Week 6 - Reflection

This week’s reading focused on music listening skills and how students respond to music. The opening of the chapter resonated with me strongly because the experience of Ms. Elizabeth is very similar to my first three years of general music teaching experience.

I have been teaching sixth, seventh and eighth general music classes for the last seven years. Although I have gotten better at teaching and classroom management, I still find those classes challenging for many of the same reasons mentioned in the book. The quality of education is often compromised due to misbehaved students who do not want to be there, making teaching and learning difficult. However, I have observed that all students, including those who show no interest in general music class tend to use iPods and iPhones in recess, homework centers and hallways. The use of these music technology tools is an indication that they love listening to music.  Perhaps students have not been engaged in my listening lessons because the lessons were taught as “formalized listening” (Bauer 2014, p. 108).

After reading this chapter I looked back for a minute and remembered that the music that I loved to listen to twenty years ago was much different than the music I listen to today. As I grew older, so did my listening skills, taste and musical expectations. Listening to music is a part of my practice routine. I listen to music carefully with an analytical ear. The problem with that though is that my ear became the barrier between students and myself. I cannot expect my students to listen to music that took me years to digest. According to Bauer (2014) listening to music with understanding and appreciation seems to be a result of prior experience with that particular style.

Chapter 5 is truly an eye opener. After reading it, I realized that I would have greatly benefited, had I read it before I started teaching those classes. It is a good reminder that listening, responding to music and appreciating it, takes time and patience because it has to do with intellectual growth and it is an “education of feelings” (Abeles, 2010, p. 53).  It is also important to remember that the students we teach today are digital natives and even simple discussions about music might become more engaging to them when incorporating appealing technology. The technology mentioned in Chapter 5 is worth mentioning because it might help increase student participation. To conclude, Blogs, WebQuests, Spotify, SoundCloud and other web-based tools mentioned in Chapter 5 are great suggestions and I am looking forward to use them in September.

References

            Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and          responding to music.  New York: Oxford University Press

Abeles, H. F.  (2010).  Philosophical perspectives of music education.  In H. Abeles and L. Custodero (Eds.), Critical Issues in Music Education: Contemporary Theory and Practice.  (p. 53).  Oxford:  Oxford University Press.