Guest Lecture Dr. Mark Hopkins 01/18/2017 I really enjoyed Dr. Hopkins lecture! His approach was primarily focused on band teaching, which I have limited experience with, but his ideas and approaching to music I could understand. The part of his presentation that really fascinated me was when he compared teaching music to teaching a language. I found this approach very unique and was very curious to learn more about the effect that would have in a classroom setting. The idea of “sound before sight” especially fascinated me, mainly because when I was younger and learning to play piano I struggled reading the notes, but I had a really strong ear. Because of this I would often memorize the sound of the music and just play it by ear instead. That concept follows the idea Dr. Hopkins was describing. I think the idea of encouraging students to play things they hear and go with what they think will sound good is a very positive one that definitely encourages creativity in the classroom. At the same time, I’m curious as to whether learning the music later would then be a hindrance. I know from my piano experience that it took me many years and an incredible amount of work to finally get good at reading and playing what I saw on the sheet, where as if I had started that way, it may have been easier to pick up. I found all of his ideas very strong and inspiring, and I really appreciated his passions of trying to change or influence the teaching of music in schools.
Guest Lecture Lesley Dawe 01/23/2017 I really enjoyed this guest lecture! The whole talk seemed much more personal because we had all read her paper and were having a discussion about what we noticed. I found her approach to the elementary music system very refreshing and inspiring. My school growing up did not have a strong general music program, we only offered band, but I loved that Dawe’s school has the opportunity for other options. Hearing about how she entered her school as a new teacher and was able to adapt her classroom to such a fresh and positive learning environment in just 5 years was incredibly inspiring. She was really passionate on the idea of failure being okay, and it being a growing point. I really liked that idea, since any new occupation, especially teaching, comes with an abundance of learning opportunities. Each new child comes with a whole new experience that you get to help build and craft, and that process takes time. I definitely learned a lot while listening to her tell us about how she went through many not so good experiences before she started to find her best way of teaching and inspiring her students. Being able to see that making mistakes is okay is the first step to learning how to improve. I also appreciated how she and the other music teachers at her school use a variety of musical teaching methods. They talk about the ‘elements’ when necessary, and use method books where suitably, but also use many creative and different approaches to teaching music. I personally think that is the best approach, because it allows students to find what works best for them. I learned a lot from Lesley's speech, and it made me very excited to start my own path to finding my best teaching styles.
Guest Lecture Randall Alsapp 02/11/2017 This Saturday workshop was probably one of my favourite music ed classes so far! What I think i valued the most from Randall Alsapp's workshop was how he told us straight up that he was going to try a few new ideas he had for classes on us. He told the class that it usually takes 5 to 6 times of doing something to even learn what it is capable of doing, and thus to never give up on an idea or a lesson if it doesn't go well the first time. The first activity he has us do was listening to a piece and dissecting it. This really got everyone's brains running and working, and warmed us up for the rest of his activities. His main exercise, the 6 groups working on the song he brought from Asia, was definitely my favourite. By splitting us into groups, he got us all working together with new people, and on things that we may not have been comfortable doing. This, however, made the whole exercise that much more exciting, especially at the end when we all came together and had to put all the pieces together into one mass composition. I thought his idea that student centered classrooms can be incredibly structured, even thought many believe them to be the opposite, was very interesting, and I look forward to being able to experiment with student focused learning and different lesson plans in my own classroom!
Guest Lecture Ruth Wright 03/06/2017 It was very interesting listening to Ruth Wright's ideas, and learning about her new music program. The statistics she showed the class surrounding how many student enroll in music electives in high schools was quite shocking. My school had a very small music program, and very few students enrolled in music, but I always assumed other bigger high schools had much more successful programs, and some do, but these statistics show that more seem to be like my school. The program she was working on and telling us about seemed incredibly interesting, although she rushed through a lot of the information so I didn't learn as much as I could have. One thing I found really interesting was her idea of teaching music in its original way. She explained that a lot had changed in music education throughout the 20th century, and a lot of new styles of music were being incorporated in music programs, but what didn't change was the way educators were teaching it. For example, you cannot teach jazz or pop music the same as classical, because they are simply too different to understand the same. I found the whole idea very fascinating and I want to experiment with different ways of teaching those different styles. Her other thought that I thought was really important was the one regarding children entering school, and how most music educators assume they all have no knowledge of music, but that is simply not true. By the age children enter JK, they have already likely experienced massive amounts of music in different ways, so I think learning to teach music WITH the children and not TO them is very important.