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I have a question I wanted to ask all of you. Today, Erina, Kaili and I went to our practicum school and our teacher was describing to us an issue he experienced with one of his students. He said that the student was unhappy with the fact that he chose Christian pieces for the Holiday Concert (along with Hanukkah and Kwanza pieces). The teacher said he tried to be an neutral as possible, but it is difficult because so many "traditional" holiday and non-holiday pieces are rooted in Christianity (Requiems, Glorias, etc.) How do you think the best way to walk the line on this issue is? It got me thinking about how I will approach this issue when I am faced with it.

There are a lot of issues on here already, but I'd like to add one more. There's a problem in schools today concerning the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Anthem. Some schools prohibit the Pledge in class and the National Anthem at sporting events. In a country that is somewhat devoid of tradition, I have a problem with this. I understand the arguments behind each side and I still see no problem in showing national pride in school. I do not believe that anyone should be forced to participate in the Pledge or the singing of the Anthem but I believe that the right to do so should not be taken away either.

Technology is a huge problem in today’s schools. I know from experience that there is always all this technology that is at the finger tips of the teachers, but they do not know how to use it. They often try to ignore the technology, and stick to what they know. Technology is something that students today are very interested in, and we should use this to our advantage.

When we are trying to connect to the student’s worlds I think that there is not enough connection to technology. There are so many options when working in a musical setting to use technology:

“Facilities. The physical plant needed to support such a music program is a music technology center consisting of a large central room to serve as a recording, production, and editing studio. Also needed are satellite rooms, including a separate computer lab for instruction in theory, composition, arranging, and keyboard; a room equipped to teach group lessons on wind and string instruments that is also equipped to teach group electric guitar and bass; a group drum-set room; and several small rooms equipped with a single computer for individual and small ensemble practice utilizing accompaniment, recording, and editing programs. The smaller rooms should be wired to serve as sound isolation booths for recording projects” (Jones 10).

When I read this I really had to agree with it. Although I believe that having enough space to also work with a large group is important and practical, having small ensembles can be more rewarding for the students as far as actually learning about and appreciating music. They would have a more rewarding and valuable experience if they were in smaller groups, and had more options in classes. Adding in classes that would incorporate technology and music throughout more of the schools would give students a chance to really enjoy music in a way that they will get the most out of it. This gives more of a variety for the students so that it is not all just one type of music experience.

I was reading ahead a little in the articles and the third article really got my interest. I know that we are not yet on this article, but the article is on multiculturalism in schools. This is something we often talk about at Westminster…authenticity. In the article little in the articles and the third article really got my interest. I know that we are not yet on this article, but the article is on multiculturalism in schools. This is something we often talk about at Westminster…authenticity. In the article Campbell talks about there being instructional packages with fully Campbell talks about there being instructional packages with fully notated melodies. I know that I believe that authenticity is important, and that I would rather learn about the culture rather then using a packet of notated melodies. But I was wondering what everyone else in the class thought about the idea of authenticity. Also how far is too far when studying different cultures? Another issue that I read about was covering all the cultures very shallowly or covering the ones that affect the students more and doing it in depth. How would you make the call on this?

“The multicultural music education movement (which some have called world music education) has been primarily about musical diversity, with less regard for the cultural interfaces, contexts, and processes of the music. Perhaps this is because it is easier and far more economical to publish instructional packages complete with fully notated melodies than it is to run institutes for teachers in which culture-bearers transmit the music (and not incidentally, cultural constructs, too) in a traditional time-honored manor” (Campbell31).

With a definite shortage of qualified teachers in most urban and rural areas, I can't help but wonder why the most qualified teachers continue to teach the students with the most resources outside school. Shouldn't the teachers with the most resources to give students be teaching in schools where students have limited or no resources outside of school?

Something that I still think is an issue in education today is the structure of the school day. The very regimented school day in most school systems does not support many educators' belief in the importance of interdisciplinary education. Many students have eight 45 minute periods throughout the day for each area of study, and this schedule inherently communicates to the students that these subject areas are all different. While many teachers connect the subject areas in their classrooms, it is probably not happening as often as it should. Is there anything that can be done about this, or do educators need to continue to find ways to connect different disciplines with a school day that is definitely not promoting this?

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I know to expect a lot from young students, especially after my elementary practicum experience. Younger students can wrap their minds around some pretty complicated things.

I'm just worried, I guess, that when I become a teacher, I might assume that they know things that they might not know. Unless you have been teaching at the same school for quite some time and have worked out a grade by grade curriculum, how will you know what they know and what they don't? For college students like us to go from learning contemporary trends to teaching general music to kindergardeners, we might forget where to start.

When I was in Kindergarten our main classroom teacher had these teddy bear cut outs for us to color and then we were going to put them on our bulletin board in the hall. She told us to color them in tan. I didn't know what tan was. I've always been resistant to asking teachers questions, so I colored it in with every crayon, that way some of it had to be right. However, when my teacher saw it she yelled at me for not following directions. I will never forget that day.

My story is sort of pathetic, but when you are that young and that eager to please and you do something wrong, it's a big deal. The teacher obviously assumed that we all knew what tan was, and every one else in my class seemed to know. However, what if there is that one student who doesn't know what the teacher is talking about and is too nervous to ask? I guess I just remember how horrible I felt and I would never want to do that to one of my students.

It is my perception that an issue that affects all educators is the lack of what I would consider to be fair compensation. As I said the other night, I believe that most parents believe that education is incredibly important, not all parents feel music education is as important, but on the whole I believe most parents would find the education of their children to be very important. I don't understand how, when education is so important, it seems that cities and towns skimp on the payment of their teachers. It seems like societies spin on salaries is completely warped at this point. While I am a huge baseball fan, I find it absolutely obscene that players are paid as much as they are, only to play a game. This past year, professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez was paid 25.2 MILLION dollars for a single season of play, he made over $44,000 every single time he stepped to the plate, whether he hit the ball, walked or made an out. $44,000 for striking out???? There are teachers that struggle to make $44,000 in a year, and they are shaping the lives (or not) of countless students. Does anyone ever think that it will happen that people that perform such important jobs as teachers, will ever get greater compensation? I believe it is much more difficult to recruit good teachers when they know that the pay they will recieve is, in many cases, terrible. While I can hope to be optimistic, I have doubts that this will ever change.

There are a lot of things that I think are problems in music education today, one of the biggest things that I have seen recently is the attitude of students. While I know that this is not the same case in all schools, I recently went to my old high school and observed a period of choir. The town that I lived in is made up of a lot of 'upper class' kids who seem to always get what they want. The attitudes of some of these students during choir was offensive, they did not treat the teacher with respect, talking back without even thinking about it. While I know many people would say that the teacher is not commanding their respect, from spending years in that school system, I can honestly say that some of these students act like this with ANY teacher (or any adult for that matter). I don't really understand what the deal is with students today, it seems like they believe that rules don't apply to them. It seems like it is getting more and more common for students to behave how they want to. Is this the fault of the parents? The students themselves? Administrations and teachers that are too lenient? How can teachers take these attitudes and reverse them if these behaviors are being learned at home, where their parents answer to their children?

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I know that we have discussed Bloom's taxonomy in previous courses, however, recently I (and a few others in the CPIII) have had to read an article, Bloom's Taxonomy: Original and Revised, Mary Forehand, www.coe.uga.edu/eptll/bloom.htm) about it for a course we are taking called pedagogy of theory. The article was mainly informative. It spoke of the initial development of the taxonomy and then went on to talk of how it was revised in the 1990s. Kate and I were talking about how similar the adjectives are to the CP lesson plan model. However, some of the steps seemed to be out of order, in our opinion. The revised taxonomy goes in this order for cognitive domain: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and then creating. Kate made a very good point that if there is going to be any creating, there then must be an evaluation of the creation. However, this is how the intitial taxonomy (1948) was: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and then evaluation.
Then the question arose in my mind, should they have changed it? They did change all of the terms to be verbs instead of nouns, which I think is appropriate considering learning is itself a verb and a doing. The article does not mention if Bloom was involved in the revision, it does not even say if he was alive or not. Bloom died in 1999, and the revision (according to the article was in the 1990s). If Bloom was dead at the time, is this ethical? The person who chose to revise it, Lorin Anderson, was a past student of his. The reason of revision was so that the taxonomy could have more relevance to the students and teachers of the 21st century.

I do not disagree that recess and fall break attribute to more focused learning but I think that Westminster sudents had a bigger problem with not having fall break this year because it was taken away from them. Knowing that we had ensemble weeks and fall breaks in the past it just gives us something to blame the stress on when it is taken away from us. Let's think about it the other way around. What if the norm was to have classes striaght through with no break or no recess and all of a sudden the state decided to put breaks into our semesters. I am sure that students would be annoyed and not understand why their educational flow needs to be interupted. As for the social aspect of children in the elementary schools, recess isn't exactly the most comfortbale atmosphere for those lacking social skill. If anything, recess can cause more problems for a student in a classroom. The last thing a teacher needs is a student not being motivated to do her work because no one would play with her in recess. Even when we are on break for one month for winter. We plan on getting ahead of the game before the new semester. We hope to practice atleast once a day, read text for upcoming classes, and get a lot of personal errands out of the way so they won't have interfer with the new semester. But it never happens. We appreciate the break but never does it benifit us. Some of us rush back to the residence halls because of the rush to get classes started again while others feel worse than when break started because they didn't get anything done over break. Puting a break or recess in someone's schedule CAN be very benificial but it depends on how we choose to use those breaks.

I think we should open our blog to the article from the NY Times entitled Professor Says Seminary Dismissed Her Over Gender. This article was sent to us on the Listserv by Dr. Abrahams, and I think it would be an important discussion to have on the blog and in class. I have a feeling that most people would agree that this is a horrible situation, that shouldn't have happened. I know as a woman who is hopefully going on into higher levels of education this article made me feel uneasy about religious institutions. The New Testament, in which Timothy is written and the quote taken from, is used in all Christian schools from elementary to college level. Have women been released because of this and have not spoken up? Could this happen to any of us with out our consent? And, if you're Christian in any form, How do you fight against these opinions with out denouncing what you believe?
Also I think this article could lead to a further deeper discussion about all prejudice in school systems today. Problems still arise today concerning, Gender, Faith, Race, Sexual orientation etc. How do we protect ourselves against these prejudices? How can we up hold feelings of equality in out classrooms? How should we teach, and guide students to believe in equality so these prejudices don't continue?

I feel that students who come to America from non-english speaking countries should most definitely learn to speak English. However, throwing these students into a world filled with so much unfamiliarity is pretty cruel. Ignoring the fact that they do not understand the language is not a way of addressing the issue. I will, however, acknowledge that learning the language is very important, and it has been said that being immersed into a culture and being forced to learn the language by constant aural exposure is a sure-fast way to get people to learn how to speak in another tongue. Perhaps they should have classes where they sit in on only- english spoken classes simply to get them to adjust. I believe that there should be accomodations made to ESL students, as there usually are. They need an extra hand to help them understand things and guide them along through such an intimidating transition. If there isnt proper funding to allow for such programs, like in less affluent areas, then peer teaching may have to be implemented in such cases. Perhaps there are students in the school who have overcome such a language barrier; maybe there is a way for those students to have a class or so with that other student who does not yet know the language. This student could perhaps take this peer tutoring for credit, in place of another course.

I'd like to see what everyone has to say about English immersion in schools today. Should foreign students be forced to learn English by complete immersion or should they be treated differently? And how should a school that doesn't have enough funds to create ESL classes deal with this issue? I know this issue sprung up a heated and interesting debate in my psychology class, so I'd like to see what everyone here thinks.

I saw on the News 2 nights ago how some elementary schools are eliminating hw entirely. They are conducting an experiment to see if this could quite possibly be a more efficient way of getting kids to retain information. I thought it was a great idea, espeically at an elementary level, because at that stage of childrens lives, they are growing and learning how to play and socialize. And if they stayed locked in their rooms everyday doing hw, they will never learn how to socialze with others, or know what it feels like to participate in an after shcool club or sports etc. What do you think?

This is an interesting issue to bring up because, though it may seem trivial on the surface, taking away recess has the potential to be a destructive thing. I googled recess and found an article that addresses three detriments that are: attention, social skills, and physical health. That's not to say that there are only three negative effects of this, but these are pretty good ones. Here's the link: http://www.ericdigests.org/2003-2/recess.html
This issue should strike a nerve to Westminster students. As we all know, we didn't have a fall break last semester. Although this isn't the same exact issue, it's very similar, and I know the toll it took on myself and many of my friends.
Like the article says, learning occurs more effectively when it is spaced out. We learned this in psychology class. Constructivist teachers use "think time" to allow the information that they are teaching to really sink in. I'll even go on to say that creating a non-stop school day supports the banking method, because the students are being thrown a constant stream on information with no time to digest it. With recess, students are given that break and, while they probably don't think about what they learned that day during their playtime, it does give their brains a much deserved break.
Also, the article talks about the social aspect of recess. From my own experience I can say that many of my friendships were not made in the classroom but on the playground. The freedom that is given to kids on the playground fosters friendships, improves social skills, and helps them flex their imagination. With videogames, TV, and other forms of media that we have today, it's easy for many kids to end up sitting inside for hours after school and never associating with their peers. Especially for kids who already suffer from a lack of social skills, recess is a much needed time for them to make friends.
Also, there is the physical side of it. Again, from my personal experience in elementary school I got the most physical exercise outside on the playground when my friends and I had the freedom to make up a game. In physical education, which is usually indoors, I was hardly motivated to run around and get a true exercise. But on a large playground, or field, with fresh air and lots of room I never sat still. And I know I'm not the only one that had that experience.
So, in short I think it's very detrimental to take away recess. School takes up half of a child's day and who knows what goes on when they go home, and if they're even allowed to play. I don't have an answer for teachers who feel that they don't have enough time to teach their material. I think that the state mandated curriculum is to blame, and that teachers are truly in a jam. However, I do know that students who are not given a break in a six (or so) hour school day will not learn as effectively as those who are given a break.

Hi Folks,
Here is the space that we will be using for our blogs this semester.
I would like you to consider the issue you see as most significant and problematic in music education today and develop them into the two blog entries for this week.
We will start comments as soon as postings begin.