Don't Touch That Key; It's Hot! Season 2, Episode 7

I will start this week's account with an anecdote.  I was working in the Pet Shop on Thursday, as I do every Thursday.  Right at the end of my shift, an undergraduate student walked into the Pet Shop and announced that her saxophone was not working.  It turns out that she had a pad that had come unglued from the pad cup: a common occurrence in woodwind repair.  So, I jiggled the pad back into its cup, fired up my torch, heated up the cup to melt the glue, made sure the pad was refastened to the cup, and checked for leaks.  All good.  Now, here is the important part.  As I handed the saxophone back to the student, I made eye contact with her and I said, very slowly and well-enunciated, "don't touch that key; it's hot."  To which she replied, "I won't."  She took the saxophone from my hands and, as I turned away, I heard her shriek and then say, "I touched it."  I would like to say that I checked to make sure she was ok before I laughed at her.  But, that would be a lie.

 

Saturday, it snowed.  A lot.  So, I took the opportunity to do some work on the research paper that I have due on Wednesday and of which I had written a whopping two sentences.  I read a lot of articles on educational tracking, and specifically the effect of early teacher impressions of student ability on later student achievement as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  That is to say that if a teacher thinks a student will do well, that student is likely to do so; if a teacher thinks a student will do poorly, that student is also likely to do so.  I read and read until I realized that I was looking at words and not actually reading them, just looking at them.  It was time to stop for the day.  But, I will tell you about one article I read.

The author of the study observed ability-grouped reading lessons in a first grade classroom for an entire year.  The ability groups were formed based on the recommendations of the previous year's kindergarten teachers, who acknowledged considering both ability and maturity in their recommendations.  The study looked at student attention during reading lessons, the pervasiveness of classroom management techniques during lessons, the type and frequency of reading turn disruptions, and the self-fulfilling nature of the teacher's predictions of aptitude.  The author hypothesized that each reading group would have a different educational climate.  Lower-ability groups, because their assignment was made partially based on maturity, would have more inattentive behavior, which would lead to more classroom management actions, which would lead to more reading turn disruptions, all causing the lower-ability groups to have a lower quality of educational experience than the higher-achieving groups.  After analyzing the data, the author concluded that the lower-ability groups were significantly less attentive, encountered a significantly greater number of management acts, and had to endure a significantly higher number of reading turn disruptions.  The author surmises that this significant difference in learning context creates an atmosphere which is detrimental to the lower-ability groups' members chances of achievement.  Scores on a standardized reading test, taken by all students at the end of the year, were compared across ability groups and then to measures of teacher impressions of student reading ability.  Students assigned to the higher-ability groups did significantly better on the test than students assigned to the lower-ability groups.  There was also a significant, positive correlation between teacher impressions of reading ability and scores on the standardized test, indicating the presence of the self-fulfilling prophecy of achievement potential set in motion by the grouping of students by perceived ability.

Eder, D. (1981). Ability grouping as a self-fulfilling prophecy: a micro-analysis of student-teacher interaction. Sociology of Education, 54, pp.151-162.

So what?

Well, I think the implications on the school musical ensemble are quite large.  There seems to be a parallel between the ability grouping of students in reading class and the grouping of students that occurs in an ensemble as a result of seating auditions.  Assuming the ensemble director assigns parts within a section, in a top-down fashion, based on the results of a norm-referenced seating audition, the director may very well be making self-fulfilling prophecies regarding the musical achievement of the students.  Students who are at the bottom of the rank order are given the easiest parts, potentially leading to less engagement, more inattentiveness, more management actions coming their way, and more stoppage of playing music for them.  In essence, the director is handing these students the easy part and saying, "this is what I think you are capable of."  And the students need not reach any higher than that, regardless of whether or not they are actually capable of playing the harder parts.  Well, you have heard me say it countless times and I will say it again: this is why we should be employing rotating sections instead of rank-order, part-assigned sections.  More research on this topic to come.

Remember last week how the contra was broken?  It was such a sad moment.  Though, I have to admit that I got a little excited about driving the contra out to Indiana to have it serviced at the Fox factory.  Well, I took another look at it this week and, lo and behold, there was just a screw that had backed itself out.  I screwed that bad boy back in and, BAM!, working contra.  So, in Wind Symphony, we are playing a tune called Bells for Stokowski by Michael Doherty.  There is this cool little moment where the contrabassoon and some other low reeds (bassoons, bass clarinet, and such, but who is really listening to them when the contra is cranking?) have a really aggressive iteration of the melodic content.

 

(The passage in question happens around 5:44.  To be fair, the Marine Band could use more contra.  Come on, guys!)

Anyway, I must have been channeling my inner monster as we played it on Wednesday because Dr. T. turns to the low reed section and said something to the effect of, "let the contra take the lead here. We don't often have a contra player as talented as the one we do right now."  Turbo Contra, baby!

I didn't have a terribly great Night Owls rehearsal on Monday.  I really planned out what I wanted to do and had convinced myself that it would be a really weighty task to get through.  But, somehow, the group powered through my whole 15 minute plan in about 6 minutes and I was left unprepared with what to do next.  I lost my momentum and, even though we did get some good work done, I wasn't in complete control of the situation and I didn't feel that great about it as a result.  I let myself fall into one of the traps I keep reminding the undergrads of: always plan too much because you never know what will happen.  Silly, Mitch: practice what you preach!

I was super stoked for Temple Prep on Saturday.  Problem: Temple Prep was cancelled this Saturday due to school of music auditions and nobody told me about it.  So, I showed up and it took me longer than I would care to admit to realize there were no Temple Prep people milling about, and then went right back home.

Upcoming Events:

• Wind Symphony Concert: March 11 at 7:30 pm at TPAC

• Category 5 Wind Ensemble Concert (yes, I am playing again!): March 14, probably at 7 pm, I think at Laurel HS, Laurel, MD

• Wind Symphony Concert: March 22 at 7:30 pm at the Kimmel Center

• Mitch speaks at NAfME conference: October 25-28, 2015 in Nashville, TN

Well, that is all for this week.  Stay warm, my friends.

Future Doctor Mitch, out!

Blood Is Thicker Than Water, But the Air In My Office Is Thickest Of All! Season 2, Episode 6

In this episode, something mindblowingly amazing will be revealed about our hero (AKA: me).  But not in the next paragraph.  You have to wait.

So, I arrive at school on Monday morning, ready to get to work.  I open my office door, only to be met with the dankest, wettest, cringe-worthyest air quality every experienced by humankind.  I felt like I needed a knife, no a sword, no a light saber (because only the best of tools will suffice) to cut my way through the air and enter my office.  Apparently, there is a problem in the boiler room and everything in the basement of the building is now subjected to a moist environment because of it.  Just to paint you a picture of how bad it is: when I put on my coat at the end of the day on Friday, the insides of the sleeves were wet.  Yuck!  So, all of us are complaining and the answer we have been given is, "they are working on it.  In the meantime, get a fan."  Which really means, "you are grad students.  Who cares about your office conditions?"

On Tuesday, I was fixing a clarinet and dropped a pivot screw.  Pivot screws are tiny screws that hold the keys on the instrument as well as acting as pivot points so they can toggle up and down.  Well, I couldn't find the screw, which is not surprising since I often can't find things like my keys which are so much bigger than a pivot screw.  No biggie, though.  They are super cheap and I put a pack of pivot screws on my list of things to buy.  On Thursday, when I was in the Pet Shop (where I fix the instruments), I stepped on something sharp and it stuck through the sole of my shoe and poked the bottom of my foot.  Guess what it was...  You got it; it was the pivot screw!

The contra is broken.

So, when I play, some of the low notes vibrate at such a slow frequency that I actually experience my eyeballs shaking in their sockets.  It's neat to watch the world vibrate while I play.  So, I was playing and I thought, "how cool.  I can see my instrument vibrating when I play low b.  That's this note for anyone keeping track:

I know there is no sound file with that note.  Just imagine the lowest note you can think of and then think of a note lower than that note.  That note you are now thinking of is not quite this note.  This note is still one note lower than that.  Anyway, I digress.  As I was looking at my instrument shaking, which is usually just my eyeballs shaking, I realized that in this case, the instrument actually was shaking!  The low b key was not sealing properly and it was flapping open and closed on the very low notes.  Gaaaah!  So, now I have to take the contra to the shop.  I have gotten a name of someone very reputable up here.  But, I am very apprehensive about taking my horn to a repairman I have no prior experience with.  If you have some time, offer up a prayer to Hephaestus, the Greek god who smithed the weapons of the gods, of which the contrabassoon surely is one.

Ready for that big reveal?  Well, it is not quite time yet...

Remember that time Dan told me he and Rachel were pregnant with Baby Ben and I didn't realize I was the only one who knew and I blabbed to people?  I should just tell people when they meet me that if something is sensitive information, they need to be explicit about it to me.  One of my professors told me something this week about one of my other professors.  It came up in casual conversation, so I didn't think it was a big secret.  But it turns out it totally was!  And of course, I opened my mouth to someone about it, not maliciously, of course.  I was just hoping to get some more information about the scenario.  Luckily, the person I talked to was one of the very few people who knew the information already, so I didn't let the cat out of the bag.  But, the person I told went and told the professor that I now knew the sensitive information and all of a sudden, I was caught up in this rumor mill and unable to get out of it!  It felt like middle school all over again, that is if I had been popular enough in middle school to have been part of any big rumors.

Monday night, I played in a concert.  It wasn't uber fantastic, but I think it was decent.  Here is the link.  Check out the contrabassooning!  Even with the broken key!
https://drive.google.com/file/ d/ 0B0VsY8BzjTmWZ1N5b1A2ejdxWU0/ view?usp=sharing
The piece I am on starts around 1:04:00.

This week, I have been doing some more reading on auditions in school settings.  I ran across a master's degree thesis which looked at the effects on student musicians of auditions which result in ensemble and seating placements.  The study found that there were only brief negative impacts on motivation and self-esteem based on audition results.  The study also found that the overall motivation and self esteem of students with higher placements was not significantly better than any other group and that the overall motivation and self esteem levels of students with lower placements was not significantly lower than any other group.  The study concluded that ensemble directors need not be concerned with the negative effects of the audition process, because they seem to be short lived and not significant in the long run. 

Daniel, J. J. (2006). Effects of band and seating placement on the motivation and musical self-esteem of high school wind musicians (unpublished master's thesis). Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH.

As you know, I am concerning myself lately with the appropriateness of seating placements in ensembles of developing musicians.  My contention is that by assigning parts based on seating auditions, we essentially "track" certain players into the 3rd clarinet parts and out of the potential for being a life-long musician.  The results of this study concerned me because I expected to find a more detrimental effect to the psyche of high school musicians who do not do as well on the auditions.  But, after further thought, the results of this study actually jive with what I know about tracking.  Students who are tracked into any educational track, more often than not, do not switch tracks, especially in the upward direction.  If students' self-esteem and motivation remain unblemished by placement in poorer tracks, this may be part of the cause for students not actively trying to reach the upper tracks after poor placement.  However, I need to do much more reading before I can properly argue this position.
 
Ok.  Are you ready for the big reveal?  Move That Bus!


Remember back to the end of last semester and possibly the beginning of this semester when I was preparing that session proposal to speak at a conference and I told you that I was unable to reveal the contents of that proposal because it was still in the works?  Well, I have been invited to speak at the National Association for Music Educators (NAfME, formerly MENC) National In-Service Conference in October 2015 in Nashville, TN.  My session is entitled, Transcending the Notes and Rhythms: Fostering Creativity in Instrumental Ensembles.  Want to know what will be in the session?  Then you better get your butt to Nashville in the fall!

Well, folks, it was a jam packed week and I am sure you are done reading about it just as I am done living it.  Until next week,

Future Doctor Mitch, out!

News Flash: It Is Still Cold, Season 2, Episode 5

Philadelphia is cold in the winter.  I am over it.

I think I am finally settling into a rhythm for the semester.  It took a while, but things are starting to feel a little more sure footed.

This week was the start of my adviser's research project for which I am the research assistant.  The pretest went without major problem and was over far quicker than we anticipated.  In the preparation for and execution of the pretest, I have already learned a lot of valuable things about conducting research.  Dr. C. talked today about struggles with sampling in a study like this.  Because the study is so time consuming, multiple universities have to be involved to have enough participants to provide a sample which will result in robust findings.  That is to say that the results of the study will have convincing enough data to show that the treatments really were either a success or failure.  I learned that convenience sampling is just not good enough in most cases and that often more extreme and logistically-complicated measures must be taken to ensure robustness.  I also learned how important it is to consider all the moving pieces when trying to set things up.  People's work schedules, material collection and distribution, facility availability, coordination between participating entities, and more have to be considered when planning a project.  Not only do these aspects need to be considered, everyone involved needs to be kept up to speed and included in the planning dialogue so someone doesn't get left out of the loop.  This is all really valuable information and experience as I am trying to get started on my first original research project this spring.

I have a research paper coming down the pike at me in Measurement and Evaluation in Music and I hope it will inform my research project this spring and my dissertation down the road.  For the paper, we are allowed to research any form of evaluation, measurement, or assessment used in or having impact on music classrooms.  I have decided to research the pervasive phenomenon of chair auditions, or the ability ranking of students in an ensemble, and the subsequent assignment of music parts based on those rankings.  It is my contention that, while ability ranking is appropriate in professional orchestras and other ensembles, it is not appropriate in school ensembles of developing musicians.  I am hypothesizing that by ability ranking developing students and assigning parts based on those rankings, music teachers essentially track a portion of students out of being able to seriously study music.  In my initial survey of music research on the topic, I have come across a big problem which is also a big opportunity: there is not much research on the topic.  While that makes research for this paper more challenging, it means that this topic of inquiry is wide open for my exploration and research.  My paper for this class will end up being based on the small amount of extant literature in music on the topic and a slew of other research in related fields.  The trick is going to be figuring out what related research to read.  So far, I have come up with educational tracking, effects of competition on children, equitability in education, student motivation, and normed assessments as related research topics.

That being said, I read an interesting article on music auditions this week during my research for the paper.  The study examined high-performing, student, orchestral musicians during a weekend-long, orchestra festival experience.  The study looked at changes in the students' perceptions of self-efficacy over the course of the orchestra festival as a function of gender and orchestra placement (there were two, ability-based orchestras).  Students' self-efficacy was recorded at four points during the weekend: before placement auditions, before the first rehearsal, at the midpoint of the festival, and before the final concert.  The study found that there was a significant rise in self-efficacy across the participants over the course of the weekend and that the self-efficacy significantly rose between all four benchmark points.  There was no significant difference in self-efficacy based on gender or orchestra placement.  However, there was a significant interaction between time, orchestra placement, and gender.  This revealed that there was a difference in self-efficacy between females in the top orchestra and those in the lower orchestra between the first two benchmarks only.  Interestingly enough, the females placed in the lower orchestra showed a rise in self-efficacy after the placement auditions and the females in the upper orchestra did not.  The article postulates that the general rise in self-efficacy over the course of the festival is likely a product of growing familiarity with the music through rehearsal and the resulting belief in probable success in performance.  The lack of self-efficacy increase in the females in the upper orchestra after the auditions is attributed to the competitive nature of the top group and the belief of those students that other students were gunning for their positions.  Much of this article is not directly applicable to my hypothesis regarding the appropriateness of chair auditions in school band and orchestras because this study did not take place in a school band or orchestra and the article does make a point that self-efficacy is affected by circumstance.  The damaging effects on student morale of highly competitive auditioned environments does have the potential to be supportive to my hypothesis.

Hendricks, K. S. (2013). Changes in self-efficacy beliefs over time: contextual influences of gender, rank-based placement, and social support in a competitive orchestra environment. Psychology of Music, 42 (3), pp. 347-365.

I have an intern for Temple Prep.  An undergraduate student caught me in the hallway and asked if he could help out with the Temple Prep Wind Ensemble.  He wanted to get real experience working with kids in a musical environment.  His initiative is something I respect.  It is the same thing I did when I asked Tony Townes if I could help out with the Northwestern HS band program while I was in undergrad.  I learned so much from working with Tony that I had to agree to take on this intern.  It is going to be a really positive thing, I think.  I am going to have to figure out the right amount of guidance to give him.  This past week, I gave him no guidance at all.  I wanted him to prepare what he thought to be the right music and the appropriate way to teach it.  I think he learned a lot from that experience and the resulting experience of trying to work on the music with the students.  This week, I am going to provide him some questions for thought on this past weekend's successes and shortcomings as well as questions to help him focus on some things that will aid his music selection and lesson sequencing for this coming weekend.  I will still let him pick his own music without my input, as long as he considers the questions I pose.

Tomorrow, I am playing in a Wind Symphony concert.  Check out the live streaming broadcast of the concert tomorrow starting at 7pm.  I will post the link once I find it!

Well, I think that is it for this week.  

Future Doctor Mitch, out!

Buy My Book! Season 2, Episode 4

It has been a little tough to get into a routine because we had another day off of school on Monday due to the "snow."  I guess I should say a day off of school due to the threat of snow, since nothing of substance really fell from the sky.  I just finished up my third week of the semester and I have only had my Monday night class once so far.  I guess we will have a lot of ground to cover this coming week!

I will start with Temple Prep because that was my biggest triumph of the week.  I am firmly entrenched in my goal to have the students sightread the concert in the spring.  The director of the program told me that some of the students feel a little uncomfortable about the idea of sightreading the concert.  But, I think that discomfort is a good thing.  It means I am pushing them to leave their comfort zones and stretch a little.  I hope that I can always keep them a little uncomfortable.  Though, I do know that I need to balance the discomfort with success.  Goals should be rigorous, but not unattainable.  This week, we did our first real sightreading.  I must say that it wasn't a total disaster.  Rhythm still seems to be the major tripping point.  But, I think the work I am doing with the students in my Musicianship class is really helping with the rhythm.  In musicianship, I approached rhythm from a different angle than I have in the past and it seemed to work really well.  I started with this rhythm:

I asked the students to clap the rhythm.  I counted them off and... disaster!  Not to fear, though.  We hadn't counted or subdivided it yet.  (Side note: I am pushing for "subdivode" to be the new past tense of the verb subdivide).  So, I asked the students how many eighth notes take up the same space as each of the notes in the rhythm.  Why eighth notes, you ask?  Because that is the smallest note value present in the rhythm, of course!  And we ended up with something that looks like this:

So, I asked the students to just say that series of numbers without pausing between each one. "1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2."  Then, I asked them to clap everytime they said "1."  Wouldn't you know it: subdividing worked and they could clap the rhythm together as a class, and pretty accurately as well.  Bam!  "But," I asked the students, "why do you think we might want to use standard counts instead of 1s and 2s?"  (Standard counts being 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +).  Well, because while the 1s and 2s give us the subdivision, the standard counts also give us location and help us stay together when doing it as a group.  So, we substituted the 1s and 2s for standard counts and we ended up with this:

Guess who can count rhythms and clap them without much error?  That's right my Temple Prep kids! 
*Patent pending!
*Buy my book.  Pre-orders accepted now, no delivery date guaranteed in the near future.

Statistics still makes me want to jump off a building.  That is all on the subject.

I read an article this week about President Obama's plan to start taxing tax-free college saving accounts on the grounds that the people using those accounts aren't really the target audience for them; that rich people are using them as tax shelters.  My question is: why does saving for your children's college education have to be class-specific?  Can't we just say that education is important and saving for it is something America values, regardless of the saver's tax bracket?  I always feel like, when I read an article on education and politics, that education is being used as a pawn or a smoke screen for some larger political initiative.  But, let me set your fear aside and say that the article noted that the plan to start taxing these accounts was abandoned and college savings are still safe for the time being.  But, how can we really be mad at a guy who, if we are to believe the Super Bowl pregame show, brews his own beer in the white house?

Speaking of the Super Bowl: Gaaaaahhh!  Why does the league keep letting the dirty, cheating Patriots play the game, let alone win championships?  On the bright side, how about the pregame commentary by none other than Coach John Harbaugh?  Gotta love it when Ravens get some national attention!

Well, that is all for now.

Until next week, Future Doctor Mitch, out!