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.
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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. |
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