One of the biggest things that has stuck with me a week after finishing this Shakespeare course is the teacher repeatedly making the point that we must "land" our lines on the listeners. That it's not enough to know them and say them, even with great interpretive emotion, but that if you don't connect with the listener, you might as well be reciting Shakespeare in your car (no, I never do this...well, hardly ever...). Raise the stakes. Feel the importance of the words, implore the listener to hear you, understand you, go along with you. This is the lesson I am carrying around with me as a music teacher of children who, more often than not, would rather listen to each other than me. It's not that they don't like me. It's just that the things going on in their social world are far more important to them than anything I might want to say to them. Hisa, our teacher, reminded us again and again to "check in; are they getting it?" With her eyes and her gestures and a lovable habit of saying "do you know what I mean?" or "does that make sense?" after her explanations, she pushed us to look for our audience's eyes and signs of understanding.
It seems obvious that a teacher in a roomful of students should be striving to get them to understand and "get" what she is saying. But I know myself. I know that there have been times when I have wondered whether anyone cares enough to get it, or that maybe that what I am trying to get to them is maybe not important enough. It is at these times that I have underlying, unspoken doubts about what I am doing: Does music really matter? Does it really matter if the kids actually play a song? Or is it enough for them just to think they are playing a song, pushing a bow back and forth on open strings, or blowing random notes into a horn? The obvious answer to these questions is "of course those things matter!" But when it seems that said roomful of kids would rather talk to each other, or make random noise on their instruments, or daydream, then I do wonder why I bother. And I also wonder if this feeling is unique to me, or is something that other teachers, and music teachers in particular, share.
I find myself imagining that if I could just say the right things, I would have every kid playing like a virtuoso, motivated to practice that elusive 30 minutes a day, and showing up to my classes because they dare not miss one word of those important, and ever-entertaining mots falling from my golden lips. I imagine that other teachers, my colleagues, all have found the right things to say and their classes are full of eager, silently-listening, paying-attention musical geniuses.
Since starting the Shakespeare class, I have been studying in my working life how to be sure the kids are getting what I am saying. I have spoken Shakespeare's lines in my acting class, and felt the weight of their importance. I know the stakes. I must believe that words I speak to my students are just as important. The stakes are just as high. Maybe most important, I must find "the impulse to speak" that Hisa had us look for before we uttered one word. As teachers, we ASSUME an impulse to speak, a RIGHT to speak, but if we are honest, we would probably admit that we speak more than we should. I know I do. If I want to "land" my words on my students' understanding, to impart something valuable to them, then I must keep the words' value high, by making them rare. Kids learn by doing. I should only be giving them enough words to be sure they can DO. The end.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
March
Rainy Sunday, spring teasing us, one music festival over and another one- and spring break- two weeks away, we are in the rolling along part of the year, where we can actually get into a rhythm of weekly classes, going more or less regularly along. After the music festival in February, kids have been coming back to class out of the woodwork, reassured by me that we are done with that really hard music for awhile, and can get back to building their fundamentals and playing easier songs.
I like this time of year, though Spring Break always comes not a minute too soon. There is a steadiness to the schedule, and we get to dig in and learn things like slurs on the strings and "going over the break" in clarinets. The beginning students are beginning to build a little repertoire so they can play something at their spring concert.
But it is also at this time that some kids are coming to me, instrument in hand, saying they are here to turn it in. These are usually beginners who, from the first, had trouble remembering to come to class. They had an idea that playing an instrument would be fun; that first rush of coming to music class, being assigned an instrument of their very own, and those first couple of lessons where it was all so exciting passed, and they realized that they actually would be required to put forth some effort. For some, the challenge of keeping up with classwork that they miss for the time they're are in music class is too much, or at least that's what they say.
So here is where my thinking goes kind of haywire. I have read, many times, figures that suggest that students who study music throughout school do better in school. They get better grades, score higher on standardized testing and are more likely to go to college. This idea seems to be pretty universally accepted. But this point, right here, where children begin to self-select their ongoing committment to music, is where we need to look to determine chicken/egg first-ness.
We teachers of the Arts in general and Music in particular use these facts to advocate for our programs. But what are we really saying? I am haunted by the student who a) keeps forgetting to bring his instrument, b) struggles to get any meaningful sounds out of that instrument when he does come with it to class c) has no clue how to practice at home and d) falls behind in his regular classwork as a result of the 45 minutes a week he is in music class. The way our music classes are structured now, a certain percentage of our initial number of students will fall into this category, and any statistics we might like to cite to prove the value of MUSIC IN SCHOOL are necessarily skewed by this inevitability.
I have been attempting to look at standardized test scores over time in regards to our own ongoing students in Pasadena Unified. I have not found any conclusive evidence that the little bit of music we are able to do with elementary students has any effect at all. Maybe as we follow these same students through high school, we will find significant differences between those who stick with music, and those who don't. But here's the thing: Those students who stick with music all the way through high school usually had little doubt from the beginning that they would do so. That's the kind of student they are. They do well in school because that's the kind of student they are.
There is another category of students for whom music is so important that, even if they struggle to keep up with school work, they continue music. They may not be the A+ students in any academic sense, but they show up and do the work. They may not be the best musician in the class, but maybe music in their school is what they show up FOR. These kids may get through school, barely, but get through they do. I met a former student who was in this category a couple years ago working as an aide at one of my elementary schools. She had been a really tough, at-risk 6th grader when I first knew her, but she played clarinet, I might say, fiercely, and it was playing clarinet, by her admission as a grown-up, that got her to graduation from high school. I love these students- their passion and their resiliance. Statistically, they don't add to a school's API, but they don't add to the drop-out rate either, and that's worth something. But most important in this discussion is that music becomes a sort of life-line for them.
I am beginning to realize that it might be time for an overhaul of our whole music program. First thing I would like to do is make music class part of the schedule for EVERY student. And it doesn't have to be an instrumental music class. General music literacy is being lost, and it might be the very thing that actually affects brain development and academic achievement. If we work with whole classes, giving the classroom teacher much needed release time and removing student anxiety about missing classwork, and do this in the early grades, we will possibly affect real change. We would also create a pool of students who, by fourth or fifth grade, are more ready and able to handle the challenge of learning an orchestra or band instrument.
My long-time dream is this: General music in K-2, with focus on singing, beginning note reading, rhythm, movement, maybe some keyboard knowledge. In third and fourth grade everyone studies violin. In fifth grade everyone has a choice: either to continue with strings or start a wind instrument. If we did this, consistently and equitably I do believe there would be benefits to every child at every level, and I also think that there would be many fewer instruments turned in in March.
I like this time of year, though Spring Break always comes not a minute too soon. There is a steadiness to the schedule, and we get to dig in and learn things like slurs on the strings and "going over the break" in clarinets. The beginning students are beginning to build a little repertoire so they can play something at their spring concert.
But it is also at this time that some kids are coming to me, instrument in hand, saying they are here to turn it in. These are usually beginners who, from the first, had trouble remembering to come to class. They had an idea that playing an instrument would be fun; that first rush of coming to music class, being assigned an instrument of their very own, and those first couple of lessons where it was all so exciting passed, and they realized that they actually would be required to put forth some effort. For some, the challenge of keeping up with classwork that they miss for the time they're are in music class is too much, or at least that's what they say.
So here is where my thinking goes kind of haywire. I have read, many times, figures that suggest that students who study music throughout school do better in school. They get better grades, score higher on standardized testing and are more likely to go to college. This idea seems to be pretty universally accepted. But this point, right here, where children begin to self-select their ongoing committment to music, is where we need to look to determine chicken/egg first-ness.
We teachers of the Arts in general and Music in particular use these facts to advocate for our programs. But what are we really saying? I am haunted by the student who a) keeps forgetting to bring his instrument, b) struggles to get any meaningful sounds out of that instrument when he does come with it to class c) has no clue how to practice at home and d) falls behind in his regular classwork as a result of the 45 minutes a week he is in music class. The way our music classes are structured now, a certain percentage of our initial number of students will fall into this category, and any statistics we might like to cite to prove the value of MUSIC IN SCHOOL are necessarily skewed by this inevitability.
I have been attempting to look at standardized test scores over time in regards to our own ongoing students in Pasadena Unified. I have not found any conclusive evidence that the little bit of music we are able to do with elementary students has any effect at all. Maybe as we follow these same students through high school, we will find significant differences between those who stick with music, and those who don't. But here's the thing: Those students who stick with music all the way through high school usually had little doubt from the beginning that they would do so. That's the kind of student they are. They do well in school because that's the kind of student they are.
There is another category of students for whom music is so important that, even if they struggle to keep up with school work, they continue music. They may not be the A+ students in any academic sense, but they show up and do the work. They may not be the best musician in the class, but maybe music in their school is what they show up FOR. These kids may get through school, barely, but get through they do. I met a former student who was in this category a couple years ago working as an aide at one of my elementary schools. She had been a really tough, at-risk 6th grader when I first knew her, but she played clarinet, I might say, fiercely, and it was playing clarinet, by her admission as a grown-up, that got her to graduation from high school. I love these students- their passion and their resiliance. Statistically, they don't add to a school's API, but they don't add to the drop-out rate either, and that's worth something. But most important in this discussion is that music becomes a sort of life-line for them.
I am beginning to realize that it might be time for an overhaul of our whole music program. First thing I would like to do is make music class part of the schedule for EVERY student. And it doesn't have to be an instrumental music class. General music literacy is being lost, and it might be the very thing that actually affects brain development and academic achievement. If we work with whole classes, giving the classroom teacher much needed release time and removing student anxiety about missing classwork, and do this in the early grades, we will possibly affect real change. We would also create a pool of students who, by fourth or fifth grade, are more ready and able to handle the challenge of learning an orchestra or band instrument.
My long-time dream is this: General music in K-2, with focus on singing, beginning note reading, rhythm, movement, maybe some keyboard knowledge. In third and fourth grade everyone studies violin. In fifth grade everyone has a choice: either to continue with strings or start a wind instrument. If we did this, consistently and equitably I do believe there would be benefits to every child at every level, and I also think that there would be many fewer instruments turned in in March.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Music and Shakespeare
"...the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been taking acting classes. These were fun; I learned some things about myself and acting but I wanted more. So now I have bitten into another class called "Speaking Shakespeare" taught through A Noise Within, a classic repertory theater soon to move to Pasadena (yay!). We have been chewing on a speech from Hamlet for the last four weeks, and I have decided that what I have gained from this chewing is as valuable to my development as a musician/music teacher as it would ever be to some vague notion I might have of trying my hand at actual acting.
The teacher of the class, Hisa Takakuwa, is incredibly knowledgeable about everything to do with Shakespeare: historical context, common practice, deep meanings of words and phrases, the details of the work in the canon, and how to talk to actors to get them to see what she sees. I know that there are many ways to approach Shakespeare, but immersing myself in this one expert's approach empowers me to believe that what I now know about Shakespeare, and Hamlet, is based on solid scholarship.
I thought I was taking this class for recreation. I have always loved Shakespeare and thought taking this class would allow me to delve deeper into that love. It has. But something else is happening in my brain. The words of Shakespeare have begun to run through my head like music. The rhythms of the pentameters, the irregularities of those pentameters, the alliterations and onomatopoeia, have become as "worms" in my brain, filling my dreams and waking times like the catchy hooks of pop songs. Thinking about how to say these words, how to glean their meaning and deliver it and make it "land" on another actor gives me a whole new way to think about teaching and learning music.
My middle school students have undertaken to learn an adaptation of Gustav Holst's Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity as a possible piece to play at the Forum Festival in May. This piece, though an adaptation, is a real challenge for kids this age, and they are rising to the challenge, eagerly. The trumpets are pushing their ranges upwards. We are working out major choreography for the 4 percussionists so that all the parts can be covered. We have recruited a former percussionist to play tuba. He has never played a brass instrument before this year, and is taking to it in a big way. The flutes are flowing over their beautiful harmonized arpeggios like pros. (Now we just have to figure out how to HEAR them!) The violins are playing in the stratosphere of their instruments with tremolos. My formerly timid trombone player is finding the brass in his instrument. We are shaking the rafters, rattling the windows, and having a blast. And here's where Shakespeare comes in. I find myself talking to them about how to play this monster the same way Hisa talks to us about how to play Shakespeare. Getting beyond the reading of the notes-or words- and hitting the listener with meaning.
Though Jupiter is a jolly planet, he gets pretty intense, and in our adaptation, the really jolly theme is not even presented. I kind of wonder why, since it is actually very easy melodically and harmonically. What we do have, though, are the syncopated tunes in the low brass and strings which are echoed in the percussion. Not easy to teach, not easy to learn, but we persevere, and are making progress. We have talked about the army coming up over the hill to get the trumpets' bells UP so we can hear the fanfare announcing the arrival of said army...maybe it's the circus that's coming. The snare drummer has to play that figure like gunshots. Now, I'm not a fan of guns in any shape or form, and have been known to come down hard on kids for turning clarinets into pretend rifles. But with the images from Henry V in my head (my husband is also a huge Shakespeare fan and we had just watched the Kenneth Branagh version) all I could think was that those snare drum sounds needed to sound like shots. And the imagery worked for the musician. Crisp and clean, he delivered. We talked about energy in bows, about listening across the orchestra to others who have the same figure as you. We have been talking about how the audience will hear this piece. And I want to talk more about the jolly aspect...(I really miss that one theme....maybe I ought to try my hand at an addendum to the arrangement.)
It is thanks to these classes in Shakespeare that I have new vocabulary to use to impart understanding. I don't know if the kids see or hear something new in the way I talk to them, but I feel something new, and that's got to be good, right?
I think these classes should count as professional development -and therefore be tax-deductible- don't you?
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been taking acting classes. These were fun; I learned some things about myself and acting but I wanted more. So now I have bitten into another class called "Speaking Shakespeare" taught through A Noise Within, a classic repertory theater soon to move to Pasadena (yay!). We have been chewing on a speech from Hamlet for the last four weeks, and I have decided that what I have gained from this chewing is as valuable to my development as a musician/music teacher as it would ever be to some vague notion I might have of trying my hand at actual acting.
The teacher of the class, Hisa Takakuwa, is incredibly knowledgeable about everything to do with Shakespeare: historical context, common practice, deep meanings of words and phrases, the details of the work in the canon, and how to talk to actors to get them to see what she sees. I know that there are many ways to approach Shakespeare, but immersing myself in this one expert's approach empowers me to believe that what I now know about Shakespeare, and Hamlet, is based on solid scholarship.
I thought I was taking this class for recreation. I have always loved Shakespeare and thought taking this class would allow me to delve deeper into that love. It has. But something else is happening in my brain. The words of Shakespeare have begun to run through my head like music. The rhythms of the pentameters, the irregularities of those pentameters, the alliterations and onomatopoeia, have become as "worms" in my brain, filling my dreams and waking times like the catchy hooks of pop songs. Thinking about how to say these words, how to glean their meaning and deliver it and make it "land" on another actor gives me a whole new way to think about teaching and learning music.
My middle school students have undertaken to learn an adaptation of Gustav Holst's Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity as a possible piece to play at the Forum Festival in May. This piece, though an adaptation, is a real challenge for kids this age, and they are rising to the challenge, eagerly. The trumpets are pushing their ranges upwards. We are working out major choreography for the 4 percussionists so that all the parts can be covered. We have recruited a former percussionist to play tuba. He has never played a brass instrument before this year, and is taking to it in a big way. The flutes are flowing over their beautiful harmonized arpeggios like pros. (Now we just have to figure out how to HEAR them!) The violins are playing in the stratosphere of their instruments with tremolos. My formerly timid trombone player is finding the brass in his instrument. We are shaking the rafters, rattling the windows, and having a blast. And here's where Shakespeare comes in. I find myself talking to them about how to play this monster the same way Hisa talks to us about how to play Shakespeare. Getting beyond the reading of the notes-or words- and hitting the listener with meaning.
Though Jupiter is a jolly planet, he gets pretty intense, and in our adaptation, the really jolly theme is not even presented. I kind of wonder why, since it is actually very easy melodically and harmonically. What we do have, though, are the syncopated tunes in the low brass and strings which are echoed in the percussion. Not easy to teach, not easy to learn, but we persevere, and are making progress. We have talked about the army coming up over the hill to get the trumpets' bells UP so we can hear the fanfare announcing the arrival of said army...maybe it's the circus that's coming. The snare drummer has to play that figure like gunshots. Now, I'm not a fan of guns in any shape or form, and have been known to come down hard on kids for turning clarinets into pretend rifles. But with the images from Henry V in my head (my husband is also a huge Shakespeare fan and we had just watched the Kenneth Branagh version) all I could think was that those snare drum sounds needed to sound like shots. And the imagery worked for the musician. Crisp and clean, he delivered. We talked about energy in bows, about listening across the orchestra to others who have the same figure as you. We have been talking about how the audience will hear this piece. And I want to talk more about the jolly aspect...(I really miss that one theme....maybe I ought to try my hand at an addendum to the arrangement.)
It is thanks to these classes in Shakespeare that I have new vocabulary to use to impart understanding. I don't know if the kids see or hear something new in the way I talk to them, but I feel something new, and that's got to be good, right?
I think these classes should count as professional development -and therefore be tax-deductible- don't you?
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