GStephens

When I went to Savannah for the annual GMEA conference, I found this book, The Ways Children Learn Music, by Eric Bluestine.  I thought it looked interesting and decided to buy it and read it.  It has definitely made me rethink my own teaching of music at East Central!

In Part One, Bluestine begins by stating a well-known frustration among music teachers.  He says, "I want school board officials, parents, music teachers, and administrators to learn:  Music class is not simply a stop-gap during the school day during which students can relax between the 'important' subjects; music is more than simply a source of entertainment, more than a means of raising the self-esteem of a relatively small segment of the student population.  Music is a discipline as well as an art.  And, like other disciplines, it's worthy of study for its own sake."  When I read that, he had my attention!!

Mr. Bluestine presents a theory for teaching music that I had never heard.  I have relatively little background in elementary music methodogy, so his ideas were new ones for me to consider.  He states three goals all music teachers should keep in mind as they develop a music curriculum:  1) Our ultimate goal is to teach children to become independent musicians and independent musical thinker.  2) Children must develop two basic skills that will serve as readiness for all future music learning:  the ability to audiate and the ability to perform.  3) It's morally reprehensible for us to teach on the "most talented" students.  I agree with all three of these goals.  He mentioned two music aptitude tests I'd like to get and use at East Central:  Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA) and the Musical Aptitude Profile (MAP).  I hope to find these and start using them.

The main idea that has caused me to reconsider how I'm teaching music at East Central come from Lowell Mason, the Father of Music Education in America:  Teach sound before sign.  I've always introduced the quarter note and rest in kindergarten--maybe I should wait until later.  I realized in reading this book that I need to do more with modalities--major and minor, and that I should be introducing students to sound earlier on.  I suspect this book will change some of my approach to teaching music.

Today, in one of my first grade classes, I tried one of the ideas I got from Bluestine:  I tried teaching them about macro beats and micro beats.  They were able to clap both the macro beats of our keyboard song and the micro beats as well.  We even divided into groups with both happening at the same time!  I was encouraged!  I plan to delve more into these ideas and begin slowly changing my teaching and philosophy of music as I go.  This is indeed an interesting book!