Many a class now I have sat and scribbled down lots of notes on many different topics, eager to make fluid connections between all of the subjects we have discussed thus far. Sad as it is to say, I have failed in the one area that was truly meant to be a focus of our seminar this summer. We were meant to utilize the knowledge provided for us in class and incorporate it into the subject matter we spend every day of the school year teaching. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I got so hung up on annotations, note-taking, research and analysis of the material that I lost focus of my individual purpose. I realized it was time to take a step back and refocus my energy.
I teach 5-12 band. Mostly I focus on assuring every student has a reasonable facility on their chosen instrument. A majority of the material I use to teach these students is a beginning band lesson book. The advantage of using this book is that it makes my job fairly easy as far as lesson plans go. The disadvantage of this is that the students are left with a mostly classical viewpoint of playing their instrument. Don’t get me wrong, I love classical music, but let’s face it, most of our students spend very little time listening to classical music and that provides only a very narrow view of all music has to offer.
Enter now, the thoughts banging around in my head. Jazz and Motown are great vehicles for teaching students to be creative (generally a focus in the music classroom) and can provide very easy melodies that have the potential to ‘hook’ the students on music (also required for retention). We have spent a good deal of time talking about the sound of black music, white music and the transition music in the 60s makes into crossing over. I would like to relate white music to the basics a student learns from the written notes in a beginning band book and black music to all of the crazy sounds and different combinations of notes the kids come up with while playing around with their instruments at home. If I can encourage a strong combination of both ‘black’ and ‘white’ music right from the beginning (a ‘crossover’ if you may), I may find that out of the crazy mess, I will have a much more flexible and rounded musician as early as the end of 5th grade. There is always something new to try. Here’s hoping!
-- Kat Breitbach
