Repositioning ‘The Elements’: How Students Talk about Music Rose, L. S., & Countryman, J. (2013). Repositioning "The Elements": How Students Talk About Music. Action, Criticism, and Theory For Music Education,12(3), 44-64. Retrieved January 13, 2017, from http://act.maydaygroup.org/articles/RoseCountryman12_3.pdf
When I first started reading the article I did not appreciate how they stated "teacher candidates". To me it feels almost like they are science experiment subjects, and I would have preferred to have read something like fellow teachers. I also felt that they quite often stated "the elements of music" and I would have preferred a simple and clear definition near the beginning of what these "elements" are so that I know I am meant to be thinking. This article also states that many teachers choose repertoire that is almost stereotypical to the western canon, and that this music pushes students from going on in music. In my personal experience, my high school often played "pop" music or music that students do know and listen to. Based on my conversations with other students many still did not continue despite this. It was often due just to not being able to fit it in their schedules. I did not read anything about student scheduling and I wonder if they thought of this as a factor. The whole elements thing is very strange to me because I feel that while I was in high school it wasn't really a thing. I feel the only "element" we looked at was learning to play rhythms. My teachers for listening made us listen to a lot but it was a large variety from pop, to classical to movie soundtracks like star wars. In these listenings we learned to identify instruments, and guess the time period. Also in my class I feel we just learned to have fun while making music. My teacher would write out some patterns on the board and improvise on the piano with us and just have fun. I truly don't agree with this article because I believe my teachers created a great learning environment where we as students would be able to express ourselves, and enjoy music. I also personally feel that my friends and I all joined music because we wanted to create music not listen to it. We learned to listen to each other as an ensemble but listening to pieces was not my main focus as a student. Now as I have grown a stronger appreciation of music I love going home and looking up new symphonies, and finding new pieces but I would not have enjoyed it as much I believe, as this article is letting onto to that should be happening.
Fumbling Towards Vulnerability: Moving Out of the Familiar for Music Education’s Sake First off she states she wants to "honour the traditional past of music making," which I don't understand because when we talked with her it sounded as though she was in no way teaching with any connection to "past music making", it had sounded more like she focused solely on popular musics. I think that the idea of being vulnerable is great, personally I think it always for a different kind of connection between students and teacher than most people take. The idea that we need to help the students connect the music that they listen to, and the music they play constantly comes up and I don't get it. I took many courses of drama throughout my high school career and there was no desire to try and connect what we did to what we saw. We might mention actors we liked but it was never a focus. It also rarely involved standard idea of creativity. I think it involved as much creativity as most music classes do. Also with art classes do they focus on how art can help you look at art in the real world and connect the two? Or is it just a place to enjoy yourself. This is my largest frustration I think is that so often classes say they teach you life skills, or things that can be applicable, and most of the time it is not that useful. I get so mad with how math is taught as I still do not need to make graphs, or a parabola, and English I still have no clue how to write an essay. They also never even bothered to teach us to write a research paper or make an annotated bibliography. So while all of the frustrating things are happening around you, you can go to your art credit, and maybe relax a bit. Sure maybe in the long run you won't use the information you have obtained, but at least you got to have fun. I just want a space where my students can enjoy themselves.
The invisible student I thought this was a very important article especially with more people understanding these situations. With people becoming more aware of bullying I think it has an impact on these invisible students. Often in plays about bullying they will go into how you should try to talk to new students, or those who seem left out. Something one of my old teachers did which I really like is they went through every person once a week and asked them a question. It helped us get to know those that we normally wouldn't normally, and often helped us be able to start conversations as we already knew something about them. Also a large part of the music community was that the teachers knew all of the music students names and many others, always greeted them, and asked them questions which I really appreciated. My teachers in other classes often would do group work, starting off the year usually in chosen groups and as students get to know each other maybe let them pick. Something I realized while reading this article was that, there were often times I had a group picked out already but my teacher would tell me to go join another group. I often found this unfair but I have learned how to make conversations with most everyone around me, especially in group work and so I may have been told to join a group with an invisible student. Not for sure on this but is a possibility. My teachers also in the music class and ensembles often sent us in small groups to help allow us to get to know each other and work on our music. I think that looking for invisible students may be difficult because sometimes they may not want to be noticed. As a student I sometimes found myself not participating, or conversate with many others as it helped allow me to actually focus on the work. For me personally if I do realize an invisible student I think I would first contact the parents. So that they know and that I can ask if there is anything that I personally can do to help. My goal as a teacher is to know every student and have conversations with each one, and to form a friendship with them as well.
Bridging the gap: Popular music and music education
Tobias toward convergence
After reading this I wonder if I am very behind in technology or it describes a small amount of people that use electronics to make their own remixes of music. I knew it was a thing that some people did but based off this it sounds like most all teenagers are using it therefore we should add it to our curriculum's. While I do believe there are many great points in this, I appreciate the idea of creating own arrangements of songs even just making small adjustments, I personally do not think this all needs to be done with technology. I like the music faculty in high schools because it is a way for students to find some form of entertainment away from technology. I don't think we should continue in this cycle where we become too dependent on technology. Of course this is my opinion and some may disagree. It mentions how the Berlin Phil had something to do with arrangements of Mahler and Beethoven. With this would they not pick the best arrangements, Generally from people who have probably studied music? If there is to be arranging in schools I feel it would have to be in a very controlled environment or it could fall apart. I wonder how often this approach is used and if this feedback is positive. I do not really feel that just reading this is giving us what we need. While reading this I have more questions on whether or not this will actually work. Based on my own experiences While I was in High School whenever we did some form of composing, arranging or anything other than playing most of my class would not love it. Many of us took the course so we could play our instruments. I know there should be more than just playing in a class but if a class focuses too much on things like arranging I believe that the students taking that course could change drastically. A large portion of my class from back then would not have continued if we were to do many of the things that are suggested in the reading. I would be really interested in hearing someone who has experimented with these methods and hear their feedback.
The power of limits and the pleasure of games: An easy and fun piano duo improvisation
The elephant in the room This article goes a lot into making big changes to the music curriculum and I do not agree with a lot of it. One thing that I really don't agree with is it says that large ensembles should not be a part of the curriculum. It says how it focuses not on the student but the group as a whole. I disagree with this as you can make it based on individuals. My teachers had us listen to our own recording and write down, what our personal challenges and success for the concert were for every song. We also discussed what we liked as an ensemble and individually, as well as goals for next time. Also our test was never the concert but our teacher would have us one on one playing generally challenging parts. He would usually pick a couple of spots he thought were difficult for our instrument and we would usually pick one spot where we personally found challenging, and how we had learned to play it. Based on this reading I wonder if they even bothered to take things like this into consideration. I personally feel that a lot in this class just goes against everything that has been done and doesn't search for the positives in the old style of teaching. It may also seem I am far into that, I do believe that we definitely need to look for constant improvement but I do not believe that completely disregarding the old style, destroying it, and doing something completely different is the way to go. If you want to try to make a completely new attempt at teaching students, then I think you should give students the option for both. Not just shutting one down completely. I also do not believe this was well written. It has a section called other alternatives and it doesn't even state other alternatives, it just names a couple people who did some studies, there is no insight into what these people wrote, other than we can guess music education. The only hint at alternatives is the fact that it says "alternate teaching methods has resulted in a marked upturn in the numbers of students studying music". It has no hint as to what these "alternate teaching methods" even are. You could probably get a lot more students to study music if you gave them chocolate each day. could that not be an "alternate teaching method"? I am just getting quite frustrated with how this course highlights what it seems to be one point of view on music teaching. How to do the exact opposite of what is happening right now.