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Teaching Music to Generation Y |
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Music teachers like all others, need to know the learning characteristics of their students if they are to teach their "clients" effectively. John Paynter, retired Director of Bands from Northwestern University said about teaching that you need to "know your stuff, know who you're stuffing, and stuff them." Most of us know our "stuff", but do we know who we're stuffing? We are teaching Generation Y and possibly even Generation Z (where will it go then, I wonder?) so what are their learning characteristics? Generation Y Learning Characteristics
Teaching Information Literacy to Generation Y http://www.library.csuhayward.edu/staff/ACRL/ Generation Y learn and communicate through technology. They are in constant communciation with each other using mobile phones, SMS, email, and MSN to communicate. They listen to music throughout the day with mp3 players. They use the internet, sometimes unwisely, to do their research and increase their understanding of themselves and the world. The majority have access to computers at school and at home. Itís not surprising then that the classic instrumental lesson where they are seated in front of music stands, with the teacher providing verbal instruction is not going to inspire or motivate them to reach their potential, so we need to develop teaching styles and resources to cater to their needs. Music is, by its very nature, holistic. We hear it with our ears, read it with our eyes, understand it with our minds, respond to it with our bodies, and express it in our hearts, but do we teach it that way? The learning characteristics of Generation Y demand that we do. We need to get our students out from behind the music stand to fully experience music in every way possible if they are to remain engaged in the learning process and we are fortunate to live in an age where we have the tools to make this happen. Technology is a fantastic tool, but owing to the relative isolation of instrumental teachers in Queensland schools, relatively few teachers are exploiting its possibilities in their work. It is astonishing to note that despite the fact that new instrumental methods come packaged with CDs, DVs and programs like iPas (Standard of Excellence) and Smart Music (Essential Elements), the majority of teachers are mostly unaware of the powerful tools at their disposal. Incorporating technology and the needs of Generation Y requires a significant investment on the part of either the individual teacher or the schools. I travel to work everyday at my four different schools with a laptop, speakers, iPod and printer because the IT in my schools is generally unreliable and music technology is not yet available. I set up my tools on a desk at the front of the room for my lessons, plug in all the cables and then begin band rehearsal. I begin with some upbeat music on my iPod to accompany the setting up process. With rehearsals beginning at 7.30 am most of the students are sleepy and enervated so the music gets them going and sets up a nice "buzz" around the room. When they are ready, I continue with rhythmic movement exercises while they are sitting in their chairs (from Movement in Confined Spaces by James Froseth and Phyllis Weikart from GIA Publications). This creates focus, beat awareness, and a sense of ensemble or togetherness and it is a playful way to begin rehearsal. From there I continue with echo playing using solfa syllables to create pitch awareness. We tune and then continue with the rehearsal. I use pop music to pack up at the end because they all like to dance and sing while they are working - less students run away because they enjoy the music. In my lessons with students who are still on Book 1 in their method books, I use Smart Music. A teacher's subscription to Smart Music provides access to all the major band methods so it doesn't matter whether I am using Standard of Excellence, Accent on Achievement or Essential Elements. Smart Music has all the accompaniments for the exercises in all books for all instruments. As opposed to accompaniment CDs, in Smart Music you can slow the accompaniments down and use the assessment tool to show students where they made errors, providing immediate visual feedback. You can record them playing the exercise and replay it to them or email it home so they can play it for their parents. As the program is included in the Essential Elements method book for band and strings, the students can use it home and email their practice exercises to you for help or assessment. The students love using it, and as the exercises are displayed in large print on screen, with a cursor to show where they are in the music, it helps the students who have difficulty reading music. Using accompaniments also develops their ear for tuning, rhythmic and harmonic awareness, which is essential to their musical development. Both iPas and Smart Music have built in visual metronomes and tuners, which are also a great tool in teaching. Anecdotally, the students using Smart Music at home seem to practise more and progress further than many of the others. The ability to slow the accompaniments down significantly builds their confidence, while the ability to speed them up challenges the more able. The Smart Music library also includes accompaniments for advanced students to rehearse with an accompanist on a daily basis, which significantly increases their confidence and ability to perform accurately. Using Band in a Box (from PG Music) allows me to create upbeat accompaniments to band pieces in schools that have smaller or incomplete ensembles, and for solo pieces that the students like to play that have no accompaniment. It's simple to use (just type in the chord symbols and select an accompaniment style) and an accompaniment with rhythm section, solos and harmonies can be created in minutes. Itís especially good for jazz or rock pieces that can sound a bit hollow when played by a solo instrument, or for use as an improvisation backing track. With my laptop, I can burn CDs of the accompaniments for students to take home and work with. For more contemporary accompaniments, I use Garage Band (Macintosh) or Acid (Windows), which can be great backing for rhythmic exercises. Finale 2006 even allows me to create my own accompaniments that can be saved as Smart Music accompaniments for use in the program. With Finale and Sibelius, I have published student's compositions and incorporated them into an interactive Power Point slideshow for use in library presentations, Open Days and on CD's for them to take home. They can see the class's compositions and hear them played back when they click on hyperlinks to individual slides. This allows them to share their work with their friends and families and gives them a tremendous sense of achievement being able to share their published work. At assessment time, Finale 2006 provides the Finale Performance Assessment tool. You type in the melody to be assessed and when the student performs the melody into the computer through a microphone, the program grades the performance on the number of errors made. There are also thousands of technical exercises that can be customized and printed for your ensemble, saving heaps of time and allowing you to create specific warmups for your own group. Finale 2006 includes too many features relevant to instrumental teaching to include here, but you can check out their website for more information. Of course, books and traditional teaching methods are still relevant, but the available technology is tailor-made to work with Generation Y's learning characteristics by combining visual and aural learning into the one package. It is my hope that more teachers will include technological tools in their budgets, and that schools will see the importance of supporting initiatives in music technology. Reaching this generation means learning about technology and using it as a tool to help them to discover the joys of participation in music. In this age, music has a tremendously important role to play in their development because it takes time to learn, it develops social skills, and because it provides an emotional outlet. But if our students are to reap the benefits of music in their lives, we must use resources and teaching strategies that meet their needs and that they know and understand. Web Resources
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