Second Lesson Reflection

I recently had take 2 of my ten minute lesson on Bach.  I did the lesson on fugues just as I did the first time.  When the ten minutes was up, my first thought was:  “That was horrible.”  It didn’t feel great while I was doing it, and it felt even worse in the couple of minutes afterword when I reflected on it.  When my time was up I quickly packed up my things and went to my computer.  I didn’t write my actual reflection then.  Rather I just wrote the first few things that came to mind.  This was what I wrote:

Did a worse job

Messed up the color

Not clear

Crappy teacher

Got distracted by people laughing

When I hear someone say it’s making them nervous that can’t be a good sign

Obviously I’m hard on myself, but this was truly how I felt.  I was very nervous before my first lesson, but it ended up going alright, and I was ultimately proud of myself for getting through it.  This time though, I felt it was a borderline disaster.

The main thing I wanted to change was to make the lesson a little simpler in the sense that I wanted fewer facts.  I really wanted to focus on what a subject was and what the exposition was, and to not get bogged down with getting too much deeper.  The first time around I definitely talked too much, so I wanted to have a bit more of the class doing something.  One idea that I decided to try sort of at the last minute was to teach the class the subject vocally.  I had them sing it back to me in a few different sections and then had them sing the whole thing.  I realized that this was going to be a big challenging because it’s a fairly complicated melody to have to memorize on the spot like that, but I thought it was worth giving a try anyways.  The main thing I wanted to accomplish was for the class to get the subject in their head and become familiar with it.  It didn’t really matter to me if they couldn’t sing it perfectly.  I also decided to bring my bass guitar because that’s the instrument that I’m most comfortable with.  (My piano abilities are extremely limited).  I also wanted to play the beginning of the fugue with a student rather than just have them play the subject on his or her own.  This went all right, but I embarrassingly messed up a couple of notes because I let some of the laughter and comments of the rest of the class distract me and throw me off. 

            The other change I made was to split the class up into four groups for the listening/visualization part.  Rather than having everyone simply call out the color that was playing the subject, I assigned a color/voice to each group and had that group stand up when they saw/heard the subject.  Unfortunately I mixed up the color of the tenor voice with the alto voice, which led to confusion.  We tried the exercise again, but I felt it was too late to try and correct the colors at that point, so it only went moderately better the second time.  One interesting thing that happened was that everyone started singing their part along to the video.  I let it continue, and I’m still undecided if this was good or bad.  By singing were they getting more or less out of it?  Were they doing it seriously or as a joke?

            Overall the whole thing just felt uncomfortable to me.  I thought my tendency to be inarticulate came out, and I got a few laughs the first time, which didn’t happen this time.  Thinking about it now, I think getting people to laugh a little bit is a useful way for me to feel a little more comfortable.  I guess it’s a way of realizing that the people I’m talking to are really listening to me and are semi interested.  However, the only way for me to really use humor is for it to be spontaneous.  Quite often when people laugh at things I say it’s borderline unintentional.  In any case it didn’t happen at all this time.

            As I watched and participated in the other lessons I started to feel even worse about how my lesson went.  I thought for the most part everyone else did a great job and showed a lot of improvement on their first lesson.  On the other hand it felt to me like I took a step back.  It’s too bad because I thought all of the changes I made to my plan were quite good.  It’s just that it didn’t really come out when I was actually doing it.  

Luckily I didn’t have to wallow in my own self-criticism.  Professor Schneider actually gave me some very positive comments and told me that it was a big improvement compared to the first lesson.  Not only that, but I even got some nice feedback from a few of the other students in class.  This was very nice to hear.  It says to me that sometimes I really shouldn’t trust myself.  Maybe I did a better job than I gave myself credit for.  I did do a good job with stream lining the lesson, I got everyone singing more and doing a bit more, and I got everyone to learn the subject of a Bach fugue.  I still can’t change how it felt to me, but I suppose that in the end I did improve on my initial lesson.  Regardless of how well or bad it went, doing these lessons as well as seeing other people’s lessons has been a valuable experience.  I look forward participating in the rest of my classes’ lessons on Monday

Audiences

There are really only two ways I can think of to build an audience.  The first way is by promoting.  This can be through advertising, word of mouth, or by playing concerts outside of school in a variety of settings.  I’ve never actually had to do any of this.  I’ve been in many bands over the years, and I was never really the guy that took on the promoting and marketing of the group.  This is probably because most of these bands were groups that I wasn’t completely invested in.  In any case, promoting a musical group, be it a rock band or a high school jazz band, is something that I have little to no experience in and don’t know a lot about yet.

The other way I can think of to build an audience is by being both really good and interesting.  If your band plays at an exceptional level, then most likely more people will attend the next concert.  Even better than just being good though, is to play something that really grabs people’s attention and that everyone will remember.  If the band is unique in some way, then it’s more likely to build a following and get a bigger audience.  I would guess that the school bands that attract the biggest audiences are the ones that have a special identity, that play a lot outside of school, and that even have a name they go by other than “Such and Such High school Band.”

I’m not sure that it’s always necessarily important to build an audience as a high school band or orchestra director.  The most important thing is for students to get lots of experiences performing in front of an audience period whether it’s an audience of 30 or 3,000.  Preferably, students would get the chance to perform in front of audiences of greatly varying sizes.  In fact, playing in front of a small audience can be a valuable experience.  I’ve had many gigs where there were only about five people actually listening.  I sometimes had to remind myself that I should care just as much about playing well as if I was playing in front of a huge crowd.

I remember that in “Teaching Music With Purpose”, Peter Boonshaft says that rehearsing is much more important than actually performing.  I guess I disagree to some extent.  I think they’re both equally important in different ways.  The whole point of being musicians is for other people to hear us play.  If we just play for ourselves, then that’s great, but what have we really accomplished?  What’s the point in playing if others can’t hear us ultimately?  It’s sort of like the tree falling in the woods with no one there to hear it expression.  Performing in front of an audience is a form of practicing.  It’s the practice of being comfortable on stage with people watching, and the practice of not just playing the right notes with the right musicality, but having good stage presence and being a good performer.

Do we need competitions to motivate bands?

I only know of one way to create a love for music and performing in students.  It has to start with the teacher having a love for music and performing him/herself.  The teacher then has to have the ability to convey this love of music to the students.  The teacher may have all the enthusiasm in the world, but if he/she doesn’t express it, then the students aren’t going to see it.

One example of a teacher showing his/her love for music is simply taking it seriously.  I recently watched the movie “Chopped.”  It was obvious that the jazz band director Ace Martin from the movie had a love for music because of how seriously he took the band.  After he had conducted the auditions, he made a comment about how he was just hoping that the band would sound good and that they had enough talent.  He cared deeply not just about music, but about performing music at a high level and making it sound great. 

As I watched the movie, it became clear that one of the reasons why Martin was so serious was that he was working toward getting to and playing at The Essentially Ellington competition in New York.  When he told the band that they had been accepted, everyone was incredibly excited.  The band became more focused and worked harder.  Everyone cared about maximizing the potential of the ensemble and playing as good as they possibly could. 

This competition was the basis of the film.  It’s clear that competing in New York was a major motivator for all of the schools involved and pushed all of the bands to sound better.  This seems like it could only be a good thing, and yet the idea of competition in music as well as any art bothers me.  I realize that band competitions are a reality that I must live with, but the whole concept just doesn’t sit well with me.  I suppose it’s human nature to be competitive, but why do we have to give trophies to winners?  How does one “win” in music?  Isn’t the desire to sound great enough motivation?  Apparently not unfortunately.

In the second half of the movie when some of the bands were shown performing, my feelings were even more amplified.  I realize that the bands had to qualify to be there in the first place, but I found myself wishing that the competition was just a performance only.  All of the bands sounded great.  I would think that for the students, hearing great bands from other schools would be a valuable enough experience.  Why does there have to be a winner and a bunch of losers?

I hope that when I get my first job, I won’t have to participate in musical competitions, because I don’t know that it’s in me.  I hope that I‘ll be able to get an ensemble to take music seriously without an extrinsic motivator like a trophy.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do this.  I know it starts with having a love of music, which I know that I have.  I guess I’ll see.  I realize that this is probably all wishful thinking, but at this moment, before my teaching career begins, this is how I feel.

Lesson Reflection

I think that I was more nervous than I had ever been in my life before I did my 10-minute lesson.  I struggled greatly trying to come up with a lesson plan.  Honestly, most of my time “preparing” was actually just spent trying to come up with a good idea.  I finally thought of something that I could do, and went with it.  Doing a lesson on fugues was one of my original ideas, but if it hadn’t been for finding that color visualization video on YouTube, I’m almost sure I would have settled on something else.  My big issue with the idea was trying to present it in a clear, easy to understand way, and that video really helped me do that.

            My stress was building throughout the weekend, and it peaked right before Dale started his lesson, and I found out that I was going to be second.  I sat in my chair with my head down, nearly in tears.  It was a bit strange.  I’ve performed music probably thousands of times in all different environments.  I don’t even have a major fear of talking in front of crowds general.  Yet this was different somehow.  I think the main reason why was because I was unsure that what I had prepared was going to work.  I suppose I felt a bit underprepared.  This is despite having shared and practiced my lesson over the weekend with my wife and my parents.  They all were very encouraging, and said I would do great, but I just didn’t believe them, because that’s the negative attitude I tend to have.  I think another reason why I was so nervous was because along with the conducting assignment I had to do two days later for a different class, this was the most relevant thing I had been given to do in graduate school yet.  I wanted to take it seriously and hopefully do a good job.

            When I started, I had pulled myself together, and I was no longer nervous.  One of the things I was most unsure of was the beginning of the lesson.  I felt pretty good about the idea of having the class sing a round, but I hadn’t completely crystallized how I was going to do it in terms of what words I would use to get them to start.  Overall, I was pretty happy how the whole initiation part turned out.

            Having someone from class come up and play the piano was a last minute change I made.  I was intending on playing it myself.  I’m an extremely poor piano player, but I had practiced that part enough so that I was fairly comfortable with it.  In the end though, I thought it would be better to have a student do it because it was another way for the class, or at least someone from the class to be doing something instead of the teacher.  I thought, anything to make it more like a lesson and less like a lecture.  I’m glad I made this decision, because I think it worked just fine. 

            Making sure it wasn’t a lecture was possibly the number one concern I had, and was most likely the thing that made it so hard to come up with an idea.  Everything that was popping into my head just involved information, and me talking.  I knew that the ideal lesson would involve the students doing some sort of activity most of the time rather than just sitting and listening to a teacher talk to them.  Ideally, the activity would involve them playing music.  As much as I tried to fight against lecturing, I ultimately failed. 

Mr. Schneider rightfully pointed out in his comments that I was indeed starting to lecture, and that I was introducing too many terms.  After discussing it with him, and doing some more thinking about it myself, I think I’ll be able to come up with some ways of making the lesson more student-centered for next time. 

Should we have to rely on parents and fundraising to run a modern BOJC program?

I believe there are three parties of almost equal importance that determine the success of a student in elementary school learning a new instrument.  The first is the student him/herself.  The second is the teacher, and the third is the parents.  If one of these three isn’t invested, then the student isn’t likely to continue with their instrument.  Although the teacher is responsible for what the student does in school, the only way the student will improve is if he/she practices at home.  A lot of kids aren’t totally self-motivated, so the parent’s job is to keep their children on track, and making sure that they practice.

            By the time students get to high school, they have hopefully become more self-motivated.  However, I believe parents are still important.  Even if they don’t have to actually sit down with their kids when they practice anymore, they still need to be supportive.  They should attend the concerts, they should help transport their instruments, and they should pay for private lessons.  In this way, parents need to be relied upon to run a successful BOJC program.  If the parents stopped sending their kids to private lessons, for example, the students will not be able to improve as musicians, and their ensemble at school will suffer.

            However, I don’t necessarily think a BOJC program should need the financial support from parents or fundraising to be successful.  I think it really depends on the school.  There are certainly schools that may require fundraising because they have limited recourses, which are put into things other than music.  There are many other many school districts however, that do provide enough already.  I really think it needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

Reflection on the choir warmup

            Much like the trumpet lesson, I was a bit scared at the prospect of leading the choir warm-up.  When it came time to decide which one in our group was the least experienced, it was a run away.  I can’t think of too many other musical activities that are further outside my comfort zone.  For one thing, I can barely sing.  I suppose I would call myself of baritone, but that’s just because I can’t sing high enough to be a tenor or low enough to be a bass.  I’ve also never once conducted any sort of ensemble.  That being said however, I sort of wish that I had tried conducting rather than snapping.  It definitely seems much more musical, and I could really observe as the other warm-ups went on that it really has a tangible affect on the singers.  Another thing, which I clearly should have done, was to make better eye contact with the rest of the class.  This is no surprise to me that I stunk at this aspect.  I’m terrible at making eye contact with people that I talk to, let alone people that I’m trying to conduct.  I’m sure I came across as quite uncomfortable, and that’s basically how I felt.  I realize that I can be quite hard on myself, but it’s hard for me not to be.  On a positive note, I felt just a tiny, tiny bit proud of myself for going up there before anyone else and ultimately following through with it.

Technology in Music Education

            Part of music education involves listening to music.  Since technology has affected the way we listen to music, this carries over into the classroom.  We’ve gone from records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3s.  Smart phones allow us to carry around thousands of songs with us at all times.  We can find almost any song or musical artist we can think of on youtube.  This means that teachers have greater flexibility.  One general music teacher just recently showed me how she has every song she teaches along with every lesson plan and activity organized in iTunes on her phone by grade level and time of year.  I can think back on how different things were since I was in college only ten years ago.  In my private lessons, every week my teacher would give me music to learn and a cassette tape with a copy of the recording to practice along with.  I’m sure today he just has students look up the song on youtube, or email them the file.  Having the Internet at our fingertips all the time has made exploring music much easier and more convenient for both teachers and students.

            I think that technology has helped especially in the area of composition and performance.  Not so long ago, to record music, you had to go to a recording studio.  Now, we can carry around portable versions of Garageband and Sibelius on our phones.  There are things like metronome apps, tuner apps, and ear training apps that can help aid in practicing.  One free app that I’ve used quite a bit myself is iReal Pro.  In addition to a few other uses, it allows musicians to practice along with a song, and the volume level of the practice instruments can be lowered or muted all together.  As a bass player, I’ve found this especially helpful.  I can really see how a teacher would be able to use it with students.

            Since it seems like just about everyone now, including kids, have smart phones, one may think it would be a no brainer to take advantage of some of these applications.  However, I can see a possible downside.  A lot of schools have a strict no cell phone policy, and I can understand why.  For much of the day, students really shouldn’t have any need for their phones in school.  I can see a possible scenario where if exceptions are made to this rule, it could be hard to monitor.  Overall though, I would be in favor of using phones as long as it’s only for specific lessons the teacher has planned.

            Since kids grew up with this technology, there’s a good chance that they know how to use some of it better than the teachers do.  By using it to help teach music, teachers can make their lessons more relatable and fun for their students.  The only other down side I can imagine is if the technology itself becomes the focus rather than the actual music.  However, as long as teachers always keep this in mind, I think that technology will continue to have a positive impact on music education in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMrxdXagJUQ