For our MUED 271 Final, we were required to attend the MUED 670 graduate student debate, as well as one of three options of other music events. The other event I decided to attend was the Student Showcase I. Below are some pictures of me and my friend, Erica, at the event and my reflections! 1. Prior to the beginning of the debate, what was your reaction to the topic? What beliefs did you hold at that time about the topic being debated?
I had heard that the topic of the graduate debate was whether or not music education should be taught in schools. When I heard that this was the topic, I thought that the answer was a no brainer—of course music education should be taught in schools, that was what we were getting our degrees for! I did not understand why this topic needed to be debated if we all wanted to be music educators and believed that music needed to be taught to students in schools. However, once I got to the debate, I realized that the topic was whether every student should be required to have music education every year for their K-12 schooling career (Team A) or if that music education should not be the responsibility of public education (Team B). After getting this clarification, I still thought that Team A’s stance was so much easier to debate and believe in. I would not be studying music education in college now if not for the fact that I was taught music in a public school, so it seemed obvious to me that this option should be available to every student in a public school setting. If not, how else were students going to be exposed to music? While I was pretty certain I knew who was going to win the debate (Team A), I was excited to hear what the other side was going to come up with and argue. I wanted to see if it was true that the “worse” side would end up with a better argument because they had to study both sides of the debate more avidly. 2. Describe ways in which positions expressed in the debates challenged, strengthened, and/or clarified your beliefs about the topic being debated. Please refer to questions posed by the moderator throughout the event, as well as the Q&A at the end of the debate. Once the graduate students began presenting their opening statements, the debate topic at hand became even clearer for me. I realized that a key word in the debate was “mandating” music in public school education, rather than simply offering it as an option. My beliefs about the topic being debated were clarified as the moderator explained the two different, yet intertwining philosophies that each side was based off of: aesthetic and praxial. The aesthetic philosophy defines music as sounds that are inherently meaningful and since music is emotions, students must be educated to understand the emotions that music is displaying. On the other hand, the praxial philosophy states that while listening to music in an aesthetic manner is important, there is no universal or absolute feeling that music displays. Instead, music must be culturally developed through active music making. It was interesting to hear about two developed music education philosophies that I had never heard of before and realize how each supported the different positions. I was challenged when Team B asked, “Why is the classroom the best place for music education?” and stated that by putting them in a classroom where only one type of lesson is taught at a time there is no way to support the individual interests of students. While I believed that both sides had great arguments, my beliefs about the importance of community music making were strengthened. Not only is important to have music education in schools, but in order for their love of music to diversify and grow, music students must be active in seeking out the different kinds of music making in their neighborhoods. 3. How has your thinking about the topic that was debated changed? Do you hold a completely different position? Is your position now more nuanced? Were there elements of an argument that was made that you may have disagreed with, but can see as a reasonable opposing point of view? Please be specific when citing elements of the debate. After hearing the debate, my position is not completely changed, rather I think it is now more nuanced than before. I have more terms and philosophies to back up my beliefs instead of simply stating my opinions based on my music education personal experiences. Team A and Team B’s arguments were both extremes of music education in schools; I do not think that music education should be mandated for every student because it would take the enjoyment out of making music. However, I do not believe that it should be completely taken out of schools and left to the community because music in schools is a huge way for students to initially get plugged in. One element of an argument by Team B that I disagreed with was when they stated that when music education was cut out of public schools, people would use that extra money to spend on community music making programs and events. I just think that this would not be the case because people would spend the money on newer objects and items rather than music programs. However, if the people in the community fervently believe in the power of community music, I do think that this could be a reasonable point of view. Team A and B both had great reasonings behind their positions, but I thought Team B was better able to support their argument and definitely made idea of community music learning in order to reach a diverse amount of people and better suit their needs seem very plausible. But I still cannot see how that this is the most feasible and accessible idea for teaching and exposing students to music. Over the past semester, I have been engaging with a variety of reading materials such as books and state and national music standards, as well as interacting with guest music education speakers. My engagement with these different ideas has challenged me to ask difficult questions about music and acknowledge that the answers to these questions are not black and white. It makes me a little nervous to pursue licensure in K-12 music education because I will not have all the answers, but it also makes me excited because I get to work and discuss my thoughts with my peers and professors and begin developing my own beliefs about what it means to be a music teacher and what music education should be.
Reading Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education (2016) by Randall Allsup has challenged what my original image of a music classroom is. One of my favorite quotes I read this semester from this book was “Thus, the laboratory and the museum are both metaphors for relationship making as well as actual physical spaces that construct how we live and learn with others.” (2016, p.105) because it made me consider the musical background I had and what my experience was like. I realized that the classroom could be both a laboratory, a place of experimenting and creativity, and a museum, a place where tradition is appreciated and used; however, there is a way for both the laboratory and the museum to become negative and become places where only rules and structure are enforced. I was forced to redefine what I wanted my future classroom to be like. Did I want it to just be a place where traditional repertoire was played or where we added more modern songs? Would students just sit in concert arcs and play music or would we have technological experiences and music making projects in small groups? These were the questions that made me nervous and excited about being a music teacher in the future. When Dr. Bledsoe visited, I believe that she did an excellent job of articulating and giving examples of how she combines the laboratory with the museum through Duo Musical Playground. She incorporates music learning with fun crafts and artwork. It was a great encouragement to see that it is possible in the real world and that I can incorporate this into my teaching. We also read Hammel and Hourigan’s Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-Free Approach (2017) and it made me realize how important it is to reach out to students with special needs and how difficult it can be. It made me understand a lot more about what it is to work with students who have special needs and the information I needed to be proactive in communicating with other teachers about, like IEPs, in order to provide the best experiences for my students. Hearing Dr. Hammel explain the complexities of the system and her experiences about working with support staff and the school administrators makes me feel more confident that even though it can be stressful working out all the many details, it is possible and there are so many other knowledgeable people who are willing to help and have the students’ best interests in mind. Gordan’s Quick and Easy Introductions also brought about similar considerations for me regarding student learning differences and how I should diversify the way I teach because the way students learn music is actually different than I initially thought. Learning music is similar to learning how to speak, so if this is the case, I should be teaching skills that allow them to recognize sounds first before notation. We also looked at relevant professional documents such as the JMU Eight Key Questions, the Virginia Standards of Learning for Music, and the National Core Music Standards. After looking at these documents, I was amazed by how many standards are explicitly stated that need to be accomplished. It will be difficult to incorporate all of them, but they have many great ideas like incorporating history and current events, different ethnic music, and contemporary media and technology that I would love to have in my classroom. The JMU Eight Key Questions helped me ponder and engage with an entire situation from an ethical standpoint. When Dr. Abramos visited, he also brought about these difficult questions when asking us what Beyonce’s Run the World was conveying and how so. From these scholarly engagements, I’ve been challenged to ask hard, thought-provoking questions, seek out answers, and discuss with others to become the best teacher I can be and know how to develop my own beliefs about music education topics. Reference List:
Allsup, R. (2016). Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
1. I envision teaching in a middle school band classroom, so I might redesign this framework by including more student interaction and engagement. Since middle schoolers are extremely active and inquisitive during this point of their life, my redesigned framework would fit their needs in allowing for movement and hands-on learning with music. It is similar to the investigation, except I want the framework to be specific and insure that investigation includes hands-on interaction, not just observation from afar. I would also adjust the framework so that it pushes students towards creating a product that (constructing) and sharing it with the community. This would help them think of others, rather than themselves, and how they can be active participants in the community through music. Another way I would redesign this framework would be to push the teacher to help facilitate empowering students to make their own creative decisions. I believe that students are often told “Don’t do this!” a lot in elementary school. So, to promote creativity, students should be encouraged to make mistakes and ask questions. Again, these ideas are similar to the framework already presented, but I just want to clarify and make it more specific so that it is relevant to middle schoolers. 2. On my first day of my first year in my ideal job, I would engage students with multiple interests and undiscovered resources by providing different engaging activities. We would begin with several different station rotations where students could experiment and tinker with different activities relating to music. Some of these stations might include the following: Makey-Makey or other instruments that require coding, chamber groups, and improvisation and jazz. Afterwards, they would jot down and brainstorm by themselves or with a group more ideas that they would want for musical stations. Simply by doing these different stations, I hope to spur more ideas for things they want to learn and get out of their music classroom. A subject matter that might be useful to help activate students’ self-interests as well as my own vision of growth would be music technology. By asking questions about what students define technology as and how that can help make music, we can start a conversation and think of all different kinds of ways to incorporate technology, from the pencil to coding, into the classroom. I want to expand their ideas of what music is and what music education looks like; I want them to realize that music does not always mean band, choir, and orchestra, but that it can look like a lot of other activities. 3. Allsup’s book has absolutely made me reimagine my role in the music educator profession. I see my role more as an open book to be explored instead of a regime to be followed; my job is to help facilitate, not dictate learning and engagement. My assumptions and former beliefs have been challenged in that I have come to recognize that in a lot of situations in life and in learning, there is no one right or wrong way to do things. It’s hard to grasp that fact because I want there to be a correct answer, an easy answer, but I’ve come to understand that anything dealing with education and people is never easy. I’ve also released my assumptions that the perfect teacher (if there is such a thing) is the one with the most credentials and best looking resume; rather, the best kinds of teachers are usually hidden and not recognized because they simply enjoy investing in their students. From the beginning of the semester, I’ve come to think differently about how I embrace my identity as a teacher and as an Asian American woman. I can bring my culture into my work and recognize that my background and experiences are different than others and do affect how I teach. This isn’t a bad thing, rather it creates a uniqueness in my story and how I teach. I will need more time to process the idea of how to be a teacher that embraces an open form classroom because I am a “cookie-cutter student”. It will take me time and a lot of thought to think about how I can implement openness and creativity that doesn’t always adhere to what is “right” in the teacher’s eyes. 4. “I’m struck by the fear-inducing environment fostered by the presentational approach. The apprentice is under determined and consistent evaluation, performing publicly as a means to demonstrate knowledge and understanding, always under the watchful eye of the Master. Sound counts more than words. Music counts more than people. As Elliott himself says, there is little need for dialogue. And forget about taking a stray path. In such an environment, how do students experience risk? How do they try out something new? What is the reward for divergent thinking?” (2016, p.100) I’m surprised by how relatable this passage by Allsup is, and I’m amazed at how he has well-articulated my thoughts about my time here in college. I have to agree that I do feel the fear from the Master-Apprentice model of learning here at JMU; I’m afraid of playing things wrong and making mistakes because university professors have so much power and so many connections that could end up ruining a lot of your career and reputation if you do something they dislike. Part of this and the stress it induces turns me off from wanting to pursue graduate studies. His statement also creates some confusion for me; I’m here at college to study music and my applied teacher teaches in the way of the Master, yet my education courses are showing me different ways of learning to better help engagement and foster music appreciation. How can I teach my students in this different way if I’ve never experienced it in my private lessons myself? This passage also challenges my own way of thinking and inspires me to take risks and try something different because the reward for divergent thinking in my mind is the excitement that comes from engaging and problem-solving by yourself. The “I did it!” after all the hard work is worth it in my mind, and that’s something no Master can teach me. Allsup, R. (2016). Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
1. I have seen efficiency prioritized in Wind Symphony at JMU this past semester. Dr. Bolstad makes sure that we get the music a couple of days before we sightread so that we can have an effective rehearsal because we have already seen the parts and have listened to the piece beforehand. Also, while he is working individually with a section, he constantly reminds the other sections to finger and look through their parts or to be listening and critiquing the group he is working with because that section will probably appear in our own part later on. In my high school band, I saw efficiency not prioritized; the teacher would spend a lot of time talking about logistics of the day or spend too much time giving and explaining instructions. A lot of the time my band teacher would become too absorbed with correcting one section that he forgot about the other sections and forgot to tell us how we could be effectively using our time. Instead, our minds would wander off or we would go to the restroom while he worked with one section. Some affordances of prioritizing efficiency in music instruction are more academic engaged time where students are utilizing their brains and that more activities and material can be covered in a shorter amount of time. A constraint is that there is less time to build deep, meaningful relationships if all the music instruction time is constantly on the go. It also does not allow for “wait time” for students to reflect and process what they are learning and sometimes more efficiency can mean that there is less time to go in-depth with material. 2. In my personal vision statement, I emphasize that I want to facilitate my students’ learning, but I also want to be someone they can look up to and talk to about personal issues. I also want to help teach them about ethics and how to be responsible citizens in their communities. I think that Allsup’s conception of music teacher very much aligns with my professional vision because I want to fill a variety of roles for my students. I resonate with Allsup’s thinking that as a music teacher I should have multiple traditions to use, rather than being a Master-performer so that I can help better my students in the long run. However, there is dissonance between my thinking and Allsup’s thinking in that I do believe that the music teacher as Master-performer is also a very important aspect. I do not believe that being a Jack-or-Jill of many trades should replace the Master-performer role because I have experienced the benefit of receiving help from the Master-performer. I think that a melding of both is best as a music teacher because then there can be an excellence in performing and an excellence as a facilitator and role model for my students. 3. I love the way that John Dewey’s ideal school is a “circuit of life and learning” (2016, p.70) and is a mix of a museum and a laboratory where “the art work might be considered to be that of the shops, [and] passed through the alembic of library and museum into action again” (p.70). I do appreciate that Allsup does mention that museums and laboratories can both be closed and open forms, although we do see each one fitting better into one form or the other initially (ex. Easy to think of museum as a closed form). I believe that it is great and refreshing to hear these new ideas; I think it is so easy for me as a person receiving a university music education to be fully immersed in the idea of Master-performer and Master-apprentice relationships that I forget about the necessity of experimentation and circulation of ideas. It is important for students to understand the traditions and reasons behind what they are learning, but it is even more essential for them to come up with their own ideas and continue editing them through a process of experimentation and reflection. From Dewey’s sketch of an ideal school, we see that there is an appreciation for history, but a hope for future creativity, which I think is amazing and monumental. 4. On page 80, Allsup contrasts the duties of conservatories of music with the duties of the public school. He emphasizes the fact that the public school must remain an open form and accept the tensions and questions that occur from changing demographic needs (2016, p.80). Before reading this excerpt, I was a little bitter and angry towards Allsup’s ideas of the Master-performer. I have been the apprentice for the past nine years of my flute playing career and I really enjoy the technicality and precision of the Master-performer style of teaching. I enjoy the knowledge that is passed down to me on previous styles of flute playing. However, I appreciate that Allsup does not attack the Master-performer, but merely suggests that there are deficiencies in it and that another method needs to be employed. He sets apart independent institutions, like conservatories, who have the freedom to have the Master-performer method from public schools where the duty is to educate students about music in ways that are applicable to them. I appreciated that he made this distinction so that I am not so angry towards his views. I do agree that the public school needs to continue changing according to the demographic needs and that the teachers should be developing their own skills to help their students, rather than questioning what the students are doing wrong. It makes me excited to teach in the future because I can teach different, developing ideas and continue learning about new ideas myself. Hammel, A.M., & Hourigan, R.M. (2017). Teaching music to students with special needs: a label-free approach. New York, Oxford University Press.
As a scholar, I love learning more about music education, as well as making connections with it to other content. I enjoy reading and intaking new information, and then summarizing the content to share with others beneficially. For example, I searched the web for useful apps to use and wrote descriptions, pros, and cons for them so that music teachers could easily choose which resources they wanted to use without having to shuffle through superfluous information (http://davinamiaw.weebly.com/scholarship/app-hunt). I also like to reflect and ponder on my research and readings, which helps me understand the content and form meaningful questions that will further my scholarship. I have engaged in reflection through books (http://davinamiaw.weebly.com/scholarship/chapter-1-hammel-and-hourigan), as well as through interactions and discussions on Twitter (http://davinamiaw.weebly.com/scholarship/reflect-on-twitter-discussion).
Since coming to JMU, I’ve learned how to better find and use resources that are available to me. I know how to obtain books from the libraries, as well as through the Interlibrary Loan, and am more effective in how I use key words in my searches. I am comfortable asking the librarians at JMU about different resources too; they provide so much good information because they are librarians with a specific subject concentration. By the time I start student teaching, my hope is that I will have spent even more time exploring and reflecting on all the material I have read. Another hope is that I can find thought provoking articles on my own, rather than being given them, and form my own questions and reflections from them and even write my own articles and opinions. I wish to engage my future students in stimulating conversations about what I have read and what they are reading. I can practice engagement with others by presenting my research in conferences, like VMEA, and creating my own informational posters. Allsup, R. (2016). Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
In the state of Virginia, the Department of Education has listed several mandates and obligations that must be met by students so that they are up to the standards for each grade level. In my music education classes, specifically in middle school and high school, teachers are required to put some of these objectives into their syllabi. However, as I was searching for these objectives, I came across a sample music education curriculum by VDOE (Virginia Department of Education) that contained objectives that I had never seen before in my school syllabi! I am impressed by the all-encompassing objectives this curriculum contained. It did not just focus on music theory and ability to play a musical instrument, like what my original view of how band classes should be was; instead, it included the ability to improvise, compose, connect musical knowledge with other areas of education, exploring nontraditional music making with different technologies, and much more. These objectives went beyond what I experienced growing up in my music classes. I have seen some of the core, traditional objectives of music classes, such as understanding key signatures and playing certain repertoire being accomplished, but there’s so much more in the obligations that I did not come in contact with. They also list different ways of assessments than playing tests, such as listening journals and visual representations that are simple, refreshing ways to assess a student’s learning. If I had been exposed to a broader variety of these objectives when I was younger, I cannot imagine how much more I could be doing and researching now. It’s interesting for me to step outside of the codes of tradition of music making and learning because I enjoyed the traditional way I learned to play the flute and participate in a wind ensemble. I think that teaching students the codes of tradition is an empowering act when it is done with love and support, and is seen as passing down a legacy and tradition of music making that has been going on for a long time. I think it’s also empowering when students learn grit and build good skills that will help them in the future. However, it is not empowering when there is only one way to learn and there are no other options to explore different genres and interpretations of music, and different kinds of music making. One cost of how I currently conceptualize music education is that I can become close minded to other ideas because “this is how I learned it” and I know that it worked for me. Another cost is that I the way I conceptualize music education may not be as engaging and relatable to students today. A benefit is that I get to hand down a wonderful tradition of music and share something that I love with my students. Knowing that there is no guarantee that my students will love what I love is absolutely understandable, and it helps me to become a better teacher knowing and reminding myself of this fact. I can appreciate the fact that we both share a love for music, but it will also push me to become a better educator by striving to get out of my own music bubble and explore different ways to teach music that incorporates what my students love with a passion. As long as my students can enjoy music and relate it back to what they are learning, I will be satisfied because I know that everyone has different interests. A lot of what Allsup discusses relates to outcomes and the key question, “What achieves the best short and long term outcomes for me and others?” Allsup talks about this question in both closed and open forms. He highlights the effectiveness of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, “an institution that claims democracy as a constituting element” (2016, p.26) and how even in their closed form of a classical European orchestra, they are able to thrive and explore music making in a different way---without a conductor. By highlighting this story, Allsup describes how the best long term outcomes come from remaking and redefining traditional practices. In contrast, he also shows another example of Jiro Ono and how his “severe routine of expertise may have stunted his growth as an innovator” (2016, p.26), which is a negative outcome that is not the best for us. Another question is “What duties and/or obligations apply?”. Allsup begins by answering this question based on the context of the situation; he states that in the nineteenth century, “the texture of social relationships were secure: there were listeners, composers, and performers” (2016, p.21), while today’s music and its roles are “activity destabilizing categories and moving beyond explication” (2016, p.22). Allsup would say that our duties and obligations are first and foremost based on what the time period is focused on and states is best, but he would also this is not the best way to go about music educating. He would rather music education be about giving meaning and direction to lives rather than tradition, and for educators to explore the messier part of education that will hopefully remain an open form. Character would also be extremely important to Allsup, including the question, “What action best reflects who I am and the person I want to become?” Allsup discusses the Master-apprentice relationship a lot and how taxing that relationship can play on the learner. He states that because of so much standardization and assessment “one can detect a kind of category fatigue in the field of music education” (2016, p.27). Allsup pushes the reader to consider his perspective of revival for music education and what he hopes it will become: a reformation and hijacking of fundamental terms so that music can become alive and fresh once again. Lastly, “How does freedom, personal autonomy, or consent apply?” deals with liberty. Allsup asks a lot of questions like, “What would it mean for music educators to relinquish the constant need to resolve, explain, and contain?” and “What would it mean to misread the notes on the page?” (2016, p.29). He wonders what would happen if we allowed much more freedom in our music making. His answer to how does freedom apply is that by allowing this to occur, music can evolve into some of the most beautiful forms it has ever been; it may be a bit messy, but it will be beautiful. |
Davina MiawOn this page, I will present examples of my scholarship in the form of reflective essays and philosophical assignments. Archives
November 2019
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