in prioritizing imaginative play.  As she explains, when kids play with the big box shiny toys that are associated with TV shows and characters that the kids know, they are simply replaying a script.  A script which usually boxes boys into roles of violence and roles that tell girls that they need to be sexy. It is entirely limiting.  When they use their imaginations with simple toys instead, they get to create a new world and build anything they want. She wrote in a school newsletter, "Children need to play creatively.  They need to invent.  They practice problem-solving as their play evolves."

Like Turkle, she "wanted to encourage kids to turn off their screens and become more connected with the natural world, their classmates, and their own selves."

Like Mitra, she "designed unit[s] to celebrate and highlight children's ability to begin charge of their own learning as they create stories, invent problems, and evolve as powerful individuals. 

She witnessed how instead of boys playing Power Rangers and pretending to beat each other up, they were pretending to be doctors who were attending to sick baby dolls.  And instead of girls trying to emulate the Bratz dolls, with their 6 inch heels, push up bras and overdone makeup, they pretended to be the childcare workers in the hospital, identifying symptoms and suggesting cures.  The biggest difference was that this type of play left the children feeling satisfied.  

 

She started a number of school-wide initiatives that were meant to address the age-compression problem.  

1. The Toy Lending Library

with the aid of donations from local stores, families and the community she was able to build a collection of toys that spurred creativity and curiosity which students could sign out and take home with them.  

2. Turn Off Week

Students and their families made a pledge to spend one week without screens.  They prepared everyone for the week with assemblies and in-class conversations that were full of suggestions for what one could do instead of spending time in front of a screen.  It was a success, and most of the students found that they ended up spending more time outside, more time learning or improving upon skills, more time connecting with their family.  

3. Family Game Night

An evening at the school when students and their families would get to participate in a pot-luck dinner and interactive games all together such as Twister, Uno, bingo, Blackjack, Spoons and Charades.  

Parents continually asked when the next game night would be.  

She recognizes that trying to fight against mainstream media's assault on our young is an uphill battle but that, "protecting them from a corporate world that forces them to grow up too soon, and promoting their creative play are two giant leaps in the right direction". 

Just Brainstorming Over Here

 My first idea was inspired by two things

1. When serving as the assistant director of the Junior Providence Singers I led the group of high-school choral students in collaborating together to create an a cappella arrangement of a contemporary song.  I loved getting to hear their ideas and watching as their creative process unfolded.  The piece ended up being the song they were most excited about singing at the concert.  

2.  This past academic year, students were not allowed to sing or play instruments together in the classroom.  This meant that they were doing a lot of work online instead and learning an entirely new musical genre: digital music.  I saw the value in this and the skills they learned from the digital platforms that could in fact be transferred to all types of music making.

So I thought what I might do is design a project for which students will be put into groups of 6-8, they will choose a song that they would like to arrange as an cappella piece, collaborate together to write their piece on a platform such as BandLab, then record themselves performing their arrangement. 

But then I thought about actually putting the project into practice and worried that there would be a large percentage of students for which this project may seem too difficult or just out of their range of abilities.  So I asked myself in what ways could I adapt this project to accommodate students who may have trouble.  

I thought even broader than just the scope of this one project and became concerned with the wide range of abilities that will exist in my classroom and how I would try to bridge that gap every single day in the classroom.  

I want chorus to be a place where every person who chose to sign up feels good about being there.  I want the students who may not have the "natural abilities" of some others to leave getting just as much out of the rehearsal and with the same sense of accomplishment as everyone else in the class.  

How could I use digital media to ensure that would be the case?

Would it be a platform on which students could do daily check-ins and ask for help if and when they need it?

Would it be a living document that assigns roles to students when they break out into sectionals, has the students record themselves and asks them to self-assess and determine which sections need more work?

I'm not sure yet.

But my goal over the next couple of days is to reach out to my own music teachers and ask them about the strategies they used to help keep everyone involved, engaged, and feeling the same level of accomplishment regardless of ability level.  

We Need our Grannies.

 Sugata Mitra had an unconventional idea which led him to place computers in holes of the walls in super remote and incredibly poor villages around India.  Download a few programs onto the computer.  Watch as the towns children would flock to the computer, children who would ask, "What is this? What does it do?".  To which he would respond, "I have no idea!".  Then he would leave.

This idea stemmed from his curiosity surrounding the number of "gifted" children in rich communities and the supposed lack there-of in poor communities.  

And the experiment was to see how much learning would occur in an environment where the kids had to organize their own education, with no outside guidance.  

After setting up the computer with his chosen programs and leaving the children to figure everything out on their own, he would return months later to observe and record what had happened.

Every single time he returned to a village, he discovered results which proved his theory that schooling today as we know it is obsolete and outdated.  That the antiquated education system which was created hundreds of years ago and meant to turn out students who were all identical to one another needed to become a thing of the past.  He found that the children were thriving by creating their own learning environments.

He provided each community of children with only 3 things

1. Broadband

2. Collaboration

3. Encouragement

The encouragement came in "granny-style".

Granny Style: A form of encouragement that involves observing, asking questions, then expressing visual excitement and awe over the answers.  Comments may include, "wow!! how did you learn how to do that?!" or, "I would never have been able to do that when I was your age!!"

Mitra proposes that a new and improved model of education would be designed around his S.O.L.E. model (student organized learning environments), and teachers would adopt the "granny" mentality which would allow them to pose meaningful questions then stand back and admire the results. Instead of making their students learn, they are letting their students learn.

It's so interesting to think of education this way.  In a not so distant time, the youth of today will have instant access to the answers for just about any question they could possibly ask.  So it makes sense, for so many reasons, that the model of spewing out information and facts for students to attempt to absorb and memorize is pointless.  All Mitra does for the children he speaks about is provide them with a resource, a question, and some encouragement.  They naturally had all of the tools they needed to facilitate their own learning from there.  

Just as Ken Robinson says, if you can spark curiosity in a child, you don't have to do anything else.  It is the human in us that wants to learn and when we are inspired to do so, we will.  It seems to me that Mitra has proven this with his experiments.  

I think the number one reason that I wanted to become a teacher was really so that I could be an encourager.  I believe in kids and it means the world to me to get to tell them that, and then get to see what they accomplish.  

Connected

 "Let's talk about how we can use the digital technology of our dreams to make THIS life, the life that we love." 

Sherry Turkle closes her TedTalk entitled, "Connected, but alone" with this inspiring call to action.  

Turkle, who was once on the cover of WIRED magazine, has changed her tune as of recently.  It's not that she thinks we all need to abandon the technology that we have all become so reliant on, but that we need to change the way that we connect with technology so that we are actually making genuine connections with one another.  

I found myself nodding along to her talk when she spoke about how we as a human race have lost our ability to be alone.  For even a second.  I admit that I am someone who will take out my phone while sitting at a red light, will put on a podcast while I cook if no one else is home, and will always fall asleep by watching an episode of Bob's Burgers.  I can relate to the humans that she is referring to who refuse to experience a moment of loneliness or boredom.

Even when I am with the people who I love, the lot of us will spend a significant amount of that time on our own phones scrolling through social media.  

Turkle refers to her coined phrase, "the goldilocks effect".  What she is describing is this current phenomena in which we cultivate some form of relationships online but they are as an altered version of ourselves.  We allow people to get close, but not too close.  Not close enough to see the real vulnerable sides of ourselves.  

We are using our technology to hide from each other.

And although we are all culprits of this behavior, we all also end up with the feeling that No one is listening.  

She urges that our families, our friends, our communities and our planet need us.  They need us to be present.  They need us to listen.  And if our behavior and our reliance on technology as it is today continues, we won't be there for them.   

But she presents all of this in a positive light and with a hopeful tone.  I'm pretty sure she believes that we all still have a chance!  In fact, I think we are all currently experiencing what it could look like to form connections by using digital media through the work we've gotten to do in this course so far.  

Michael Wesch is stressing a very similar point in his article, "Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance".

"We are all interconnected, sharing one planet, and our future depends on us and future generations."

He, too is imploring us to inspire students to show up for each other and for themselves.  

The root of the problem in education, as Wesch describes it, is that students are struggling to find meaning and significance in their education.

With most classrooms set up in a way that allows schools to pack the room with students and pump them back out after having received their required credits, it's hard not to liken formal education to something like factory farming.  It has dulled the students and their curiosity and lead them to care solely about the bare minimum they need to do in order to pass.

We must urge our students to recognize their own significance and the ways in which they can impact the world.  

I think by implementing both Turkle's and Wesch's ideas for the future, we've got a shot at seeing the next generation grow into a population of conscious, connected and curious people who could make this world a much better place.