Hold A Tune

Writing programs for learning is a difficult task. There are many spinning plates. Take your eyes off one, and you risk it falling off. Of course, the task is even more challenging if you’re writing programs for an unfamiliar subject.

Hmm, is music one of those? I majored in music during pre-service training. Many of my fellow students ran a million miles to get away from it. They figured you had to be a musician to engage with music fully.

The same line of thought followed me throughout my teaching career. Teachers who weren’t musicians found it hard to write programs for music. They found it even harder to teach.

They would seek me out to class swap. It went along the lines of, ‘I’ll take your class for history if you take mine for music.’

I accepted with glee. Did it boost my ability to teach music? Yes. Did it increase the colleague’s ability to teach music? No.

We eventually came up with ways of observing each other’s teaching. The idea was to upskill each other.

Teaching music is similar to teaching a difficult math concept. We need to unpack the concepts before we present them to students.

We can all hold a tune. We can all sing. If you sing flat or sharp, it doesn’t matter. You’ll only sing flat or sharp if you’re singing with an instrument.

Any note on a piano always plays the same pitch. Your voice needs to hit that pitch, or you’re off-key.

Try singing without a backing–no instrument. Get your class to sing along with you. Make the song an unknown one. Start with nursery rhymes. The possibilities are endless. Your kids won’t know you’re flat or sharp. They will enjoy it, though!