I surprisingly really enjoyed this class. Being completely honest, I have heard stories about Dr. Watson being one, very talented, and two, pretty close to the jazz instructor in Whiplash. He didn't seem like that during the class. It was cool because throughout the class everything progressed naturally and just felt like we were playing around. My other immediate thought: I needed to practice my musicianship skills. Dr. Watson knew the transpositions for every instrument in the room, his rhythm was impeccable, and his improvisation was great. From what I hear, in the jazz ensemble rehearsals he can play warm ups in different modes which is a concept I don't even quite understand myself. Seeing his knowledge made me want to increase mine.
It was interesting to see how everything we did in class related back to his teaching objectives for the class. I also liked that he had figured out how each of those goals related back to the curriculum. I thought this was interesting because I feel like we have seen so many different ways of teaching music and contemporary ideas but, haven't really seen how they fit into the curriculum that we will be required to teach. It seemed as though Dr. Watson was just enjoying his time improvising with us until he revealed what he was teaching us. Improvising, rhythm, ear training, how to assess students, aural learning, the difference between abstract and concrete themes, and also confidence when individually asking us to improvise. If this were an actual jazz ensemble or a full day workshop, it would have been cool to do some type of group work exersize with the melody that we learned. Maybe later presenting it to the class and seeing the different combinations we could have gotten. Without this though it was still a great class.
0 Comments
Our class with Kelly was very interesting. I thought that the amount of interactive components was perfectly balanced and, other than running short on time at the end, it was well thought out. It was great that she brought her real students into the lesson and taught from her real experiences. I felt like it added a sense of personal presence to the lecture. It was very obvious that she not only had experience teaching but I could tell that she loves it. I would have never thought to bring in the story books as a response to classical music not telling a story. I would have shown him documentation of the story behind a piece or given a small history lesson of the era, for example the civil war. The books brought in an aspect of individual curiosity rather than just absorbing information. At first I was quite upset that my group was the only group that received a different author but as we proceeded in the activity I was actually glad. Our book had a clear story and got me invested quite quickly. I really enjoyed how well the illustrations coincided with the story. Like the page when his father died having no onomotopia. Over all, the class kept me engaged and helped me to think about the students that are forced to be there. It also made me realize how attached music is to other creative aspects. For example, composing songs to go with paintings or reading a book and internally hearing a song, and how easily children can access this.
I think that this was my favourite guest lecture from this class. Ruth Wright is a very well spoken and easy going woman. She really knows how to keep the attention of a room and how to plan out her time. I also think that this was my favourite guest lecture because I always find it interesting to see how other countries are going about education, or just how other countries organize themselves in general. I admire the initiative Ruth has for piloting a program herself in a country that she wasn't born in.
I especially agreed with the six defining factors of the Musical Futures; entitlement, relevance, empowerment, personalization, aural and sustainability. These are things that I think should be included in all education programs, not just music education. In fact, I feel like these things people should experience on a daily level with the things they are passionate about. Like Ruth said, it's hard to say definitive answers so early in the Canadian version of the program. However, the findings from the UK version, which is now in more than 2000 schools, reports that is doing wonders. I mean, doesn't every teacher want to see lower levels of absenteeism, increased confidence in students and increased engagement. My favourite part of the entire presentation was the part Ruth talked about our right to be musical as being a basic human right. She referenced that "music is encoded in the human genome". That our bodies where capable of creating music to each other before they were capable to speaking to each other. From this point on music has constantly changed. I think its a given that what music we integrate into learning should change as well. I always thought cirriculums that did this were so progressive. Once Ruth mentioned that although we had brought in new versions of music we kept the same pedagogical approaches my eyes were opened, that's why the band arrangement of pop songs, or analysing a rock song never brought in new music students. I think the education systems ability to add in newer music shows that we don't see children as musical blank pages. We know that they have favourite musical genres and we try to appeal to that. I really enjoyed the time we had to try out what Ruth was talking about. When we split up into groups and had free reign about how we learned the instruments. I think it probably wet down a little differently than it would in an actual Musical Futures classroom because most of us already know how to play guitar, drums or bass. My group decided to do a rendition of I Want To Hold Your Hand by The Beatles completely done on xylophones. It may be biased to say but I think that our was the best. Usually I don't enjoy doing spontaneous group activities but, I don't know, I really enjoyed it this time. I feel torn about this workshop. To be quite honest, I wasn't excited about coming to school on a Saturday (and it didn't help that I was late because I thought it started at 9:30). I'm torn because I enjoyed the content and the way the speaker approached addressing us but I didn't enjoy a lot of the interactive portions. As I've mentioned before, if groups are nessicary I would rather be in charge of who is in my group. I understand that this is hard in a group like the one today, who didn't all know each other. Near the beginning, when he gave us individual time to figure out an ostinato and then had volunteers show the group was more comfortable than being forced to perform it. Most of his points were already very in line with my beliefs of what a teacher should be and I feel as though he made quite the effort to connect with every person there.
I also really enjoyed his passion. I was talking about this with someone the other day, that when people are passionate about what they are doing, it doesn't matter if you like that same thing, you're intrigued. I see it all the time in music or when I'm explaining the plot of a tv show to my brother. It was the same today. His passion for student centered teaching is what made certain parts enjoyable. He is very well thought out and it looked liked his direction for our time together flowed vey nicely. The thing that really put the day into perspective for me was when he said "student centered teaching doesn't mean less structure, it means more guidance". This cleared up a lot of questions I had about student center teaching. How do you stay with the curriculum if the students are leading? How do you keep students on task? Where is the line between student centered and student led? I grasp the concept of student centered teaching more now, although I feel like I won't truly know what it looks like or feels like until I have experiences in the area. I admired his energy through the entire workshop. It felt as though there was no point in which he got discouraged or tired, or at least let it show through. I don't know if this is his personality or if it's something he turns on as teacher. In the past few weeks I've realized that I notice teacher's outward expression when they teach. I think this is because through out highschool I had a few teachers that would one day be completely happy and an enthousiastic teacher and than the next day either get mad at every turn or not even speak to students. I am a strong believe that teachers shouldn't let their emotions guide their interactions with their students. If they worked in an office they wouldn't get mad at their coworkers or clients. That was a long winded answer to say that I felt engaged everytime he was speaking because his energy was high and his intination was exciting, which is another indicator that he phacilitaed the public speaking aspect very well. My first thought when meeting Leslie through Skype was that she was well spoken and thoughtful. This surprised me because she seemed quite young looked quite young, which was validated by her response of teaching for only five years. The fact that she was younger actually made me relate to her ore and be able to but myself in her shoes. I appreciated how honest she was with her answers to our questions, from articulating her frustrations with this teaching method to simply saying that she would have a strong enough answer. I agree with her approach to teaching music especially because most students only get a formal music education till eighth grade. However, she did mention that the more formal band stream isn't as popular as the pop music stream. That brought me back to the conversation we had in class about the decreasing interest in classical music. Keeping in mind that there is no "right" answer to this, I think that her and her collegues have created a great music program that relays music to students how it really is, fun and relatable. I don't, however, think that they are creating a more interesting program to promote classical music. This also isn't they're focus. I enjoyed how open she was to technology in her classroom. I've been taught be teachers who believe that there is no place for technology in the classroom. I think that it can be a great help and that there would be less of a "technology problem" or "cellphone problem" if they were encouraged to be used for good and informative purposes in the classroom.
I really enjoyed Dr. Hopkins lecture. I understood his approach very well although, I felt that he sped through the content quite fast. As I said in my first annotated bibliography, I felt that his lecture was speaking to aspects of education that I already thought needed some sort of reformation. The most interesting part of his presentation was when he showed us the compositions made by beginner instrumental students. Although there was no notation used, it was still some of the most creative pieces of music I've seen. I've sung soundscape and graphic notation pieces in my choir and know how much deeper the expression of music can be when interpreted through the performer's eyes rather than trying to replicate notes on a page. I believed that music and someone's progression in it shouldn't be marked in general and I wanted to know his opinion on this idea. After class I asked him one on one and he told me that he agreed with me, and said that was one of the reasons he took on recreating the curriculum. To create something closer to how music should be experienced while existing in a school system that "academicks" music. He directed me to the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" to read about that topic and how one person had achieved this.
|
Archives
March 2017
Categories |