Letting Go...

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In addition to teaching class music, I also take instrumental tuition at school.  Principally I am the brass tutor, but due to cuts in staffing, I now also 'dabble' in guitar and percussion.  This has led me to discover a few interesting facts about how I teach, but especially my default style of 'I lead you follow'.

Today, while I was taking a drumming lesson with two Year 8 boys one of them, who has never been one for concentrating, decided to add his own beat in when we were all supposed to be playing a unison Djembe rhythm together (usually a sign he is struggling with what we are meant to be doing).  It worked so well that I fought my own urge to get everyone back to doing the same thing and let the two drummers off their leashes to experiment.  It was interesting to see how the boy who had originally digressed moved between different beats easily while staying in time, while the more 'advanced' drummer who plays in several school groups initially struggled to come up with his own original patterns.

This got me thinking about how I have been approaching teaching Music recently and how maybe I have become scared to let the students discover their own way through pieces and composition tasks due to a fear of being pulled up for not teaching what was on the lesson plan.

I enjoyed todays lesson so much, I am now thinking on how I can get back to doing this in lessons.  I might even write it into a lesson plan...





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