I’m watching a show on VH1 called “Ice-T’s Rap School” and its premise parallels the mission of Music-in-Education in many ways. The show puts rapper Ice-T in a New York school, where he acts essentially as a MIE Teaching Artist: he designs his own curriculum, teaches regular classes, does some performing, and also attempts to integrate his lessons with material that students are already learning in other classes. Even in a 30 minute episode, I saw Ice-T work with students on many different levels: In one-on-one sessions to improve on the literary/rhyme elements of each student’s self-written lyrics; talking with students in a class setting about the moral and social implications of hip-hop & rap; modeling performance techniques; and working on the integration of rhyming and dance (and choreographing dance moves), just to name a few.

What’s most interesting to me about this show is that it seems to set itself aside from the whole “reality TV” thing by showing the entire learning process that Ice-T’s students have to go through. Whereas other shows might be content to focus their airtime on catfights between contestants, “Ice-T’s Rap School” stayed true to the educational aspect of the program. Furthermore, the popularity of the program, and its prominent place during weekday primetime (Thursday at 8:30pm) with a very famous artist, goes to show that Artist-Teacher-Scholars are indeed a part of the mainstream culture, whether we call them that or not.

As MIE Program Coordinator, I find myself explaining the merits of teaching artists and the Artist-Teacher-Scholar framework to many inquiring minds. And, until now, I often considered teaching artists to be on the fringe of the traditional model of what’s acceptable in public education. Seeing “Ice-T’s Rap School” has changed my mind: Clearly, Artist-Teacher-Scholars/Teaching Artists are not only acceptable for public education, but they are also at the forefront of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. I will be keeping an eye out for more examples of this in pop culture, and hopefully am also priming the pump for MIE to go primetime.

-Randy

Lyle Davidson has done something really remarkable this semester in structuring his “Music, Learning and the Brain” class (informally referred to around here as “the brain class”). For the first part of our class, we’ve been studying John Ratey’s lucid book “A User’s Guide to the Brain” (2001).

We took the first five class meetings to engage with this text in an in-depth way. Our class discussions focused on outlining and clairifying our understanding of this material, everything from flow charts about brain functions to creating clay models of the brain to build fluency with its contituant parts. The text is a terrific and engaging book which communicates the new picture we’re developing about the brain and how it works in non-jargon terms and with very approachable stories and metaphors. The most profound thing that I can state simply from our study is that viewing the brain in the old way, like a machine that simply works correctly or doesn’t, is very outdated and we would be more effective to look at the brain like a colony of organisms (neurons) that is growing, evolving, and reshaping itself in response to stimulus every single day of our lives, from conception to death. Therefore, in a very physical way, education is “changing our brains” and there are much fewer limits on what we can do with our brain than we usually imagine.

However, unlike most science-based course which I’ve participated in, we’re not going to continue in this detailed text-based course of study, and the semester’s learning will not be assessed by either in-line or end-of-semester examinations on the material. Instead, both the remainder of the class and the methods by which we are assessed will be something very different. We spent yesterday’s class brainstorming how we could create a new direction or new modality for the class. In this new mode we break off as individuals and small groups to do our own research, readings, projects, documentation, and learning in “applied topics” which connect what we have been studying to areas that we are excited about. These applied topics — which range from how the brain reacts to our diet to how to use a new understanding of our brains to re-think pedagogical topics to how we can understand the brain’s role in the social aspects of music — are chosen based on the direct personal interest and connection that each classmember has with them.

In structuring the course in this way — 1) An initial burst of intensive study and more traditional academic study with a common text and fast assimilation of new material, 2) a pivot node where the established learning strands come together in a brainstorming session, 3) and explosion of new, individualized veins of application and discussion which are based on our common reference of the text we’ve studied, and 4) a final culmination of our explorations in which our research, work, and portfolios are presented — Mr. Davidson has created at way to present a science-based topic in an engaging manner through it’s direct personal application.

I am thoroughly enjoying the course and I find the topic to be of immense interest. I’m excited to see how our brainstorming session results in a multi-threaded discussion in which topics that we are passionate about related to the material are explored and discussed.

This experience begs a natural inquiry question: We are familiar with some of the most standard academic classroom study/assessment arcs from having experienced them over and over. If this is an innovative model for structuring a class, what other innovative structures are there out there?

–Fred

Fred Sienkiewicz
(fred at sienkiewicz.org)

Larry Scripp’s Intro to Music-in-Education class is an obvious forum for exposing students to the various aspects of teaching, but a closer look shows that not only do we hear about these methods through Larry’s teaching, we also experience them in the way he teaches us, and we experiment with them by teaching our own lessons in front of the class.

In these past two weeks we have been using different colored plastic cups to represent either rhythm or pitch, and creating impromptu performances led by members of the class. Follow the link at the bottom of the article to see Alex Powell directing the class in a pitch exercise. He assigned a pitch to the first cup, and assigned the second scale degree to the second cup. When he pointed to the third, we deduced that it would mean to sing the third scale degree. The confusion came when he assigned scale degree 5 to the fourth cup, and then directed us to sing back down the row. We mistakenly sang scale degree 4 instead of 3 for the third cup. Alex made us aware of our mistake, and we corrected ourselves. In a later discussion, Larry showed how Alex might have corrected our confusion by starting from the first cup and ascending to verify the correct scale degree on the third cup. I think this was a most valuable lesson – that it’s better to allow students to correct their mistake by verification, rather than simply telling them they’re wrong or correcting the mistake for them.

-Kristen

This semester, I am fortunate enough to be taking Lyle Davidson’s class about the brain, and how we as individuals (and musicians) learn. In class, we are able to carry on great class discussions about individual interests in the brain. I have found that in my day to day life, I’ve been able to apply almost everything I learn to my music. For example, a few weeks ago we discussed the value of rewards in daily life. I find that as a musician, not to mention a perfectionist, I tend to cut myself short of rewards. This is because I never think I’ve met my goals. Of course this is far from true. I simply move my goals further away (many times subconsciously), so I feel that I always have more to do. Now that I’ve realized this, I feel that I can properly reward myself after accomplishing a daily goal. In fact, I really enjoyed a comment that a student made in class. She said that when she was practicing a difficult passage, she would line up a row of M&M’s. Whenever she would correctly play the section, she would allow herself to eat one M&M. I think I will have to try that next time.

-Brynn

We have currently had 6 classes and in these classes we have discussed everything from poetry to the average attention span of a 3rd grader. I found that I have the attention span of a 5th grader at times, especially when this class meets at thursday between 4 and 6. This past week we took a field trip to the South End Settlements, it is an old building that houses a pre-school program, before and after school program and a community arts center. In December our class will be performing for the after school program and we went to check out the performance space and the types of activities that occur there. While there we had to oppurtunity to watch an African Dance Class, where the emphasis was not perfection but movement and enjoyment. It gave the kids time to figure out what they were doing with gental instruction. We then walked through two classrooms where math and reading were being taught. Each group was no more than 10 students with 2 teachers/tutors. We learned the basics of how an after-school program is run, and was given time to look around the all purpose room. The last stop on our tour was the art center located next door. Inside we found the youngest group that the afterschool program has. They were finishing their pumpkin patch mural by cutting out silver stars and rocket ships. Our trip ended with some time of reflection where the class talked about the size of the program and how it was run. This trip was interesting and I am looking to discuss it further in class on thursday.

-Maggie

Each semester there are a number of students who choose to participate in either the MIE program or the Performance Outreach program here at New England Conservatory. However, what these students may not realize is that their work for either program can possibly count as credit for the other. For example, students who are awarded Performance Outreach Fellowships can often directly apply those experiences as Guided Internships.

-Randy

Violinist Erin Hauch used her Performance Outreach Fellowship as an MIE Guided Internship. Erin got MIE Internship credit for her Outreach work through her thorough use portfolio-based documentation. Her portfolio posed many questions about the work of Artist-Teacher-Scholars and she based her findings on her Guided Internship experiences.

Greetings!

I am writing to you today from the strange but powerful world of MIE Cross-Listed courses. I hope by now it is common knowledge that there are many courses, some that may even be required of your degree program, that also count towards your MIE concentration. If there is a more striking interest beyond what the MIE department offers, chances are there is a cross-listed course that will suit your fancy. For me, my course was the Wind Ensemble Conducting course with professor Bill Drury, but what I didn’t realize was just how much (even at this early stage) this course would delve into my entire MIE experience and the model of an artist/teacher/scholar.

Only two classes in, I’m already realizing that this course isn’t only about conducting, but also about performing and reflective study. The way I see it, this is the highest level of performing that there can be because you are essentially the performer for the performers. You have to be on top of your game in such an extreme way in order to even begin to be effective. The amount of confidence is uncanny, and as you can imagine has seeped into my artistry as a trumpeter.

But, much of the time on a podium isn’t about performance it’s about rehearsal. And in this regard knowledge of the score is key. This is where it is necessary to be the best possible scholar one can be. Even at a beginning stage of conducting it is helpful to have studied the phrases and contours of the music, not just as they lay on the page but how they were historically intended. This too has seeped into the other aspects of my life as both a student and a performer.

And in rehearsal a conductor literally becomes a teacher. I realize now that the way someone acts on the podium directly relates to the way things function in any type of classroom, even in a private teaching setting.

As you can see, this conducting class has a lot of implications for the Artist/Teacher/Scholar model, and my MIE concentration as a whole. I’m looking forward to seeing how these notions play out over the course of the semester.

Stay tuned,

-Andy