"Teaching the Artist Within Every Student"

At the 2011 Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Conference, Joanne Haroutonian gave a lecture about the ability for students to be artistic. She outlined what she called the "Artistic Ways of Knowing," which describes the artistic process of learning, enhances students' sensory awareness of the artistic process, and explains artistic awareness to people outside of academia. She highlights five basic concepts: 1) Perceptual Awareness and Discrimination, 2) Metaperception, 3) Creative Interpretation, 4) Dynamic of Performance, and 5) Critiquing. She then goes on to explain each of the five concepts in greater detail, and shows how teachers can incorporate each into their lessons. She concluded her lecture with a quote from Picasso: "A painter transforms the sun into a yellow spot. An artist transforms a yellow spot into the sun."

With the popular "An A is not enough" video (also embedded below) being circulated this week, it is clear that the arts demand perfection, and that a 90% clearly isn't enough when it comes to performance. The conductor suggests that other subjects "teach" students to become complacent, and that a "B" is good enough; in fact, "above average". Yet, if each member of an ensemble only performed 8 out of 10 notes in a concert correctly, the result would be horrible. Music and art challenge our students to strive for the best they can be, and teach them life lessons that the regular academic subjects cannot.

We need to really fight to keep music and art programs in our schools, for it gives students an outlet to their imagination and expression, and better prepares them for the real world. Real artistic expression is something that has to be fostered and developed over time, yet when a student realizes the inner potential that they have, the sky becomes the limit.

Claron McFadden on Human Expression

"The human voice: mysterious, spontaneous, primal; the vessel on which all emotions travel, except, perhaps, jealousy. And the breath, the breath is the captain of that vessel. A child is born, takes its first breath, and we behold the wondrous beauty of vocal expression: mysterious, spontaneous, and primal... When you're totally in the moment, the vessel of emotion is open. The emotions can flow...". 

Claron McFadden's message here is a very interesting one in the way to approach human expression. Having studied in Rochester, NY at the Eastman School of Music, McFadden is a world-renown soprano. As someone who knows very little about vocal pedagogy, I found myself captured by her sense of articulation, and her personal expression in her singing. McFadden closes her short lecture with a performance of John Cage's "Aria" for solo soprano, and walks the audience through this very non-traditional score before singing it live. This is a rather captivating performance, and could be used to get students thinking about expression in music, as well as to challenge what their conceptions about music really are. I am not normally a big fan of late 20th-century or early 21st-century music, but McFadden found a way to bring this piece to life for me. The TedTalks video came across my PLN this week, but I have embedded the video from YouTube below:

Florida's Student Success Act Becomes Law

Earlier this morning, Governor Rick Scott signed the Student Success Act, which will greatly improve Florida's quality of education. Scott stated, "I am proud that the first bill I sign [as governor] is this important legislation that will give Florida the best educated workforce to compete in the 21st century economy. We must recruit and retain the best people to make sure every classroom in Florida has a highly effective teacher." To read more about the legislation's policies, click here.

Michelle Rhee, CEO and Founder of StudentsFirst, stated, "This landmark legislation recognizes that teachers are the most important factor in schools when determining a child's success. We applaud Florida for its adoption of bold and comprehensive education measures that put students first."

I posted a link to StudentsFirst.org earlier in my blog with a map depicting how in danger a teacher is to be laid off with budget cuts. Florida should now have changed from orange to green, indicating that the state now takes performance into consideration for firing teachers (ending LIFO), and effective teachers are therefore at a lower risk of losing their jobs. I applaud Governor Scott, and urge more governors to stand up for education in their individual states.

Sheet Music on the Go

Piano Street is an online digital musical database of piano scores. The site now offers a version for mobile devices, giving a user access to over 3,000 study scores (over 23,000 pages of music) from standard classical piano repertoire, and includes all the scores on the regular website. The new mobile website works on devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android devices, and other smartphones. Access does require a paid subscription, but it does give the user another access point to scores, especially if they are not near a library with a good music collection or away from their personal score collection.

For access from mobile devices, visit the website at m.pianostreet.com.
To follow their blog, click here.

Intro to Noteflight

http://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/2a4bcfb2a960fafcea067531ac067d78ccd8ebc6

As part of this week's assignment, we had to become familiar with the free online notation software program Noteflight. After exploring another freeware notation program (MuseScore) last week, I find myself preferring Noteflight. As a person who is quite familiar with the ins and outs of Finale, Noteflight offers its users more options than MuseScore. I really like how users can create scores and share them over the net with other Noteflight users, and how a person can email a URL to their score or embed it to a blog (which I have done later) to share music with others. This would be a great tool to have students use as they learn to compose their own music; they can input it quite easily, edit it, share it in whatever way they want, and get feedback from other users or instructors anywhere they have access to an internet-connected computer. Noteflight's interface is quite user friendly, and offers quick access to articulations, dynamics, and other more advanced features that freeware notation software normally does not give the user access to. Overall I was quite impressed, and will consider using this software with future students of my own.

Part of the week's assignment was to replicate an arrangement of "A Bicycle Built for Two" by Harry Dacre. Below, find my score, embedded into the blog, which should allow you to play the file. It should automatically scroll for you as the music progresses.

Breakthrough Education Reform in Florida

The Florida House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed landmark legislation yesterday, recognizing how important they view education in Florida. Among the achievements, there is an end to LIFO, and requires parents to be notified if their children are being placed in a classroom with an underperforming teacher. The tenure process has also been overhauled, and teachers that have tenure could get fired due to unsatisfactory performance. There is also no automatic renewal of contracts, regardless of performance. While the fight over tenure could be a negative point among teachers, it challenges teachers to perform to their very best, and ensures that Florida is trying to make sure the best teachers are the ones in front of their students. These are just a handful of the items passed. To view the full article, click here.

Putting Students First

Tony Pedriana is a former principal from Milwaukee's city school district, and author of "Leaving Johnny Behind: Overcoming Barriers to Literacy." He notes how the mantra "Children First" was a central topic during his career as a teacher and principal. This article, entitled "What it really means to put students first," highlights the actual trends that he saw develop out of an effort to put children first, and how we fell far short of that goal. In the end, he concludes that putting children first has never been our real goal with the choices that we have continued to make over the past several decades. "No Child Left Behind" is a joke, and only leaves more children behind each year. If we really are going to uphold the vision of putting children first, we have a long way to go, and a lot of people to hold accountable for the choices they make. Michelle Rhee at StudentsFirst is a good stepping stone in current advocacy, and she's willing to fight the fight. The real question is, what are you willing to do to help the cause of children and learning in this country?