Critique
This article was influential to me in many
ways. First, it helped to plant the seed for the “Community Anthem”
project that I developed with a colleague at my school this year. Second,
I am fascinated with the idea of teaching children to compose, but find
the logistics of that process difficult to break down into the bite-size
pieces required for an elementary school student’s understanding.
“Community Anthem” was
born out of the year long unit plan created by a fellow music teacher and
myself. We planned to approach the 2004-5 school year by focusing on the
multiple cultures represented in our school, so we began by surveying the
heritage of our student population and then built lesson plans around the
predominant countries. Each child made a passport and received a stamp in
their passport as we “visited” each country. Emphasis was placed on the
instruments and music indigenous to that culture, including the national
anthem. When I read this article, I got the idea that we should have the
students compose their own anthem for the school, city and/or borough, but
I was not sure how to facilitate student composition in my own teaching.
As a result, we wrote a grant for Queens Council on the Arts that included
an artist residency that would enable us to bring in a composer to work
with a select group of classes on composing an anthem for the school
community. We received that grant and the residency is currently taking
place through a partnership with Arts Horizons.
Working with this composer-in-residence has been
enlightening for me, particularly in light of this article. The composer
has approached teaching composition in the many of the traditional manners
that the author of this article portrays as “teacher control.” She has
them writing sentences and using “ta ta ti ti” to figure out rhythms.
Some of the classroom teachers mentioned to me that the students didn’t
really comprehend, but when another music teacher worked with them and
drew the parallel between rhythm and syllables, the students were better
able to understand the concept. I feel I’ve been able to view the impact
of a teacher putting too many restrictions on the creative process of
students and have witnessed the children’s drop in enthusiasm when they
are not allowed some freedom to explore their own ideas.
However, it is easy to stand back and criticize
such traditional teaching techniques and not so easy to come up with
alternative methods. I think two things can happen if some sort of
framework is not given to children on such an assignment, 1) they will be
at a complete loss without some sort of prompt to help them begin. Many
times I have seen them struggle with an assignment that is too open ended
and requires a great deal of imagination and creativity. They need some
carefully designed parameters that will guide them into the process
without restricting them too much; and 2) there can be an issue of
classroom control if certain guidelines are not established. Allowing
free reign creatively may lead to a behavioral free for all.
I’m glad to have read this article again and
been reminded of these ideas because I have encouraged my instrumental
ensemble students to compose pieces on their own using the notes we have
learned thus far. Some of them have been very enthusiastic about the
process and have brought me several compositions; however, some are
intimidated by the idea. I think the biggest mistake I made was in asking
them to notate their compositions, because that limited their creativity
and stifled their enthusiasm in just the same manner that the article
describes.
Next year, I hope to incorporate more composing
into my lessons for both ensembles and general music classes. Reading
this article again has started the wheels turning and I will keep these
ideas in mind as I begin to structure a unit plan for the coming school
year.
