"Houston, We've Got a Problem" Reflection

This article outlined the author's concern that many children are growing up today in single-parent homes and that this is a concern for our society.  While I agree that it benefits children to be raised in a home with a parenting team of two, I must state that I do not think it inherently hurts children to be raised with only one parent.  Most of the time, in my experience, both parents are involved even if they are unmarried, and it is not at all the "normal family," as the article stated, for parents to be married to each other.  Many children are raised in divorced-parent homes, remarried-parent homes, or are raised by a parent's significant other in unmarried-parent homes.  I must outright state that I do not think single-parent homes are a problem that we need to fix as a society and that I disagree with the general sentiment of the article.  Good parenting can be done by one person, and poor parenting can be done (and often is done) in a married-parent home.

In my school, I am not allowed to directly address the social issues of my students.  We have an administrator who addresses these issues individually with children, so I refer my students to her if they are having trouble.  My only job is to teach them music.  I believe the best way that I can address the situation of poor parenting is to use music to teach my students how to be good people.  I will not allow my students to fall apart if they have a difficult time at home.  Music is a wonderful subject for teaching students to be a part of a community, and music gives students an outlet for expression in case they have anger, sadness, or problems at home or anywhere.  I believe that teaching students how to use music to express their feelings can help them learn to grow up in a healthy community and to be productive citizens.

Secondly, I believe that I can use music history to teach students lessons about life.  For example, I can teach students that music has been used in the past to celebrate patriotism and to speak out civil rights.  I can explain that the people who made huge differences in our country by doing their part to speak about what matters have often used music to do so.  This understanding of music as a way to fight for the good and to make things better in life can help students to grow up to believe that they matter.  Perhaps this understand can prevent some students from falling into crime or poverty as adults.

In the community, we must come together and treat others with kindness and respect regardless of their home situations.  My community is actually working to help with poverty in our school district this summer by starting a summer lunch program.  Once a week, we provide free lunches and fun activities for kids through a grant which we applied for.  This allows those parents who may not be able to give their children adequate nutrition because of huge financial issues a chance to feed their children and work together with the community.  It also allows them a chance to get out of the house and talk to other people for awhile, and it helps them to feel like they are part of a community.  A sense of belonging into a group can positively affect how people relate to each other in the home and out of it.

A second task that my community has already started is parenting classes.  Our preschool director offers short evening classes with provided childcare and snacks on topics such as positive discipline, sibling relationships, and nutrition to help parents with raising their children.  In our community, most parents are present and want to be good parents, but many fall into a pattern of raising their children the way they were raised and have little education to raise their children otherwise.  These classes provide a judgment-free way for parents to learn how to speak to their children calmly instead of yelling and how to encourage their children to eat what is placed in front of them instead of fighting and being picky.

In conclusion, it is important for our society to focus on serving others who need help rather than griping about how different society is than it was 50 years ago.  With education and an opportunity to express themselves, people are primed, especially with modern technology, to be better than they have ever had the opportunity to be before.  "It takes a village to raise a child," after all.

Summary Reflection

In this course, Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Music Education, several topics were explored that have benefitted my music teaching and will affect how I continue to teach my students.  The topics, history of music education in America, philosophical positions, aesthetics, purposes of education, and sociological, social psychological, and psychological concepts of music education, each will impact my choices in lesson planning in the future.

The history of music education in America is important to know because what has happened in history has directly impacted what is happening today.  When American education was initially organized, most students learned music in their homes as families gathered around the piano and learned instruments to make music together.  While this was the case for my very musical family, it is no longer the case for the majority of my students.  Music educators have had to argue to get music into the schools from the very beginning, and we are continually advocating today to keep music in the schools.  Understanding Lowell Mason's ideas about why music education should be part of the school day, including the development of character in students, the influence of music as an important part of the intellect, and the concept of the physical exercise required to make vocal music can serve as a foundation for my own advocacy arguments.  In addition, I found it interesting that Lowell Mason pushed for vocal music because not all students could afford instruments.  In my extremely low-income school, the affordance of instruments is always a major problem.  I have thought before about including mostly vocal and singing exercises in my classroom to develop my students' ears and voices first, and understanding that vocal music was historically the offering of public schools can be good evidence for my choice to use mostly vocal music.  In the future, I will continue to teach students how to sing well first before they explore instrumental music, and I will use the understanding of music as intellectual, moral, and physical disciplines as a basis for advocacy in my district.

An interesting discussion during this course was the discussion of philosophical positions.  The text stated that it is important for music educators to choose one of the stances and consistently adhere to the chosen stance.  I disagree that this is important; I believe that it is stronger for a music educator to have a full understanding of all of the stances and adopt the one that is, at that moment, most effective for the learning of the students.  I would be remiss if my choice of philosophy prevented my students from learning to the best of their abilities.  That being said, I believe that, generally speaking, the most effective philosophy according to my personality and teaching style is pragmatism.  With music, the process is undoubtedly more useful than the product, and students must learn to evaluate themselves and others in order to understand what is good.  After all, there cannot be an understanding of what is good without an understanding of what is bad.  It is important, especially in this constantly changing world of technological advancement, that students are educated for change.  Students must learn the process for learning music instead of worrying only about the product of performance, and students must learn how to transfer their knowledge into other areas of their lives by webbing the information together.  I will use this philosophy to adjust what I am teaching to the current needs of my students, and I will change my philosophy according to the changing needs of my students.  I will be sure to emphasize the steps that we take to learn our music more than the actual concert.  While the concert is in mind, the most important part of music class is the enjoyment of making the music.  I believe this will create lifelong music lovers and learners, which is my primary goal as a music teacher.

Another topic that was explored during this course was aesthetics.  Aesthetics are the understanding that living is not the same thing as existing.  While existing includes things like eating and breathing, living includes things that are satisfying, meaningful, and interesting.  Aesthetics allow humans to look beyond the simple and practical parts of life into the parts of life that make life matter.  Music is undoubtedly aesthetic, because it exists only to make life better and to express emotions and feelings.  Aesthetics are an important way to advocate for music education because music offers this emotional expression, creativity, and meaningful parts of life that other core subjects like math and science cannot. This, in itself, makes music more important to study: music is what makes us human.  These parts of life are very important for students to receive as part of their education, because I do not want to just train people to grow up into robots who can follow directions and copy whatever they are told.  I want to train people to become contributors to the world, to creatively think about new solutions to long-standing problems, and to express themselves and communicate well to others.  By using music listening assignments to create aesthetic experiences for my students, I will contribute not only to their intellect, but to their humanness.  I will teach my students to seek for deeper meaning in the things that they are learning, and to never settle for the surface level.

In chapter 4, the topic was the purposes of education and how music education fits in with general education.  There were 4 roles of education listed in the text.  The first was minimum competencies, which means that since parents have specializations in our advanced world, students cannot learn all of the basics that they need to know at home anymore.  The second was a cohesive society, which means that the multitude of cultures in America must be combined into a common culture so that all citizens can better understand one another.  The third was learning from the past, which outlines that we could not advance as a society without an understanding of what we've already learned, or else we would never be able to advance since we would spend our lives creating what someone else already created.  The fourth was a richer life, which acknowledges that being able to competently function as an educated adult citizen makes for a multifaceted and more meaningful life.  While I inherently knew that these were purposes of education, they had never been previously explicitly pointed out to me.  An understanding of the roles of education and their relationship to music education will help me to advocate for music in the future more cohesively.  Music helps students will all four of these purposes, but it especially relates to a cohesive society since we, as Americans, have our own styles of music that help us fit into our subcultures.  Music also especially relates to a richer life.  I do not expect my students to necessarily grow up to be professional musicians, but I do expect them to use music to make their lives better and to use an understanding of creative expression to communicate to others better as adults.

The next modules in the course were sociological and social psychological concepts in music education.  The textbook poignantly stated that music is a form of behavior, and I had never thought of it that way before.  Thinking of music as a behavior will certainly affect how I teach music.  Since music is a behavior, I expect my students to be actively involved in making music.  Most of the objectives that I will use in my music class will be behavioral objectives because I will want students to do things that are musical to show how they are learning music.  This behavior is also cultural.  Since many of my parents and students do not attend formal concerts, I will use time in music class to teach students about proper concert etiquette.  I will also take the time during concerts to briefly educated parents about appropriate behavior.  I believe this will add a higher level of culture to our community that will be meaningful to parents and children alike.  Since music is social psychological, it often relates to the group as a whole.  Teaching students to work together for the good of the whole group is a very important task to me.  I want to emphasize with my students that each voice that sings is an important part of our group's sound.  I want to help them understand that in our musical culture, we work as one unit even though we are individuals.  Music teaches us how to matter individually because of our contribution to others.  This is, by far, my greatest defense of music - the relationship of ourselves to others and learning how to fit within a group.  Group efforts will always be an important part of life, especially as adults in the workforce, and I want my students to gain an understanding of healthy communication and emotional expression while they are working within a group where they feel safe to be themselves.

Lastly, we discussed psychology in music education. While there were many parts in chapter 7 that were important to me, the most important was the discussion of Piaget's levels of development.  While I had learned about these developmental levels in several courses for my undergraduate degree and I have experienced the developmental levels in my students as they communicate to me, I have never read about the developmental levels' specific relationship to music.  The authors of the text cited Zimmerman, 1981 from a study that concluded that children can form musical concepts in a specific order: timbre, tempo, duration, pitch, and harmony.  I have never known this before.  In the future, I will arrange my kindergarten curriculum around these concepts in order to accommodate for my students' understanding.  Since the concepts build upon one another, this is a great starting point for building my curriculum, which is the topic of my Capstone Project.  I look forward to creating meaningful lesson plans in this order and studying how much better my students learn the necessary concepts.

In summary, the most important lesson that was reemphasized in this course is that it is important to continually consciously and cognitively think about where I stand on issues in music education.  To be a successful music educator, I must know and continue to develop my position on philosophy as an educator.  Without a governing philosophy, I cannot affectively instill concepts in my students to the degree which I would prefer.  Without knowledge of the history of music education, I cannot meet my students where they are and take them where they need to go in their music learning.  Without an understanding of sociology, social psychology, and psychology in music education, I would be unaware of the importance of music in students' lives and how to relate to their culture and needs.  In short, I would surely be a poor music educator if not for a good music education foundation.

Musical Concepts for 4th Grade Students

My fourth graders spend the majority of the year demonstrating all of the musical skills and concepts that they have previously learned in music class by applying those concepts to the recorder.  These are concepts that they have learned in other ways, and I attempt to begin a transfer of learning on the recorder with the students.  Students play the recorder from October-February of 4th grade.

The first concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand and demonstrate on the recorder is rhythm.  Previous to recorders, my students have played all kinds of percussion instruments with different rhythms, including pitched xylophone instruments, but they have never played a wind instrument.  My students have learned to play quarter notes, eighth notes, half notes, dotted notes, and whole notes and their corresponding rests.  The application of the change from using the hands or feet to demonstrate the rhythms to using the tongue is typically a new challenge.  To promote the development of rhythm more fully on the recorder, students must learn to play the rhythm with their tongues.  Therefore, I isolate the skill that I would like the students to acquire by taking away the other challenges.  On the recorder, students have to think about moving their fingers to the appropriate fingering, breathing, and articulation at the same time.  First, we clap and count the rhythm, which we already know how to do from previous learning.  Next, we leave the recorders in our laps and speak the rhythm on "tu" while clapping the rhythm (instead of saying the numbers of the counts).  Third, we do not speak, but just tongue the rhythm with air.  Finally, we play the rhythm on a single pitch on our recorders.  After students have tried all of these steps and at least 80% of students are getting it correctly, we start applying the different pitches to the actual music.

The second concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand is the relationship between singing the melody and playing it.  Many of my students do not make the connection that the recorder music should sound like the song when it is sung.  They are not audiating the music as they play on the recorder.  To promote the development of this concept, I always have students learn the songs that we will play on our recorders with singing and lyrics.  Then, we cover up words and hum in their places.  For example, on "Merrily We Roll Along," we might sing "Merrily we roll ______" and hum the blank space.  They love this game.  We take away more words and hum in their places until we are humming the entire song.  Then, we hold our recorders and hum the song while we do the fingers.  Then, we stop humming and blow air.  Sometimes, I add a step where I sing the song while the students play on their recorders.  I always encourage the students to sing the songs in their heads while they play them to help them determine if they are making mistakes or not.

The third concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand about recorders in the relationship between the written pitches and their fingerings.  Many of my fourth graders know their note names very well when we start recorders because they have played them and sung them on other instruments and with other songs so often prior to recorder.  The problem comes for them in connecting the note names with particular fingerings.  I can understand why this takes so many steps, because the students must connect the note name with the fingering and the rhythm within a millisecond in order to play the music correctly.  Therefore, we play "fingering games" to help connect the fingerings more quickly.  The fingering games are played as warm-ups every day on the recorder, so the game adjusts as the students get better at the recorder.  At first, I call out note names, and the students have to get their hands in that position all together as quickly as possible.  Then, I start showing slides of the pitch on the staff with its name next to it and students have to get their hands in that position all together as quickly as possible.  I award points for classes who get it within a certain number of seconds, and we have contests that last several days between classes.  Next, I start showing slides of the pitch with no name next to it.  It is basically a flash card game at this point.  Next, I make the game a little more challenging, I challenge individual students to earn points for their class.  First we do one note at a time.  Next, I split the class into teams and have two students battle to get the note the fastest when I show it on the board.  Then, I challenge individual students to do more notes at a time.  For example, the board might have B, A, G, and students have to show that they can change the notes quickly but still get the correct fingerings in the correct order.  Since implementing this game, my students' sightreading skills have greatly improved.

The fourth concept that I would like my fourth graders to understand about recorders is finding melodic patterns.  In my experience, when students find patterns in music and remember which pattern happens at what time during the song, they are much more likely to play the song correctly because they feel significantly less overwhelmed.  When learning a new song on the recorder, we always do warm-ups and rhythm reading first, and when it is time to add the melody to the song, we find the melodic patterns.  At the beginning of learning, I show the students the first phrase of music.  For example, on Amazing Grace, I show "Amazing grace, how sweet." Although it isn't the whole phrase, that portion of the phrase is repeated several times in the piece.  I then call students up to find this phrase again and to bracket it.  I then point out other phrases and have the students find the remainders.  Last, we add in the "Tinies" as I call them - the pieces of notes or ends of phrases that differ (like "the sound" at the end of that first Amazing Grace phrase) from other phrases.  As we point out each pattern, we learn to play them.  At the end, we put small sections of patterns together and add to the sections until we can play the entire phrase.  By the end of recorder belt learning, the students can bracket the phrases for a grade without help on individual sheet music.  I am always amazed at what my fourth graders can do!

Behavioral Objectives for Music Class

Behavioral objectives are objectives which require students to demonstrate their abilities by completing a task.  Behavioral objectives can most easily be assessed by students fulfilling a rubric of completing the activity correctly, partially correctly, or not correctly.  The following objectives are ones that I have actually used in my classroom.

1. For kindergarten: Students will echo rhythms correctly on the rhythm sticks that are first played by the teacher.

Rubric:

Circle one.

0 points - student made 4 or more mistakes when performing the rhythm
1 point - student performed the rhythm partially correct, but made 1-3 mistakes
2 points - student performed the rhythm correctly with no mistakes

2.  For first grade: Students will demonstrate aural recognition of a percussion instrument by choosing the correct instrument played by a classmate while the testing student was not looking.

Rubric:

Circle one.

0 points - student chose the incorrect instrument with a different timbre (such as choosing a drum when a triangle was played)
1 point - student chose an instrument of similar timbre (such as a tambourine instead of a triangle), but not the one that was played
2 points - student chose the correct instrument

3.  For third grade: Students will jump onto the correct pitch on a treble clef staff on the giant staff.
(This is a game we play after we have learned to name the notes on the treble clef staff; the staff is made of tape on the floor and the students show their understanding of pitch names by standing on the line or space that corresponds with the name of the pitch.)

Circle one:
0 points - student did not stand on the correct pitch
2 points - student stood on the correct pitch

4.  For fourth grade: Students will individually perform "Hot Cross Buns" on the recorder with correct pitches, rhythms, and at an appropriate tempo.

Rubric:

Circle one.

10 points - student performed "Hot Cross Buns" with correct pitches, rhythms, and at an appropriate tempo.
7-9 points - student performed "Hot Cross Buns" mostly correctly, but with 1-3 mistakes in either pitches, rhythms, or tempo.
4-6 points - student performed "Hot Cross Buns" about half correct, with 4-6 mistakes in either pitches, rhythms, or tempo.
1-3 points - student performed "Hot Cross Buns" mostly incorrectly, with 7-9 mistakes in either pitches, rhythms, or tempo.
0 points - student refused to perform "Hot Cross Buns" individually

Cognitivist/Gestalt Approach: Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata

In teaching Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, I can safely assume that the student has taken piano lessons for at least 8 years and therefore has an excellent foundation in reading music.  At this point in a child's musical career, the major focus would be on expression and musical phrasing.  Therefore, my primary cognitivist/gestalt approach would be to encourage the child to think musically about phrasing and expression.

Within the cognitivist approach, the child should memorize the music as quickly as possible by associating the sections of the piece in his or her memory with other pieces that he or she has already learned.  Therefore, it might be a good idea to search through the music with the student to discover places where the music represents warm-ups from the Czerny (such as any arpeggiations in the accompaniment, for example), and relate those sections to the Czerny in his/her mind.  Another concept would be to develop a story behind the music that each section is telling so that the student can use the story as a trigger to remember the sounds of the music during that section.

To focus on thinking about phrasing and expression, the student can associate the different sections with different emotional ideas.  For example, the beginning of the piece is very peaceful, while a section later in the piece sounds more disgruntled.  If the student imagines the peaceful phrases to be an angel with new wings hopping from cloud to cloud, while the disgruntled section is a jealous little angel who does not yet have his wings, he or she may be able to recall the musical material more quickly for memorization.  After the student has memorized the work sufficiently, he or she may be able to bring more new ideas or develop the musical ideas with more meaningful expression.  By learning the whole piece, the student has a greater overarching idea to perform, which will make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

Behaviorist/Stimulus-Response Approach: Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata

In teaching Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, I can safely assume that the student has taken piano lessons for at least 8 years and therefore has an excellent foundation in reading music.  At this point in a child's musical career, the major focus would be on expression and musical phrasing.  Therefore, my primary behavioral objective would be that the student performs Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata with meaningful musical expression and musical phrasing.

First, I would have the student listen to the piece while following along with the score.  When it finished, I would ask the child to initiate a discussion about the musical phrasing in the piece and what he or she would specifically do in the piece (such as crescendos, rubatos, etc) to demonstrate the musical expression.  The discussion would be mostly technical with little metaphorical discussion.  We would discuss what the music is expressing so the child has a reference for him/herself.

Next, we would find the sections of the piece and label them.  We would outline what portions of the sonata the student would need to learn by which weeks of lessons so that he or she could master the piece by the appropriate date.  This is setting behavioral goals because the student would know that he or she would be expected to perform the goals by those weeks.  Then, each week at lessons, the student would perform the section he or she practiced the week before and we would discuss the musical phrasing and any remedial things that needed to be fixed, such as incorrect rhythms or fingering alterations.  We would then discuss ideas for phrasing and practice for the following week so that the student could continue to learn the piece.

In a behaviorist or stimulus/response lesson, most of the lesson would consist of the child demonstrating the desired behaviors by actually playing the piano.  The goal would be mostly music-making and little discussion, except for what is necessary.

Creativity

As a teacher of elementary general music classes, my students can be creative and can easily make creative choices in music class.  Creativity can come into play in music class in all three areas of music education, including creating, performing, and responding.

In creating, students can compose music for themselves.  Students can compose on instruments or for singing.  These composition projects need to involve parameters, however; students should not be “set free” to make up whatever they want because this can be overwhelming.  One of the composition projects that I do with my first grade students is that I give them a phrase on the xylophone to learn to play that is a “question” phrase.  We discuss call and response musical phrasing.  Then students are given parameters such as a number of measures, the use of quarter notes, eighth notes, and quarter rests, certain pitches they can use, and that the ending note must be C to create the response part of their composition.  They are also required, according to new Common Core Reading and Writing Standards, to write a sentence defending their choices and explaining why their phrase works as an answer to the question, which allows them to participate in the responding area of music.  If students are given the chance to practice and perform their answer, then they are also participating in the performing area of music.

Within the performing area of music, I like to have my students figure out how to play simple melodic songs by ear.  I believe this requires creative thinking because students have to think deeply and make creative connections between what they’ve learned about music in the past in order to figure out the melody of the songs.  One example was with the fourth graders.  I asked them to figure out how to play on their recorders One Direction’s song “You Don’t Know You’re Beautiful” because the chorus of the song uses only do, re, and mi.  They were very excited to get to figure out a song that they listened to all the time, and each rendition was slightly different since the chorus of the song is performed slightly different each time.  It was fun and very creative of an activity.  We furthered the creative activity by “passing off” the melody by playing a portion of it and then pointing recorders at the next person, who would play the next section.  This allowed for a creative performance of the piece, even though it was an already established piece.  The passing off game was the students’ idea, not mine, which I thought was very fun and innovative.

A second way that students can be creating in music class is to listen to music and make up stories that accompany that music.  While not all music is intended to be programmatic, students will listen more actively if they are allowed to create as they listen.  Therefore, with my third grade students, I give my students the title of a piece of music and tell them to make up a story as they listen.  I give them a pencil and paper and sometimes crayons to use.  As they listen, they are to make up a story and use musical sounds as evidence for what they chose as their stories.  This way, students are both creating and responding to music, and they are listening very actively.  My students have come up with some excellent stories for what they are hearing in pieces of music.  One student created an entire story of a good guy, a bad guy with a curly mustache, and a girl tied to railroad tracks while listening to Beethoven’s Fifth.  He even recognized a certain theme as the bad guy’s theme and another motive as the good guy’s theme, and the continual movement of the main motive as the train coming through.  I could not believe the complexity of his creativity.  I have found this to be the norm for my students; they can make up fantastic stories to go with music and give musical reasons why they chose those parts of the stories.  This has become one of my favorite creative musical activities.

I have never been quite brave enough to let my elementary students choose a piece of music for a performance, but I have allowed them to choose which songs they would like to learn in regular music class setting.  For example, during the American Vernacular music course for this masters degree, I established a unit of studying American music with my students.  Within the unit, which is set up mostly be decades, I made a playlist of youtube videos for each one with at least 10 songs, and the students were assigned for homework to listen to all the songs and choose their favorites, but they had to list reasons why those were their favorites.  In class later, we chose through voting which pieces we wanted to learn and use in our study of the genre or decade of music.  This assured that the students were listening to all the assigned pieces but still were able to focus on a few even in only 25 minutes twice per week of music class.  It worked very well this year when we actually implemented it.

The fifth way that I encourage creativity in music class is through dancing and body movement.  Sometimes when we dance, we all do the same thing together, but other times, I ask the students to make up dances or to move in a way that goes with the music.  This allows the students who might not be willing to express themselves vocally another way to express their feelings of the music.  Students respond very well in these activities.  With kindergarten students, I do an entire unit of Carnival of the Animals in which we act out each movement as we listen to it. One example is in the movement called "Elephants." It is a low-register waltz played on the stringed bass. My students moved to the music, knowing it was titled elephants. They were very funny. Most of them pretended to have elephant trunks, and many of them were ballet dancing, but in a way that looked very heavy. In our discussion afterward, students revealed that it was hard to move the way the music sounded because elephants are big and heavy but the music was gentle and light. It was a great discussion for the music. Many of the students said they thought the elephant wanted to be a ballerina really bad. It was a fun and creative experience for everyone.

Conformity

Because of the very low socioeconomic status of my school, we do not use uniforms, robes, or other similar clothing for concert performances.  However, I have seen my students pressure one another to curl their hair or wear matching outfits with their friends for their performances.  This is a kind of smaller-group conformity that is not influenced by me necessarily, but is still present naturally in my elementary school program.  I should also mention that on field trips or other school-wide activities like assemblies or the attendance of high school or middle school musical performances, there are school rules that apply to the entire school.  While I did not create these rules, as a teacher, I help to enforce them.  The conformity to the three school rules of be respectful, be responsible, and be safe is a constant presence in our school and one of the reasons our school is successful even with such a low socioeconomic status.

In music, the subject matter is so often a group activity.  In elementary general music classes, students often have to learn songs and games to play together.  In order for these songs and games to work, students must subscribe to conformity because the singing games do not work unless the students play and work together.  While presenting the subject matter, the teacher can influence the conformity of the students in the way he or she presents.  In my experience, when I am obviously passionate and excited about a unit, even if it is not a unit I would expect students to be excited about, they mimic my excitement.  I believe this is also related to the fact that they like and respect me as a person.  Since I have never let them down before (in the sense that I have always done my best to make sure that activities are fun and positive experiences), the students trust me to be honest when I say that something is going to be exciting or fun.  

One of the things that is very important to me as a music teacher is to be honest but kind with my students.  It is also in the philosophy of our school to give honest goals and standards for students.  In our school, grades are given according to meeting goals, and goals are written by students and teachers individually.  This is a new advancement that was on a trial run this year.  Students are required to meet their individual goals.  With rewards for students, I award every student a certificate with recorder studies, for example, no matter how far they made it on the recorder.  I do whatever I can to ensure that students meets their individual goals.  The only way that I can teach conformity by giving grades is that I am allowed to give a participation grade for students according to their work with the class.  If a child is not participating with the group, he or she will not receive the good grade.  This emphasizes conformity because the good grades are awarded to those who conform by participating with the group.

In concert programs, I list every child together with an asterisk next to the names of those who have special parts instead of individually listing them.  This, I believe, gives all students the idea that they work together to achieve the show and that each person is important in the making of the show.  The conformity is related to the group effort.

Student decisions are an important part of conformity in my classroom.  I sometimes gives students choices about activities, and the students have to vote on the activities.  I can see, especially with my fourth graders who are the oldest in my school, the influence of conformity on their voting decisions.  Many students will look around before they vote to see what their friends are voting for.  Some students change their votes later when they see that other students chose something else (I don’t actually allow this, but they try).

One other type of conformity that I have noticed quite a lot is in fifth grade band.  At the end of the 2012-2013 school year, it was announced to the fourth graders at the time that I would be teaching fifth grade band the following year.  Many of them reacted with joy and excitement because they respect me as a teacher and enjoyed music class with me.  However, when the 2013-2014 school year started and it was actually time to sign up for band, the students had found out from the older kids who they wanted to be like that band was not cool and was for losers.  Therefore, about half of the students who I expected to sign up for band chose not to.  Additionally, some of the students told me that their parents told them that band was for losers and that they didn’t want them to be left out of things because of their participation in band.  Therefore, the conformist idea that band is not cool was even being fed to students by their parents, who still, even as adults, subscribed to the idea that band was only for losers.  Therefore, I have strived as the music teacher to make band as fun as possible and as “cool” as possible by including a percussion ensemble made of trash can items and tried to perform music that was intriguing or fun for the kids that also taught the concepts they needed.  I think it will take several years to truly change the idea of band, but with the incorporation of ways to make band something that isn’t just for geeks anymore.

Vocasphere – Good Friday

I am part of a professional adult chamber ensemble known as Vocasphere.  Most of the singers, myself included, are music graduates of Millikin University.  The group is hosted by First Christian Church in Decatur, Illinois and has done projects over the past two years such as performances at Millikin’s Homecoming, with the Millikin collegiate choirs, Handel’s Messiah at Christmas, and Good Friday services at First Christian.  It is my greatest musical distinction to be part of such an excellent performing ensemble, and as many of us have gone into non-musical fields or into teaching positions, we ache to perform high-quality literature with other highly trained musicians.  Vocasphere is a true gift for us.

Good Friday this year was a performance by Vocasphere for First Christian Church.  We performed a motet of pieces related to the last words of Christ.  The music at the event was a reflective religious performance.  The performers were separate from the audience, but the intention was that all were worshipping together.  The purpose of the music at the event was reflective expression of the feelings of grief related to the death of Christ while simultaneously reflecting in the hope of what was to come three days later on Easter with Christ’s resurrection.

The music was four to six part choral music in a very Britten-esque style.  It sounded extremely “20^th century choral.”  Each movement was approximately 3-4 minutes long.  It was intended for careful listening, written in English so that the audience could understand.  The lyrics were projected on a screen so that the audience could listen purposely and reflectively.

There were 12 singers for the piece: 4 sopranos, 2 altos, 3 tenors, and 3 basses.  We wore black with silver or grey accents.  We stood on the stage at the church and sat between movements for the readings from scripture.  We did not interact with the audience except for the formal interaction that occurs through performance, such as eye contact and facial expressions to demonstrate the music more effectively.  We used printed music on music stands, but we looked up as often as possible.  Our sounds were not amplified.  We acknowledged the audience through head nods after each movement, and we spoke with the congregation after the service was completed.  There was no applause because the service ended in silent reflection and exit.

The audience consisted primarily of families and regular-attending church members.  I noticed many different ages.  There was childcare provided for children under 5, but there were a lot of older children present.  Most people, it seemed, were sitting with their families.  It seemed like most people were from upper-middleclass socioeconomic status, which is the general makeup of the regular church attendance.  The audience did not applaud because it was not in the nature of this particular type of service.  They seemed well-educated on how to behave for the concert.  There was not a printed program, but there were lyrics and reflections and participatory audience segments projected on the screen.  They participated by singing a few hymns at different times in the performance, including “Were You There” and “Let Us Break Bread Together” for communion.  They also participated in certain leader-response readings which were projected on the screen.  There were no tickets necessary.  There are no food or drinks allowed in the sanctuary of the church except bottled water.  I did not see anyone eating or drinking.  The performers had water bottles to drink from during the service.

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

This week, we watched a short video about some students in Paraguay who have created an orchestra using instruments made from garbage in the landfill on which their community is built.  In the video, one person mentions that instruments are worth as much as homes in their community, so having instruments is a huge blessing to the people.

In the video, one girl says that listening to the sounds of her violin makes butterflies in her stomach.  She is so excited to experience music, and she is obviously thrilled that she can play music on a good-quality sounding instrument.  It seems clear that she would not have music in her life without her instrument, and she knows the gift it is that she can experience it, even with an instrument that Americans would consider garbage.  Another girl says that her life would be meaningless without music.  It is wonderful to think that she can find her passion because of a recycled instrument.  Music is obviously valuable in people’s lives if they are willing to go through the effort to create their own instruments from trash.  I imagine that obtaining the kind of tuning and acoustics that they need is difficult and involves a lot of science as the instruments are being made.  Even that effort seems very meaningful when it means that children can experience something wonderful in their lives.  These children were unlikely to have music in their lives at all if not for these recycled instruments, and they seem to recognize how valuable it is.  How sad that we must imagine music being removed from our lives or difficult to obtain in order to grasp its power and magic in our lives!

I feel like I have to fight the battle of why music is important every day.  In fact, it is easy for me to say that I am tired of fighting the battle of why music matters because I feel like I have to defend it so often.  Therefore, I have made every attempt in my job to demonstrate the power of music as I work with my students and as I speak to their parents about music.

The first way to educate people about the importance of music is to directly speak to the students and facilitate a discussion with them about why music matters.  Since the students are the ones who are being taught music and are experiencing music, if they do not find value in it, who else will?  I have done activities with my students at all grade levels to inspire their minds to think intelligently about why music is important in their lives.  For example, I recently did a project with first graders in which they had to answer the question, “How do I use music in my life?” and then draw a picture that showed their statement.  Not only did the activity allow me to incorporate reading and writing activities into music as well as art, the students inspired me by coming up with what I considered to be very meaningful and creative responses for first graders.  One student wrote that listening to music calmed her down when she felt angry.  Another student wrote that singing along with songs in the car made him feel close with his family.

The second way to education people about the importance of music is to show and speak to the parents about how music is positively influencing their children’s lives.  With the first grade activity mentioned above, I displayed the student answers on the wall outside my classroom for Open House.  Many parents came by my classroom and discussed their child’s answers with me.  At performances, I always try to include a short segment where I outline the children’s musical activities for the year to give parents an idea of what their children are doing in my classroom.  I also try to inform parents that there are three areas of music experiences:  performing, creating, and responding, and that I try to incorporate these into my class activities as often as possible.  I think that many parents are simply uninformed or uneducated about how to learn about music, and organizing musical ideas into these three categories is a great starting point to get parents thinking about music in their own lives.

A third way to education people about music is to make music experiences something for the whole community or even the world to understand.  In the technology in music education course that I recently completed, we discussed forms in which technology can help spread musical ideas.  One of the discussions that began was the idea to blog about lesson planning and activities that occur in the music classroom and regularly remind parents of the link so that they can be updated.  Making a blog also allows anyone in the world, or anyone with access to the blog, to be inspired by and/or experience music in my classroom.  I intend to develop my blog over the summer and update it weekly beginning next school year.  A friend of mine who teaches music in the Chicago suburbs created a blog a few years ago.  She stated that the blog has really helped her validate her music classes to fellow teachers, administration, parents, and other music teachers because there is proof of the value of what she does in the evidence of activities from her music classroom.

Lastly, everyone participates in music in some ways.  A great starting point for education people about music is helping them to see the cognitive value in the music they already listen to.  Whether for expressive purposes, just for fun, or to experience something wonderful that one would not otherwise be able to experience, such as the recycled instrument students in Paraguay, music can bring all people to a new and better level of meaning in their lives.

Advocacy: Non-Musical Benefits for Music Education and Their Usefulness

Music has many non-musical benefits.  As an elementary music teacher, my job security has been placed entirely in the non-musical benefits of my students.  It is understood at my current position that music is valuable to students because it assists them in learning their "core" subject areas, particularly reading and math.  Our school's goal is that "every student will be proficient or advanced in reading, writing and math; no exceptions; no excuses."  Every teacher is expected to use his or her subject to reinforce our school's goal of proficiency in reading, writing, and math.  Some of these non-musical benefits of music are valuable to students, but music should not be kept in schools simply for its non-musical benefits.

A first non-musical reason for including music is its relationship to improving student grades and life.  According to the 1991 report of the National Commission on Music Education "Growing Up Complete," music study improves performance in school and in life.  Several studies have cited that students who participate in music ensembles get better grades and are more likely to go on to higher education. In my high school, this was especially true.  Nearly all of the students at the top of the graduating class participated in band, choir, or orchestra, and many participated in a combination of two or all three.  Related to living a fuller life, students who participate in music learning can communicate better than those who do not.  In my experience, studying music has a positive effect on language learning.  As mentioned in the textbook, students who have speech impediments are greatly helped my singing skills.  A friend of mine personally experienced this.  He had a very terrible stutter, but if he thought about singing the first word he was speaking, it was impossible to tell that he had the speech impediment at all.  I remember in the film "The King's Speech" that this was true as well.  The speech therapist working with the king used singing and music as a technique to help King George overcome his stutter.  I have also experienced in my classroom that students read faster if the lyrics are rhythmic.  I would like to pursue a more formal study of this related to fluency and music reading, but I have informally found that my students who have trouble reading can read a passage more accurately and quickly if I keep a steady beat while they are reading, particularly in the context of karaoke, whether it is a song they have already heard or one that is new to them.  They naturally make the passage musical, and they are not as hindered by their fear of reading.

A second non-musical reason for including music is its relationship to and assistance with study in the other subjects.  As mentioned above, studying music can improve a child's understanding of other core subjects.  Studying music undoubtedly improves a child's understanding of culture and social studies because music is inherently part of every culture.  As child study and understand the music of another culture, the children are experiencing that culture.  From experiencing that culture, students will be able to empathize and understand the people of the culture better.  Students can also understand math with musical rhythm, science through the study of acoustics and sound creation, language arts by studying the text and emotions of music, physical education by moving to music rhythmically, and technology by using computers to create, respond to, or perform music.

A third non-musical reason for including music is that students who participate in music courses, according to Rodosky (1974), tend to like school better and have better attendance.  The textbook also states that music can be an effective "anti-monotony" tool for students who are otherwise bored by excessive study, constantly sitting still and formalized learning.  My students enjoy attending my music class because they are able to be constantly active learners.  Many students get excited and smile, according to their classroom teachers, when they are told that it is time to go to music.  I believe their enjoyment of part of the school day can directly contribute to their willingness to attend.

The most meaningful non-musical outcome of performing music for me was its assistance with my ability to work in a group setting.  This has contributed greatly to my fulfilling life as an adult.  I have learned to work with and be productive with anyone, which was a quality that was not natural to me.  Music taught me how to work with a group and see a positive result.  Previous to my music experiences, I disliked group experiences because I always felt that they were uneven and unfair. I always felt like I ended up doing more work than the other members of my group, and I felt taken advantage of.  Once I became part of performing ensembles, I felt that my contribution to the group was much more even and meaningful.  I felt a connection to the other members of the ensemble, and I finally understood what being part of a community truly meant.  I learned to value others because the input of their voices was critical to the sound of the group.  Each voice contributed something unique and special, and the group would not sound the same with a different makeup of people.

Each of these viewpoints can be valuable for arguing the retention of music in public schools, but these arguments should not be the be-all-end-all for music education. There are reasons why each of these arguments cannot stand alone as a rationale for music education.

First, there is not enough valuable research to that specifically proves that music is really the reason that students who are involved in music get better grades and tend to be more successful.  The research does not determine whether the students involved in music are better at school because they are involved in music or if they are involved in music because they were better in school.  This distinction is an important one because while there is a correlation between music participation and better grades, there is not proven causation.  As mentioned above, I have never seen a formalized study that relates fluency to music reading, but I would like to see one or possible conduct one of my own.  It cannot be proven, therefore, that music reading actually betters reading fluency in students.

Second, it is unwise to include music simply because it enhances the “core” curriculum because those subjects can stand alone.  While it may positively impact a child’s science education to do a science experiment in music class, why take separate time for music in the school day if the child can learn the required content in an actual science course?  As mentioned in the textbook, the subject of math does not need to be validated by its musical value.  It is validated simply because it is math and is useful in itself.  It could be more prudent to view music this way as well than to argue its relevancy based on its relationship to other subjects.

Third, it is rather a bit of a cop-out to keep music in place simply because it is enjoyable to students.  Recess is enjoyable to students and is important as well.  However, music teachers certainly do not value being thought of as recess for their students.  I know that it is offensive to me that people think of my subject as "fun time" for the kids. While music is very fun, active, and engaging, it has academic, creative, and aesthetic meaning that make it much more than just "fun time" for students.  If music is simply recess, there is little reason to keep it in place in the schools besides an opportunity for prep or break time for general classroom teachers.  If music class has to depend on "being fun" in order to be sustained, it will not be sustained for very long, especially when students need to learn deeper and less fun but equally as important concepts.

Fourth, although it is truly valuable to think of music as an opportunity to work in a group setting, there are many other group setting opportunities in which children can participate.  Particularly, I think of sports in this regard.  Team sports undoubtedly teach students how to work as a team and value one another, but I do not think sports are as important to a child's health as music.

Music must be able to stand alone on its inherent value.  If music teachers use non-musical reasons to keep music in schools, there will always be arguments that render other things more important.  Music is important because it is music.  Music exists for music's sake, and it makes people more human to experience it and understand it.  Music in schools should be valued simply because it is a valuable part of the human experience, and it makes humans into better people.