What we learn when we learn about music
Designing a Junior and Middle School music experience
As with so many things, COVID not only disrupted the programs of the school, but it also had a lasting effect that remains with us today. That’s true within the music program. The disruption to the ensembles was significant, given that students couldn’t practice or perform together. Blowing into wind instruments, too, was disallowed for many, as was singing. But it also gave us some time to think. In a chapter for a book due out later this year, Emily Johnson, Grade 7 & 8 Music Teacher, writes that “while some educators continued their ensembles with extreme adaptations to prevent the spread of the virus, others threw out everything they knew and started from scratch.”
For many, starting from scratch included considering some fundamental questions. What do we want our students to learn? What relationship do we hope they’ll have to music? Performance has often dominated music education, though Johnson sees that as only one aspect of a larger musical world, one that includes social music, composition, songwriting, arrangement, production, and recreation.
While we didn’t start from scratch—the band programs, as the choral program, are all thankfully alive and well today—we did take some of those COVID lessons to heart. An overarching goal was to approach music “through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion, with the goal of maximizing accessibility in music education to reach the most learners and providing multiple entry points for students based on interest and ability.”
That pointed naturally to guitars. They allowed the shift from a solely conductor-led model—they can be played in ensembles, but they don’t need to be. They lend themselves authentically and naturally to a broad range of genres. They allow students to visualize the relationships between notes and keys, and to learn staff notation, equipping them for high school music courses. In the Grade 3-6 program, students learn music through a combination of singing, ukulele-playing, rhythm instruments, and the Orff approach, which uses pitched percussion instruments and prioritizes student creativity and choice. “They’re exploring the elements of music, pitch, texture, form, rhythm, all of it, just with different instruments, different processes,” says Grade 3-6 Music Teacher Troy Lebane. “So they’ll be able to transfer that knowledge when they pick up a guitar, band instrument, or sing in the choir. They’ll be able to have those tools to still engage.”
That kind of retrospection is what continues to shape the middle school program today and the distinctive character of our middle school. Ultimately, it’s about considering what success looks like in music education. Is it a performance, or is it more than that? The following is taken from a conversation with Emily Johnson and Troy Lebane. Both Emily and Troy have contributed chapters to the upcoming collection, The Why and How of Popular Music Education: A Canadian Perspective edited by Steve Giddings and Darren Hamilton. Emily’s chapter is titled “Stepping Off the Podium: Shifting from the Conductor-Led Ensemble to a Student-Centred Music Classroom” and Troy’s is titled “Popular Music in Elementary Music: Accessible and Relevant Pathways to Construct Identity.” The book will be published this July.
You’ve said that we’re a bit different from other independent schools. In what way?
Emily Johnson: In our middle school core music program, every student learns to play the guitar. This allows us to address the full range of curriculum expectations through an instrument that is versatile and accessible. Students develop music literacy by learning to read notation, follow chord progressions, and understand the structure of the music they are playing. They also build strong ensemble skills as they rehearse and perform together, learn to listen carefully, play by ear, and respond to one another musically. The guitar allows students to explore and perform a wide variety of musical styles, giving them opportunities to experiment, collaborate, and develop confidence as musicians.
In addition to their core music class, every student takes part in our Performing Arts Elective, where they have a choice in what they choose to pursue. They can join our choir, join the concert band to learn a band instrument, or they can take our drama and songwriting program. In that case, they get a taste of drama and then dive deeper into songwriting through analysis of song structure, lyric-writing, and using GarageBand as a tool for music-making and recording.
Troy Lebane: Yes, Emily and I have talked over the years about providing multiple entry points for students to engage. Some students might already have a classical piano background. Some might listen to rap music, and that’s the exposure to music that they have coming in. Giving students choice allows us to meet them where they are at. There are lots of different ways to engage students and still be able to teach the same concepts.
What do you hope the students take away when they leave here in terms of their music education and what they’ve learned or experienced?
Emily Johnson: My hope is that every student will, first of all, have gained an enjoyment and appreciation of music forever. But I also hope they leave with a bank of skills they can draw on to continue creating music on their own, whether it’s sitting and playing the guitar, creating something in GarageBand, or jamming with a buddy. I hope that there’s a baseline of skills there, and that they can choose to take that where they want to.
Troy Lebane: Yes, and for those who are looking to go into music professionally, I think musicianship and participation in music can look very different depending on what fields students go into. So, making sure that students have the tools to go into composition if they want to, become artists, work in the music business and licensing, is all important to us. We talk about all these options and explore possible careers beyond becoming a professional performing musician.
If someone were to question why students who may not feel particularly musical are required to take music, what would you say?
Emily Johnson: I think, first of all, there’s joy in music and that’s really important for kids to have in their day, and in their lives. And arts classes, just generally, support students in developing a sense of belonging in our community.
But music also helps develop so many other skills that they can use in life. It helps with their literacy skills as they’re reading, it helps them with processing and having to process things in time and tempo. They have to work together—in an ensemble you always have to work together and collaborate, and sometimes you’re collaborating without using your words, which is a whole skill within itself.
There’s just such a huge variety of soft skills that they’re developing when they’re taking part in music together.
What do you love about teaching music?
Troy Lebane: There’s nothing better than hearing a class of kids all play and sing together. That’s a feat in itself. I also really love seeing the gears turn, especially when it comes to singing different styles of music. Different vocal pieces require different techniques, so having students experiment with their voices and figure out which approach is appropriate for a particular style is really exciting. Should I grow in volume here or pull it back? Should I form my vowel in this way or that way? So I love seeing that.
I also love seeing students solve musical problems as they arise. I’ll always give them chord diagrams and show them what something is supposed to look like, but I’m not going to physically place their fingers for them. They have to use their minds to figure out that a dot on the string means they need to put a finger over here. Which finger should they use? How do they recognize these patterns when they’re changing chords? Do they have to change their whole hand shape, or do the chords look similar to each other?
I try not to give students all the answers and instead help them develop skills, just like in math, to problem-solve. If you’re seeing something that is difficult for you to understand, how can you decode it rather than stopping and saying, “I don’t understand”?
These are the kinds of skills our kids leave with as they explore the world of music and beyond.
