This is a roundabout commentary started in my mind with the question about "School of Inquiry", a proposed magnet school where one of our listers works.
An inquiry usually starts with a problem. Sometimes the problem is as simple as "I don't know how or why that happened and I want to know."
Example: I actually saw today a hawk leap off a power line and flap flap flap about 8 times and flew straight up (!) about 12' and then spread its wings and took off after its friend that streaked by at just that time. Problem: why did it fly straight up? Why have I never observed this before? Is it normal or rare?
I now have an inquiry that could very likely send me to a web search.
Over and over we hear that direct involvement with music makes more synapses fire and yada yada. So the instruction must make the kids do something purposeful. Like solve a problem.
This is different than "teach about music".
In the "how to teach adults" workshop I went to, the instructor emphasized that if there's no buy-in by the adults who are often forced to be there, there's no point in having the workshop. So the crucial issue in adult education (think faculty workshops) is that it has to create buy-in.. How? By identifying and posing a problem that the adults want to solve and then showing them how or giving them tools to solve it. They have to have a takeaway that they can use later.
How different is that from our classes? Depends on whether you're a sage on the stage or a guide from the side. Do you talk music all day or do you set up your kids to solve musical and intellectual problems?
How can we get kids to buy-in to their education in our classes?
Generate a problem they have to solve.
In every lesson.
I'm thinking that small group and individual activities will work well if the teacher gives them a problem they have to solve. Create a new ending for this song. Create new words with an aquatic theme for this old tune. Figure out how to stick this pattern. Find three different ways to move your head with the music. Sing "happy birthday to you" using only sml. Rearrange these words from loud to soft (ff, pp, f, mp, etc.).
I think that Artie's (Almeida) discovery of the effectiveness of well-designed manipulatives and activities is part of the answer. The kids are problem-solving of one kind or another all over the place.
I'm going to have a school of inquiry in my room next year. Give them a problem and let them solve it. In art that's called a design problem. Does music have such a term? It needs to have one!
Like the Orff folks say, if there's no student creativity (problem-solving), it's not an Orff lesson. And it's not active enough learning for buy-in.
Examine your lessons. See if there's a way to incorporate even the smallest problem-solving. Sometimes that's as simple as asking kids to make choices about something, some choices being nearly instant and some requiring more elaborate thinking.
So let's create buy-in, let's give the time to problem-solve to the kids, let's make them more powerful thinkers. Let's give music the chance to be an agent of positive change in the neurological structures of our students' brains.
Oh, yeah. And while you're doing that, you'll be creating more powerful musicians who remember the content and skills you present.
Inquire within yourself how you can create design problems for your kids.
Martha in Tallahassee
