Posts tagged band
Justine Dolorfino
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Is this really the case? Maybe it’s just another example of praxis shock (read: the discrepancy between what a pre-service teacher thinks teaching will be like and what teaching actually is like) but this doesn’t fit any of the band or orchestra directors I’ve been able to work with. Maybe they’re just the exception to the rule, but now I’m kind of curious to see whether there’s any actual data that supports the idea that directors aren’t able to keep up their own instrument chops as well as they’d like to. I’ve read a bit on the teacher-musician identity dichotomy that some teachers feel exists (i.e., the idea that there’s a difference between being a music teacher and being a musician and one will have to focus on one at the expense of the other) and I plan on editing this post with a source later on to back this up, so I’m curious about this. Either way, I’d definitely not like this to be the case with myself if I end up going the ensemble director route (but, then again, that just could be my naïvety ;))
(from soyouwanttoteach.com)
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Setting pupils harms school performance
(reblogged from researchnews)
This is an interesting look in educational practices outside of the US — in this case, the UK, and it seems to reinforce the attitudes present in this op-ed from The Guardian. Here are some definitions for US visitors like me who were a bit confused—
Streaming meant splitting pupils into several different hierarchical groups which would stay together for all lessons.
Setting meant putting pupils of similar ability together just for certain lessons. So, for example, it would be possible to be in a top set for French and a lower set for mathematics. (BBC)
I’m pretty interested in the benefits of collaborative peer learning and how it can be positively used in the formal educational setting so this kind of research interests me.
I’m curious, though, about the implication that this has for education in the US. After all, what are Honors and AP classes if not a form of setting? The same BBC article describes the current state of education in UK schools as follows: “three-quarters of maths lessons observed by inspectors used ability sets and it was used in well over half of all lessons in science and foreign languages.” Indeed, my middle & high schools used setting for these subjects and I personally found them pretty beneficial. I actually have a hard time imagining mixed-ability classes in these subjects in the higher levels of K-12 education (this is probably because I’ve only read literature that looks at peer collaborative learning in the elementary setting) or even in other subjects.
On the other hand, most music classrooms in K-12 education can likely be described as mixed-ability classrooms. Band, orchestra, and choral ensembles are frequently mixed-age and, by extension, pretty mixed-ability, and students bring a varied background of pre-existing musical knowledge to the general music classroom at every grade level. What implications does the research on setting/streaming/etc in other subjects hold for music education?
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If you want to be sexist and perpetuate gender stereotypes for musical instruments at the same time, I would suggest buying a t-shirt with this print from Lemur Music.
I’m having a hard time putting into words everything that is wrong with this image. However, the main things that come to mind are 1) the objectification of the feminine form & 2) the implicit idea that all bassists are men. His form’s not even very good. Plus, the play on bass (with emphasis on the last 3 letters) is just tacky.
When things like these are sold from otherwise-reputable musicians’ businesses & I continue to overhear statements like “you can’t play that, that’s a girl’s instrument” and vice versa at observations, I am reminded that we still have a long way to go in music education. Where do we begin? How do we fix the problem?
