Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

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 strugg...

I was at a friend's house-warming at the weekend, and as we are in the Middle East and the weather is a few notches warmer than the UK it was a BBQ.  When going to a do like this I like to take food items which are easy to make in bulk, so usually hummus, marinaded meats, a fish or two from a spearfishing session, a salad or, as in this case, bread. To me, making bread like this is fairly straight forward (bread is, once you get the hang of it), but what struck me was that people at the party, including those who had made and brought some pretty amazing food stuffs, were commenting on the things!  Now, the bread in the Middle East, unless of the Arabic or Turkish kind, tends to be either naff (too sweet/ full of rubbish) or expensive, which is half the reason I make my own.  This said, it still surprises me how many people have not had the experience of bread making.  This then got me thinking about education, and why we should all be teaching students how to ma...

It is Thursday evening (start of the weekend in the Middle East) and I find myself sat here at a loss.  Tomorrow should be the 3rd Dukhan Triathlon with the longest event, in which I intended to participate, being an olympic distance race (1500m sea swim, 40km bike and a 10km run).  Over the past six months myself and a few colleagues have been training up to 5 times a week, with blood, lots of sweat, and a few tears along the way, and working up through the previous super-sprint and sprint distance races in the aim of taking part in this 'biggie'.  But then the weather had other ideas..... Screenshot of Windguru.com - 6.6mm is a LOT of water! Now, although not a preference, I do not mind swimming in choppy water or running and cycling in wet/windy weather, but the race has had to be postponed due to the accompanying thundery weather.  The event will now take place in May but, due to the heat at that time of year will only be a sprint distance race (750m ...

Slowly but surely I am persevering with looking into applying Orff Schulwerk ideas in the classroom.  And I have just reached the chapter of Doug Goodkin's Play, Sing & Dance  about using the instrument that sends shivers down many music teacher's spine - the recorder ! Personally, and having been initially thrown out of recorder classes for not practicing (I was 7!), I returned to playing it during my teacher training and now love playing the tenor recorder as it has a warm, rich sound.  A number of teachers I know laugh and make comments about not understanding how someone with my qualifications can stomach the sound of the recorder.  Worse, others have told me that it is irrelevant in the age of the ukulele.  I believe that these thoughts are at best a little misguided, and at worse closed minded and borderline uneducated.  I agree that the recorder can be a little grating with classes of 30, but after spending hours tuning ukes and guitars only ...

Don't blame it on the sunlight, Don't blame it on the moonlight, Don't blame it on the good times Blame it on the boogie... Dance, expressive movement, moving to music .  Call it what you will, we all do it in our own way, but it seems to me that we rarely use it effectively in our classrooms... As part of my ongoing interest in Orff Schulwerk in the Music Classroom I am reading Doug Goodkin's Play, Sing & Dance (Schott 2002) , which I would throughly recommend for all Music Teachers, even those who, like me, have two left feet!  This said, I have just been reading Chapter's 6-7 and I am now feeling like I am a bad music teacher... These chapters focus on dance and movement in the music classroom and laments how, as a educational tradition, we are very good at stamping out movement as part of the learning experience.  Unless of course it has been put into the lesson plan as a focussed activity, or is part of PE, in which case it is divorced fro...

STEM.  STEAM.  STREAM.  C21st Competencies.  Whole School Curriculum Focus.  EAL Focused Learning.  Assessment is for Learning. STEM.  STEAM. STREAM.... (and repeat ad infinitum)..... Our school is presently on a drive to change it's focus from a perceived position of content driven learning to the all singing and dancing process focused C21st Learning.  This new drive is obviously an absolute pain as it means changing everything, redesigning the wheel and ultimately becoming the teacher that we never wanted to be.  Or does it? I have always been aware that as a teacher I tend to be fairly set in my ways and have been influenced by: How I was taught at school and university; How I personally learn (I come from a family of very competitive Trivial Pursuits players mean I am good at picking up factoids), and; How I was initially shown during teacher training. I am sure other teachers also view change with suspicion, but having star...

I went along to the annual Qatar Music Teacher's Guild PD Day expecting much of the same as previous years, with various teachers presenting on teaching practices that they have found useful or pedagogical learning on areas such as Orff and Kodaly Methods.  This year was slightly different as the whole day was given over to Joan Litman, a retired American teacher with a deep knowledge and love of using folk music and the music of the Middle East in the classroom.  Wow! We not only learnt how to approach teaching songs in languages that we might not know, but also how to perform them in concert, as part of a class performance or as a game.   My only problem was that with so much to take in, I am liable to forget it all!  If you get a chance, it is definitely worth going to see this lady in action. Below are my notes on the day: QMTG Joan Litman PD Session Qatar Music Academy, Katara, Thursday 26th January 2017 9:00am - 4:00pm (5 1/2 hours) Th...