Welcome to Music ... Mistakes Made Here!

Somewhere in the post-industrial (post-television?) era, people in our society have lost touch with their musical roots. For music educators, validating music curricula within the educational formula has become more of a business proposition for school boards and budget elections rather than a pursuit of maintaining the joyful experience of music making in our daily lives. Estelle Jorgensen posits, “seeing musical experience as an integral part of life … suggests a radical change in the ways in which music is taught and learned.” Music is something people have done across all cultures and throughout time. Singing and dancing were a common part of daily life and provided a social medium for groups to gather. There is a perceived gap between musician and non-musician wherein the general population are either convinced they lack any musical talent or they just don’t have the time to pursue an instrument they studied when they were young. My goal as an elementary general music teacher is to close this gap.

Two years ago I scribbled the words “Welcome to music. Mistakes made here!” on a window in my classroom. The uncertainty of creative spontaneity is an uncomfortable feeling for most, especially students in standardized-test driven public schools. When I ask students to improvise a movement pattern or an 8-beat rhythmic answer to a rhythmic question they are initially reluctant and hesitant. As Charles Keil suggests in his essay “Motion and Feeling Through Music,” improvisatory music’s main obstacle is inhibition itself and “it may be that music whose goal is engendered feeling, spontaneity, and the conquest of inhibition is of far greater value than music which aims to reflect our civilization and the repression-sublimation-Protestant-ethic syndrome upon which it is based simply because …it offers an antidote, a strategy for dealing with our situation rather than reinforcing it” (Keil,C. Music Grooves [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995], 75). I strive to create a safe environment in which my students will freely explore music and movement with little or no fear of being wrong.


Much of the academic day for students is spent sitting quietly, following directions, fitting in with their peers and searching for the correct answers. When they come into my room I intentionally provide an alternative for them. I ask them what they think, I challenge them to create, and I encourage them to explore the world through music.