Thomas J. West Music

Recently, I have been doing a lot of writing about encouraging students to reach for higher levels of excellence in their music-making. Motivating young people to do their best at any endeavor, musical or otherwise, is a challenge that every teacher and every parent faces on a regular basis. I have heard many adults complain about the entitlement of young Americans today - how they expect a hand-out and do not know how to earn or work for anything. Certainly, young people are portrayed in mass media in this fashion. My experience with young people is quite different than that, however.

The Least Restrictive Learning Environment

Yes, there are young people who have an undue sense of entitlement. However, I find it far more common to have students who are under so much pressure to perform and be good at somehting that they struggle to build a positive self-image in a time in their life when there is very little to them that is more imporant. Those roles begin to form in middle elementary grades, when children begin to play on Little League and Pop Warner teams, begin studying a musical instrument, take dance classes, or study martial arts. By the time they reach middle school, the need to fit in combined with adult pressure to perform well in school, on tests, and in extra-curricular activities can be overwhelming.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 provides federal guidance for the rights and responsibilities of special needs students, parents of those students, and the educational system that teaches those students. One of the main tenents of that law is "Least Restrictive Environment" - a student with special needs will be taught in the same environment as non-disabled peers to the greatest extent possible. This goes both ways - the special needs student receives the support he/she needs while having as many opportunities to develop in a more typical fashion as possible, but the special needs student also creates as little deviation from the course of study of his/her peers as well.

As I continue to redefine what education, most specifically music education, means in our contemporary society, I find myself thinking now in terms of teaching all students, not just special needs students, in an LRE setting. The concepts I write about here could apply to any teacher in any setting - my examples will be from my own music education classroom.

Students need to have a classroom environment where original thinking, creativity, and "wrong answers" are encouraged. The teacher needs to facilitate enough structure to keep students moving forward towards mutual goals, but more and more, the learner needs to take on responsibility for the learning. When they begin to do so, the end result is not only education, but self-esteem, ownership, and self-empowerment. The least restrictive environment allows all students, regardless of their aptitude, achievement level, or factors outside of the classroom, to take what they can do today and expand it into something improved tomorrow.

This typically bears little resemblance to what is happening in most classrooms.

The Traditional Public School Approach

Again, this applies to any subject, but I couch it in terms of the traditional American band, chorus, or orchestra program. In a traditional band program, for example, students rehearse concert music during their band period with little time spent outside of the period working individual technique. If a practice chart is required, most students put in the bare minimum time required or fudge the results and forge a parent signature.

The music students with higher musical aptitude master their parts within a few times through the repertoire; the students with average aptitude spend most of the concert preparation period getting their parts down; the low aptitude students simply leave out the parts that they can't perform, knowing that others will cover the part for them. It's a one-size-fits-all approach to music education, and by the time they reach ninth grade, the majority of the students who could not hang with their higher aptitude peers have decided that "music is not for them" and have moved on to other endeavors.

Every child reaches that point in middle school when they have to decide what they are going to focus on and become more proficient in. I took tae kwon do lessons once a week from fifth through eighth grade. It was an activity that boosted my self-confidence during a time that I really needed it. I reached a point in eighth grade, however, where the sensei would not let me advance to the next belt unless I was committed to coming to work out twice a week instead of once. No thank you, not that interested. Even if I wanted to continue, I was basically told I would never progress past that level. We do the same thing to our students in sports, music, and many other things in life. Meet this requirement, or fail. Go strong, or go home.

The traditional public school approach provides "leveling" for students of different aptitude and achievement levels. I was in all "honors" classes in high school. Many school music programs have a by-audition extra-curricular ensemble that strives for higher performance standards. Sports have a JV and Varsity level. For those willing to commit, the opportunities to be "special" are there. Even with the push in education over the past fifteen to twenty years towards differentiated instruction, students still know who the superstars are and who is just passing the time.

Providing Small Successes

Students in a large music performing ensemble have a unique educational opportunity that many other classrooms do not - they have to learn to function as a team. The success of the ensemble is dependent upon each individual contributing their best effort. It is difficult, with varied strengths and weaknesses of each student, to really reach every learner and maximize their potential. If we truly care about the growth and welfare of every student, however, and not just those with the highest aptitudes, it is our duty as teachers to find ways for every student to make progress from wherever their learning begins.

I have been very successful this school year in doing just that - creating a classroom environment where students support each other, understanding that they do not all have to be on the same page. My middle school students in particular have individually taken on the goals I set for them and blew my expectations out of the water. The amount of pride in their eyes at their own growth and the quality of what they are doing is proof positive that they are building their own intrinsic self-esteem for the study of music. They don't have to be "the best player" - they just have to be "the best me."

This self-esteem building process is accomplished by providing them with small, sequential goals for music performance, with accountability built into the process in the least obtrusive manner possible. My students do not have playing tests or seating challenges. Instead, they have mulitple opportunities to have their performance repertoire checked-off, and they can not move on to the next item until they master the item before. For ensemble pieces, any section not checked off is omitted in performance. They choose their battles, they learn how to invest their time over the entire prep period rather than letting the strongest players play it for them.

The built-in accountability also enables me as the teacher to faciilitate, remediate, and provide additional rigor for students who are moving quickly.

Learning To Become Self-Starters

As we move further into a future where employers want to hire creative self-starters, it is an absolute imperative that teachers of all subjects are finding ways of abandoning the old assembly-line approach to education in favor of a model that puts the student as the primary driver of learning. Encouragement is a must. Small successes are imperative. Advanced planning is required. Knowing the end result is key. Collaboration between students is the keystone of future adult business. We owe it to our students to find ways to lift them up, empower them to help themselves, and do away with the spectre of "the wrong answer."

This article (c) 2011 Thomas J. West. All content on ThomasJWestMusic dot com is licensed under a Creative Contributions Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Please contact the author before publishing on or off-line.

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