Hello, everyone!
First, I would like to assure you that I am still alive. I know it has been three weeks since my last post. I have been so busy as of late that I have not had time to update you all on the goings on around here. I will do my best to bring you up to speed. The past few posts have been a little superficial at times. This one will focus on big topics - things that have provoked my thought - over the past few weeks.
I will start with an epic blunder on my part. As you know, I am presenting at the NAfME National In-Service Conference in a few weeks. The topic of my session was inspired by my readings in creative cognition and my synthesis of the topics I read with my own beliefs and teaching practices. Well, I will admit that I have been absolutely fascinated by the things I have discovered in the literature and how well they apply to the way I teach. I became so excited to share what I learned with everyone that I skipped over a major step in my preparation for my session. A couple weeks ago, my adviser sent me this lecture advertisement:
Seriously? Are you kidding me? This guy is talking about encouraging creative thinking in music curricula? How conceited was I to not even consider reading any of the literature on cognitive creativity in music? Did I think I was the only person to have thought of the application of those theories and that research to the field of music ed?
Well, I started reading Dr. Webster's research. Wow! His thoughts were pretty much in line with my own. Reading his work only reinforced my ponderings and put more logs on the fire of my drive to keep reading on the topic. I will summarize some of the things I read for you.
Dr. Webster believes that the word, creativity, has lost its meaning in today's music education landscape. This is because it has been used in so many contexts and with so many meanings that what it refers to has become quite obscured and possibly lost. Dr. Webster, instead, prefers the term, creative thinking, because it highlights the mental processes that are involved in creativity rather than focusing on just a creative product. Dr. Webster acknowledges a variety of creative pursuits in music, not just composition and improvisation. He talks about composing, performing, analyzing, improvising, and thinking about music as creative musical tasks. He makes an interesting point that many music teachers focus on convergent thinking (problems or questions with only one right answer) in instruction. He agrees that convergent thinking is essential to the creative process, but without providing music students with opportunities to apply divergent thinking (coming up with multiple answers or solutions to a single question) skills within a musical context, music teachers are not allowing their students to exercise creative thinking. He jokes that, in this regard, math teachers may be more effective at teaching creativity than music teachers. If any of that has sparked some thought on your own practices of teaching and fostering creativity, I encourage you to read these two of Dr. Webster's writings:
One of the main things taking up my time over the past few weeks was my involvement in Musica Per La Vita! (Music for Life!), a symposium organized by Dr. C. The symposium focused on the relationship between school band programs and community bands, both in the United States and Italy. The symposium came out of her work with the Italian organization, Anbima, which is the organizing body for the community bands in Italy. In Italy, there is no band instruction (or really much music instruction) in the schools. Children who wish to learn to play an instrument end up going to the community bands - each town has its own band - and learning to play in the music school run by each band. Dr. C. and Anbima are designing a pilot program to try to insert music, and specifically band, instruction into the public schools in Italy. The symposium was a way to start a public dialogue on how we can learn from each other in how music is taught and sustained.
Dr. C. included me in the organization of the event and I learned so much about how to put together something like this. Things I learned:
There has been an interesting development in my life at Temple. In my preparation for the symposium, Dr. C. decided that I was over extended and removed me from Temple Prep. I will miss working with the kids, but I honestly was over extended. I think it is important to remember this lesson, both for myself and for my future workings with my own grad students: there are so many things that you can do and that you may want to do, but if you do too much, you risk not being able to do any of it to a high enough standard.
Repair workshop has been awesome! We have done some pretty cool repairs so far, including:
I love grad school! My professors have the most incredible way of taking the things I "know" about what I do and getting me to rethink and reshape those ideas. One such instance came in conducting class this past week. I was speaking with Dr. T. about my struggles with getting Night Owls to play Solas Ane by Samuel Hazo. She was asking me if I had been applying the things we have been discussing in class to my work with Night Owls. I told her that I would love to, but I feel like I just have to beat time largely and clearly to keep them together. She commented that if I felt like I was having to work that hard to keep tempo with my baton, then maybe that wasn't the problem and that I should look deeper at what could be causing their performance woes. Solving that problem at a deeper level would, then, allow me to be more expressive in my conducting. I am going to give that a shot this week and will let you know the outcome!
First, I would like to assure you that I am still alive. I know it has been three weeks since my last post. I have been so busy as of late that I have not had time to update you all on the goings on around here. I will do my best to bring you up to speed. The past few posts have been a little superficial at times. This one will focus on big topics - things that have provoked my thought - over the past few weeks.
I will start with an epic blunder on my part. As you know, I am presenting at the NAfME National In-Service Conference in a few weeks. The topic of my session was inspired by my readings in creative cognition and my synthesis of the topics I read with my own beliefs and teaching practices. Well, I will admit that I have been absolutely fascinated by the things I have discovered in the literature and how well they apply to the way I teach. I became so excited to share what I learned with everyone that I skipped over a major step in my preparation for my session. A couple weeks ago, my adviser sent me this lecture advertisement:
Well, I started reading Dr. Webster's research. Wow! His thoughts were pretty much in line with my own. Reading his work only reinforced my ponderings and put more logs on the fire of my drive to keep reading on the topic. I will summarize some of the things I read for you.
Dr. Webster believes that the word, creativity, has lost its meaning in today's music education landscape. This is because it has been used in so many contexts and with so many meanings that what it refers to has become quite obscured and possibly lost. Dr. Webster, instead, prefers the term, creative thinking, because it highlights the mental processes that are involved in creativity rather than focusing on just a creative product. Dr. Webster acknowledges a variety of creative pursuits in music, not just composition and improvisation. He talks about composing, performing, analyzing, improvising, and thinking about music as creative musical tasks. He makes an interesting point that many music teachers focus on convergent thinking (problems or questions with only one right answer) in instruction. He agrees that convergent thinking is essential to the creative process, but without providing music students with opportunities to apply divergent thinking (coming up with multiple answers or solutions to a single question) skills within a musical context, music teachers are not allowing their students to exercise creative thinking. He jokes that, in this regard, math teachers may be more effective at teaching creativity than music teachers. If any of that has sparked some thought on your own practices of teaching and fostering creativity, I encourage you to read these two of Dr. Webster's writings:
Webster, P. R. (1990). Creativity as Creative
Thinking. Music Educators Journal, 76(9), 22-28.
Webster, P. R. (2002). Creative thinking in music:
advancing a model. Retrieved from http://www.peterrwebster.com/
One of the main things taking up my time over the past few weeks was my involvement in Musica Per La Vita! (Music for Life!), a symposium organized by Dr. C. The symposium focused on the relationship between school band programs and community bands, both in the United States and Italy. The symposium came out of her work with the Italian organization, Anbima, which is the organizing body for the community bands in Italy. In Italy, there is no band instruction (or really much music instruction) in the schools. Children who wish to learn to play an instrument end up going to the community bands - each town has its own band - and learning to play in the music school run by each band. Dr. C. and Anbima are designing a pilot program to try to insert music, and specifically band, instruction into the public schools in Italy. The symposium was a way to start a public dialogue on how we can learn from each other in how music is taught and sustained.
Dr. C. included me in the organization of the event and I learned so much about how to put together something like this. Things I learned:
- Have food. People are much happier when they are fed. (we had food)
- Give presenters a very clear picture of the format of the event. They should know whether they are presenting a topic, or participating in a panel discussion. And they should know what that entails for how they deliver their information.
- Have a "shot clock" so people know how long they have left to speak. Enforce the ending time of the sessions.
- Get hard commitments from helpers so you aren't left at the end of the event with nobody to help carry the equipment and materials back to the music building.
- Have a back up for every piece of technology used.
- Bring food storage for extra food!
There has been an interesting development in my life at Temple. In my preparation for the symposium, Dr. C. decided that I was over extended and removed me from Temple Prep. I will miss working with the kids, but I honestly was over extended. I think it is important to remember this lesson, both for myself and for my future workings with my own grad students: there are so many things that you can do and that you may want to do, but if you do too much, you risk not being able to do any of it to a high enough standard.
Repair workshop has been awesome! We have done some pretty cool repairs so far, including:
- trued the openings of a trombone outer slide,
- aligned a trombone water key,
- unstuck frozen brass slides,
- replaced an oboe needle spring,
- cleaned and oiled a saxophone palm key, and
- put new hinges and a new latch on a tenor saxophone case.
I love grad school! My professors have the most incredible way of taking the things I "know" about what I do and getting me to rethink and reshape those ideas. One such instance came in conducting class this past week. I was speaking with Dr. T. about my struggles with getting Night Owls to play Solas Ane by Samuel Hazo. She was asking me if I had been applying the things we have been discussing in class to my work with Night Owls. I told her that I would love to, but I feel like I just have to beat time largely and clearly to keep them together. She commented that if I felt like I was having to work that hard to keep tempo with my baton, then maybe that wasn't the problem and that I should look deeper at what could be causing their performance woes. Solving that problem at a deeper level would, then, allow me to be more expressive in my conducting. I am going to give that a shot this week and will let you know the outcome!
So, how about those Temple Owls? 5-0! They won handily against Tulane this past weekend. But, I heard some disturbing news: if the team gets invited to a bowl game that is far away (Hawaii), they might not bring the band. What???? They might not bring the band???? I guess, coming from a school like Maryland, the notion that they wouldn't bring the band to a bowl game seems ludicrous. But, Temple is a different culture I suppose. So, let's hope they go to a bowl that is far enough away to be in an awesome place, but close enough that they will send the band!
Well, that is all for now. I don't want to overload you. Next week: my continuing struggle with Gordon's Music Learning Theory.
Future Dr. Mitch, out!
