Teachers and students thinking as musicians

I wrote the following post last month, to be featured on the blog for Teach Through Music - a London-wide CPD programme aimed at improving Key Stage 3 Music teaching. The blog, in its original form, can be found here.


One of the key themes of Teach Through Music is teachers (and pupils) “behaving and thinking like musicians” in the classroom. That Music teachers should behave like musicians seems an obvious – and obviously good – idea, but I’m not sure that it is quite such a simple statement as it might first appear.


A couple of weekends ago, I attended a Music education symposium in which the role of the Music teacher in the classroom became a hotly debated topic. Over the past fifty or so years, Music has mostly been taught in a child-centred ‘progressive’ way, with an emphasis on children being creative, and the teacher being a sort of mediator, who scaffolds students’ creativity and structures their learning. More recently, however, ideas such as Musical Futures have led Music teachers to take a more hands-off approach, allowing students to direct their own learning, with the teacher becoming more of a facilitator of whatever musical work the students want to do. But now, education seems to be swinging back towards an old-fashioned idea of teachers imparting knowledge, telling students what to learn and when to learn it. And perhaps programmes such as Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (or Wider Opps by its old name) fit in more with this idea – the teacher standing at the front, teaching a whole class how to play the same instrument – not much room for student choice there. So with all these changes, it’s not all that easy to work out how exactly a teacher should be acting as a musician too.


The key question that I took out of that symposium was “what does it actually mean for a teacher to be a musician in the classroom?” Perhaps a bit too philosophical for a Saturday afternoon. But I think there are two quite opposite answers to that question.


Being a musician in the classroom means drawing upon your own musical skills and interests. In a recent Teach Through Music launch event, vocal leader Pete Churchill talked about how important it is for music teachers to be ‘authentic’. If you can’t sing like Beyoncé, don’t try to do it – the kids will know. But show them what you’re really good at, and what you really love, and they’ll respect you as a musician. Opening yourself up like this, however, might make you feel vulnerable - students might start to judge your musical ability and pick you up on any mistakes you make, or weaknesses in your musicianship. By stopping being ‘in charge’ for a while, in order to be a musician, you could lose control of classroom behaviour. But, in throwing yourself into being a musician in the classroom, you might also empower the students – give them space to be musicians as well, and to understand what it really means. By using our own talents and enthusing about our own musical preferences in our lessons, we can create a far more genuine musical experience than if we stay removed from the musical process. Even if that does mean banging on at year 11 about how great Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ is, and then making a mistake in the third bar of playing it. After all, if we expect our students to be vulnerable, to make musical mistakes and learn from them, why shouldn’t we?


On the other hand, perhaps if Music teachers become too subjective in the classroom, too fuelled by sharing our own musical passions and being a musician all of the time, we might diminish the opportunities for students to make their own musical choices, and to work independently as musicians. David Brent in ‘The Office’ taking over the staff training session and ending up enthusiastically playing the guitar to his bemused staff comes to mind... Hopefully none of us are quite that bad, but there is no doubt something to be said for stepping back, giving students creative freedom, and letting them get on with it.


Personally, I think there’s a balance to be struck. It’s vital that students know that their Music teachers are experts in the field – as with any subject. And this means modelling performances and compositions, playing alongside students, conducting the class choir. But it also means giving the students space and time to be musicians themselves, whether that is in creating a performance of their favourite pop song, or composing a polyrhythmic piece for djembes. And then working alongside them, and learning with them.


I am currently teaching a topic on Film Music to year 9. We’ve done a good amount of listening, some performance and discussion, but now we’re firmly stuck into composing – a minute and a half of underscore for a Harry Potter ‘detention in the forest’ scene, to be precise. The students have got a ‘toolkit’ of devices to use (chromatic scales, cluster chords etc.) and features to consider (timbre, dynamics, etc.), but other than that, they’re pretty much on their own. Except, of course, they’re not. As their teacher and resident expert musician, I’m working with each group of composers to help them along the way. Listening to their work and their arguments about how to make it better. Improvising new ostinatos as they perform the piece so far, and transposing ideas that haven’t quite found their way into the same key as the rest of the group. Playing a question-and-answer pattern with the student who’s not quite confident enough to compose a whole melody by themselves, and suggesting ways for the bass drum player to develop their pulse into an interesting rhythm. That’s how I act as a musician in my classroom.


And it takes a long time. Students can’t compose a whole piece of underscore in one lesson, and a teacher can’t impart all of their musical wisdom at once. But given space and time to work independently, and support from an expert musician, students can create all sorts of fantastic music. Perhaps we shouldn’t move too far away from the child-centred progressive tradition after all.