Blending In and Standing Out, Part II

 Anyone working with children certainly appreciates the challenges of teaching meaningful lessons the week before a break.My answer to this quandary is to hand classes over to my students with something I call Share Day. Share Day in music is my absolute favorite time of the year … I invite every one of them to share a musical talent with their class. Sort of a mini-talent show, students are welcome to share a song, dance, instrument, or anything that may fall under the umbrella of Performing Arts. Even students who just want to see what it’s like to play piano or drum set or ukulele (or whatever!), get a chance to perform. I tell them “listen to your heart, play what you hear and try to give it a beginning, middle, and an end” This past week, as always, I was blown away, not only with the myriad performances, but also with how supportive and encouraging every one of them were for their classmates … It was absolutely beautiful … I wish I could share some footage with everyone, but that would negate everything I’m trying to foster. So, parents out there, please know your children are amazing and I am so incredibly grateful to know them When they are given a chance to shine they rise up ❤️

Blending In and Standing Out

Engaging our students and nurturing their creative impulses requires us to honor their unique character: who they are and what they bring to the group. In order to do this, we must embrace the delicate balance between our roles of classroom manager and nurturers of creativity. Doug Goodkin characterizes this notion in his book The ABC's of Education: A Primer for Schools to Come as teaching our students to know when to Blend In and when to Stand Out.It seems we do a fairly good job of teaching our students to Blend In but very little of helping our students know when to Stand Out.

Sharing ideas with peers requires confidence and feeling safe from ridicule or being wrong. I witness children growing out of their creativity year by year. Asking children to invent, spontaneously create and freely improvise grows gradually more challenging as the children get older. Until finally they are completely indoctrinated into the paternalistic world of performance-based ensembles, competing for rankings and trophies at theme-park festivals or state conventions, performing music written by Others and led by predominantly male directors and conductors working with a percentage of their schools' student body population--the ones that didn't give up after starting an instrument or singing in the choir for a year or two. The ones that were constantly told to blend in, never receiving the gift of being invited to stand out.

This past weekend I attended the New Jersey music teachers' conference and an attendee's question to the presenter, Dr. Rob Amchin, in a workshop about movement improvisation activities struck a chord with me on this idea of our charge in nurturing creativity.

In typical (delightful) Orff fashion, the workshop room was filled with elementary general music teachers laughing, singing and dancing together. When Dr. Amchin asked for instrumentalists, many attendees raced to a xylophone or djembe, just as our own students always do, laughing and smiling. One of the simple movement improvisation activities invited the group to share a different thing that might be found in a meadow and we all moved our bodies the way that animal might move (it is too much fun for most!). Someone yelled out "Pizza!" and Dr. Amchin adjusted the lyrics of the song to accommodate us as we sang and moved about the room like a pizza "wagging its pepperoni."

After the activity, one of the participants asked if he himself would have allowed a kindergartener to offer "pizza" as a legitimate suggestion, to which Dr. Amchin replied "of course!" And why not? We laughed while we enjoyed the absurdity of a pizza wagging pepperoni, and I have no doubt a room full of kindergartners would squeal with delight. A teacher fearing loss of control may not allow a silly response from a child and guide him or her to a more "appropriate" answer. What are the hidden messages behind this seemingly innocuous moment? There are many and they fulfill a perhaps larger hidden curriculum of falling in line with authoritarian teacher-directed expectations, no acceptance of creative, outside-the-box thinking and that the child's imaginative ideas are unacceptable for the group. The teacher has maintained control and the student has learned to be realistic and unimaginative--to Blend In. The class has missed out on transforming their bodies into an inanimate object and how to shape their bodies to convey the idea of how a pizza might actually move if it could! Would it roll? Would it bubble? Would it just sit there because it's a pizza? What a fun thing to explore.

A teacher not learning from his or her students every day has ceased to be a teacher. There are indeed times to blend in, fit within the group but there are times to stand out and let your voice be heard. Perhaps nurturing creativity in our students requires as much risk-taking from the teacher as it does from the student. I hadn't thought of that before!

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.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

A tale of a forgotten book, an iPad and how 21st century technology saved a lesson plan

My Kindergarten plan this week centered around melodic direction, steady beat ostinato and linking the concept of size to pitch levels. A major focus of this lesson included the children's book "Mortimer" by Robert Munsch and Michel Martchenko (Annick Press). The perfect exploratory activity, filled with relevance, real-world connections, engaged students. And cue the life of a full-time working mom with two elementary school-aged children--instruments set in F pentatonic, poly spots on the floor, step bells arranged strategically and book left forgotten on my desk in my dining room. A quick trip to the school library tragically unfulfilling and a desperate, deflated music teacher walking back to the music room with slumped, disappointed shoulders. About 6 months ago I treated myself to the most basic, refurbished iPad (read "cheapest") available through the Apple store and it has become an indispensable part of my teaching every day. I'm not quite sure what prompted me to look in iTunes for the book Mortimer this past week, but there it was, ready for purchase and instantly downloadable onto my device. The children don't bat an eye at these modern marvels, as it is as natural to them as a traditional book and I'm able to magnify the screen so they can read along with me. We were able to enjoy the book together and explore musical skills and concepts while reinforcing what they are learning in their regular education classroom. I remember promising myself when iPads first hit the market to buy myself one when they came equipped with a camera. Fantasizing about the day I would set it on my music stand with my lesson plans there at my fingertips and picking it up to record the various musical explorations that occur throughout the day in my Orff-based music room seemed as far off an actuality as the videophones The Jetsons used in that future-based cartoon. And here I am, using it precisely as I imagined and surprised at how seamlessly it enters into my teaching.

One word. Give me just one word!

All I need is one word. Just one. I strongly believe the arts provide many opportunities for students to develop musical skills and reinforce concepts across all disciplines. Finding creative ways to collaborate with grade level teachers in the limited short chunks of time we have between classes can be quite a challenge, but one too important to overlook. Most every teacher I know will tell you they have precious little time during the school day beyond weekly grade level meetings to collaborate and plan with colleagues within their own grade levels. Finding time to make connections with teachers of the arts is even more challenging with scheduling conflicts, administrative duties and prep times filled up with returning emails and phone calls, preparing materials, grading papers and general record keeping! This week I plan to make a space on my classroom door for teachers to jot down anything that they are working on in their classes or grade levels. Give me one word and I can take it and run. Second graders may be learning about sound waves? Effortless connection. Third graders and multiplication tables? I've just the perfect tool to practice math facts while reinforcing steady beat, attention to a conductor, dynamics and movement. All I need is one word.

SMART Board wordwall

After several frustrating moments of the random beach scene screensaver kicking on the SMART Board during class I thought of a terrific alternative. If they're going to be distracted, why not distract them with a virtual music world wall? I created a series of slides using Microsoft PowerPoint with one dynamic or tempo word per slide, exported them as individual pictures into iPhoto, created a folder of the individual pictures, and finally, selected that folder as my screensaver. Voila. .