Editor’s Note: We welcome back Lauren Flaherty for her 2nd MIE Guided Internship! Lauren is a Master’s student in voice and also works in NEC’s Financial Aid office.

I returned to my voice lessons at Club Passim around the start of NEC’s fall semester. I am in the process of teaching two back-to-back six week sessions to accommodate the upcoming holidays and possible snow cancellations. (Not what anyone wants to think about while we’ve been enjoying an Indian Summer!)

This semester I will be teaching four students, including three brand new students and one returning student. Most of my students sing and play and about half of them enjoy performing in the area. One suffers from a lack of confidence. Another is extremely new to music and requires more ear training than vocal coaching. It is difficult to control my expectations when their abilities differ so wildly, but I remind myself that I am there to teach, not to act as a judge.

Aside from helping my students grow at their own pace, I am focused on trying to create more of a formula for my teaching, specifically geared around our six week semesters. I have begun creating my own exercises that I think will help them warm-up and drill correct techniques into muscle memory. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for awhile that will hopefully reflect everything I’ve learned since I began teaching several years ago and during my past internship at Passim.

Editor’s Note: Meet Katheryn Naler, an MIE student/Violin major in her 3rd year and doing her first MIE Guided Internship! Katheryn’s internship this semester is tied in with the String Pedagogy course taught through the NEC Strings Dept.

When I was a young girl, I wanted to be a violin teacher and performer. Even during the years when performing was at the top of my gratification list (even if it meant playing on a balcony, pretending it to be the Carnegie Hall stage), when I got home to the privacy of my room, I would teach imaginary students how to learn the concepts I myself practiced. At the age of 11, I began teaching three brothers, but soon my “studio”, as I excitedly called it, doubled as my first students spread the word. As I turned 12, I began teaching an 11 year old who then stayed with me until I moved away, right before he began preparing for college auditions. He now is playing repertoire that I haven’t even approached, an experience I hope to always cherish.

As I enter this internship, I have much to learn! I wonder how to approach a four year old and impart the desire for learning that I had when I was young – to truly engage them in the excitement of learning music. I want to learn how to not play information down so much that a small child doesn’t see the wonderful value of music and the joy it can bring. I want to learn how to convey not only musical knowledge, but intertwine insight that has been important to my growth, developing a deeper connection with the student in the long term. I want to learn different methods of which to teach and how to avoid pain and injury. To accomplish these goals for my internship, I would like to teach one four-year-old student, focusing on his learning style. Each lesson plan, as well as new ideas I have, will be documented before the lesson. After each lesson, I will journal the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson as well as new information/insights I’ve gathered in response. I will also be observing at least four other teacher’s lessons with their students during the semester, taking notes throughout the lesson, as well as writing a response journal entry afterward, regarding what I learned. During the semester, I will write at least three times on the MIE blog, mirroring what I’m acquiring as well as thoughts I’ve had in response to my new ideas. At the completion of the semester, I will turn in a portfolio of all the lesson plans, response/journal entries, MIE blog entries, as well as a video of one of the first lessons and the last lesson before the internship has come to a close. The video will demonstrate my progression as a teacher as well as the progression my student has had throughout our months together.

To cultivate the experience for the student and myself, I have registered for the String Pedagogy class. Although this class directly connects with my desire to teach pre-college students in a studio atmosphere, I have also taken Performing Artists in Schools and Performing Artists in Community. These classes will aid my experience greatly as I learned better how to grasp young children’s attention as an artist in schools (emulating Bernstein in his Young People’s concerts), and how each person is important, a small part of a community, and how music can create community. I have also taken Music, Brain, and Child Development with Lyle Davidson. This class relates to my internship in that we studied the brain’s development in relation to music and how children mature even from conception. We learned how music, whether a nursery rhyme or the widely recognized Mozart, is so very intertwined in a child’s developing brain. Having this knowledge will help me understand how to more creatively engage the four-year-old student.

This internship will help me prepare for my career as a violin teacher, but more importantly prepare me to be a teacher forever learning. It will increase the opportunity for me to focus on the aspects of a successful teacher as well as hone my own. I will hopefully broaden my perspectives while I inevitably learn new techniques entirely. I will begin to learn what is essential for me to begin understanding before I leave NEC: What does it mean to be a successful teacher? How do I engage a student while effectively communicating? How do I set up a beginner’s technique in a clear, concise way in order for it to stick in their minds and be understandable for their own practice?

Hey MIE Blog readers! Got some great news for you. We have finally given a name to the music program we started last year in Chinatown. We’re calling it MusicLaunch, and it’s going to be an amazing opportunity for both our MIE interns and for community youth.

NEC’s MusicLaunch was founded in 2010 in partnership with the Wang YMCA of Chinatown (Boston). MusicLaunch is an innovative community-minded music education lab, where programs and curricula are driven by the dynamic, multi-faceted, and versatile faculty of NEC’s Continuing Ed Music-in-Education Certificate Program. It follows the YMCA’s commitment to “developing the potential of every child” with its open enrollment (no audition) policy and classes that encourage music literacy from the ground up, starting with parent/child music circles (ages 2-5). Small-group lessons in guitar, band instruments, and recorder are also offered.

Like the YMCA, MusicLaunch is committed to promoting social responsibility, critical thinking, and socio-emotional development. While many arts organizations focus on free performances as their way of giving back, MusicLaunch instead puts experiential, hands-on learning and multi-level (sometimes, multi-generational) instruction at its core. Youth are guided, mentored, and instructed by experienced teaching artists from NEC’s Continuing Ed faculty, as well as by adult intern volunteers from the MIE Certificate Program.

Here are some posts from Devin U, who started out the MusicLaunch guitar program last year.

Editor’s Note: We are pleased to introduce you to Shannon Kelly, a master’s voice student working towards a MIE Concentration. This is her internship proposal for the Fall 2011 semester; you can view follow-up posts to this one here. 

I am writing to propose as my guided internship for the Fall 2012 semester my Teaching Assistantship for the NEC undergraduate course titled Voice Class for Non-Majors. For this class, I will teach a section of approximately 9 students each week in lecture format; in addition, I will provide one-on-one voice lessons to each student in the class for either 30 minutes or one hour each week.

My goals for the internship are as follows:

• Gain experience and comfort teaching in a classroom setting, including preparing lessons, setting expectations, measuring student progress, and setting appropriate benchmarks for evaluating and grading student performance.
• Evaluate and refine my classroom teaching style as observed through documentation and data collection.
• Acquire a greater level of comfort and competence as a studio instructor.
• Improve student engagement and learning as a result of techniques studied through MIE coursework.

My previous vocal teaching experience consists of one-on-one studio voice lessons and this individual experience is limited to a handful of private students. This will be my first real experience teaching regularly in a classroom setting. Therefore this internship is an important component of my development as an Artist-Teacher-Scholar.

I am enrolled in two MIE core courses in the Fall 2011 semester (Models for Teaching and Learning for MIE and Introduction to MIE) and also took the MIE Seminar in Spring 2011. I hope to use the internship as a testing ground for several techniques I studied during that course, including specific classroom teaching strategies and approaches to vocal technique and training gleaned from readings about developing talent.

This internship is relevant to my future plans as an Artist-Teacher-Scholar in that I hope to teach both individually and in a classroom/group setting, but have limited experience in either setting. Further, I find that teaching helps me develop as artist by solidifying my own technique and improving creative interpretation and expression in my own performances.

Concerning my best personal traits as a learner, I believe my two greatest assets are my curiosity and my willingness to learn. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the “growth mindset” in learning and I am eager to apply this concept as a teacher. I also feel that my willingness to learn is important in creating an enthusiasm for subject matter among the students I teach. I am eager to apply this concept and to refine techniques for keeping students engaged and enthusiastic about the learning process.

Internship Inquiry Questions

• How do I need to adapt my teaching techniques (in group and private settings) to create active learning and growth for the students in this class?
• How will teaching this course contribute to my development as an artist and a scholar as well as a teacher?

Documentation Strategy

• Video recordings: I will record at least three classes and at least three private lessons with two different students over the course of the semester to try and track my learning process.
• Student work: I have included several writing assignments that require students to reflect and comment on singing and the classical vocal repertoire as an art form. I feel that students’ reactions to performances, while varied, may reflect my effectiveness in creating an enthusiasm (or at least appreciation) for the art form.
• Student Tests: Students’ performance on tests will also be a helpful feedback tool. Students’ improvement over the course of the semester will be the most important measure of teaching effectiveness.
• Student performances: Students will also perform live for a jury as their final exam. I hope to use these performances as a marker of my effectiveness as a studio teacher, not simply in terms of students’ vocal technique but their confidence, engagement, and interpretation of the songs.
• Student Evaluations: Student evaluations will be a critical tool for comparing student’s perceptions of the value of this course with my own perceptions about student engagement and learning. I will use these evaluations to refine both content and technique in the classroom and studio setting.

It’s that time again! MIE @ NEC students are working on their digital portfolios and I post links to recent exemplary ones.

All links here have been cleared with their respective authors for public sharing.

School Project Portfolios

• Auburn Elementary

• Exploring relationships between Math and Music at Hickory Hills Elementary

• The Music PLUS Music Integration Violin Program at the Atrium School

Internship Portfolios

• Building a Culture of Assessment for A Street Music
• The Wang YMCA’s New Music Program

Seminar Portfolios

• MIE Teaching Seminar (Spring 2010)
• Introduction to MIE Seminar (Fall 2009)

Cumulative Portfolios

• Improvising in Education (Spring 2009)

In my final semester at New England Conservatory, I’m interning as a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Scripp’s Teaching Seminar, one of the core courses in the Music-In-Education curriculum. I took the course a full year ago and really enjoyed the exposure to new concepts and the multiple perspectives from which we viewed the art of teaching and learning. Of course, year-to-year this particular course can change significantly; the topics explored are, to a certain degree, based on the interests of current class members as well as the latest literature with implications on teaching and learning.

One of the pieces of literature we’ve been reading as a class is Matthew Syed’s new book Bounce. In the spirit of Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers, Syed explores the “science of success” by illuminating the hidden opportunities that have existed to create some of the most accomplished musicians, athletes and intellectuals on the planet. Syed challenges the notion of talent, a concept ingrained in the American psyche and romanticized by many, and points to concepts like the 10,000 hours theory of practice, domain expertise and what he calls a trajectory of development.

What helps to make Syed’s arguments so authentic is that he himself is a former elite athlete, an Olympian who became Britain’s no. 1 ranked table tennis player in 1995. Syed writes candidly about hidden opportunities that existed for him, such as the tournament-specification table tennis table that his parents bought and housed in their garage, on which Syed and his brother would duel for hours on end at a young age, creating for himself a trajectory of development that made it virtually impossible for thousands of other aspiring players to match. Another hidden opportunity existed in the fact that one of the nation’s top table tennis coaches taught at the primary school Syed attended, spotting Syed’s enhanced ability at the game and inviting him to join Omega, one of the elite table tennis clubs in the country. Syed states “… I had powerful advantages not available to hundreds of thousands of youngsters. I was, in effect, the best of a very small bunch. Or, to put it another way, I was the best of a very big bunch, only a tiny fraction of whom had my opportunities.”

Syed also explores the 10,ooo hours theory of practice, a recent theory of cognitive science that asserts it takes about 10,000 hours of purposeful practice for the human brain to assimilate all of the neural traces required for world-class expertise in anything. Syed cites a 1991 study by Florida State University psychologist Anders Ericsson, in which he and two colleagues conducted extensive interviews with violinists at the renowned Music Academy of Berlin. The violinists were categorized into three groups- the most outstanding performers, the very good performers, and the least able players who were studying to become music teachers.

Syed sums up, “By the age of twenty, the best violinists had practiced an average of ten thousand hours, more than two thousand hours more than the good violinists and more than six thousand hours more than the violinists hoping to become music teachers. These differences are not just statistically significant; they are extraordinary. Top performers had devoted thousands of additional hours to the task of becoming master perfomers. But that’s not all. Ericsson also found that there were no exceptions to this pattern: nobody who had reached the elite group without copious amounts of practice, and nobody who had worked their socks off but failed to excel. Purposeful practice was the only factor distinguishing the best from the rest.”

So what are the implications of all of this for music, education and music-in-education? There are several. One implication on music performance is that this knowledge can help to nurture humble top performers. The knowledge that world-class expertise on an instrument is not the result of some innate talent but rather a product of countless hours of purposeful practice, often working in tandem with an early exposure to music that created a trajectory of development, can help to instill pride in top performers rather than a feeling of uniqueness. One of the most inspiring things I experience every so often is being in the presence of truly expert performers who are totally humble and unassuming in their personalities- this has a powerful musical effect as well.

Another implication is that we, as educators, should be able to teach complex skills (such as the learning of an instrument) more effectively now that we’re armed with the knowledge that it takes the brain about 10,000 hours to assimilate all of the necessary neural traces for expertise. It may be effective to explain to students the nature of how their brains create memory traces for the fine motor skills required to play an instrument, and that, with practice these traces become stronger and stronger, essentially becoming “wired” in them. Also, to be able to explain to students that expertise doesn’t happen overnight, and to reference the latest cognitive research on expertise, may help young students to gain a good perspective on things and avoid frustration when they expect to develop expertise more quickly than humanly possible.

Finally, an important implication for education in general is, in the words of Dr. Larry Scripp, “Teach every kid as if they’re talented.” In other words, don’t adjust expectations based on a preconceived notion of what students are and aren’t “talented,” because the latest science of expertise suggests that “talent” has far less to do with expertise than the aforementioned factors. Teach all students with the assumption that they will “get it,” because with enough determination, study and practice, chances are they will.

-Art Felluca

My name is Soo Kyung Chung, a 1st year Master’s student in Music Theory, so what am I doing at theMendell School with 2nd grade kids?
I am helping with a creative program called “The Cantata Singers” that encougages kids to compose and perform.
What a great idea that kids can compose! While mostly we learn music by singing or playing an instrument, kids in “ The Cantata Singers” discover music not only by singing but also composing.
Although we only meet for about one hour, the program is rich. The first part is to learn singing. In this program, kids approach music through very general terms. For example, students learn how the melody is shaped. By using one hand, the kids designed the rising or falling lines of melody. I think that following the melody with finger movement is a good method to figure out the shape of melody. The kids could understand that melody could be conjoint(stepwise) or disjoint(leap) and ascending or descending.
The kids also learn about the dynamic of how soft or loud music can be created. The depth of between two hands indicated the loudness. If an instructor shows a large depth by spreading her hands apart vertically, the kids respond with the loud sound [u]. When she puts her hands together to show a shorter depth, the kids respond with a softer sound. In this way, the 2nd graders learn about dynamics in a way that is fun, simple and very visual.
The second part is to participate in a small group where kids compose with a group leader. We have four small groups. Every group has a different topic about the Mexican culture. I work with Sojourner, a 2nd semester’s composition at NEC as one of group learders. The compositional style is totally free. Kids can emphasize any words that they like by melody or rhythm. If one student initiates the idea, the other kids can finish it. Or if one makes an ascending melody at the end of the phrase, and the other wants descending melody, we can make a melody by combining each phrase consecutively. One of the leader’s jobs is to catch what kids want by singing back to them because often young students are not good at pitch so it is hard to understand. We also write down what they are singing, and show music score what they did the previous week. They are so happy to see their achivements.
At the end of each session, each group shares what they have done. We listen to each group’s song, and learn some melodies. Each group has such different styles of music that I am always surprised.
Last week, we made a song over the course of 5-6 sessions. All of the 2nd graders will learn group’s song, and perform them for other students at the Mendell School. Later, on May 6th, the Mendell students will join with another group participating in the “ The Cantata Singers” program, at a local elementary school. I invite you to come listen to these great young musicians.