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October 2016

Technical challenges: Barriers to Learning

This semester I spend time reflecting particularly on music learning and constructing a curriculum from the point of view of the teacher. BUT the learning challenges and barriers to learning are often the same across disciplines, so if you are not a musician, but a computer scientist, or a writer, or something completely different – I do think this will still hold relevance for you.

This week in specific I asked my students to dissect the topic of technical challenges, and that means I do it too. It struck me that there are two very distinct sides to the challenges in learning and they are perhaps not equal, but definitely intertwined and inseparable.Read More »Technical challenges: Barriers to Learning

Applauding achievements: Here’s to you, graduate!

Preparing to go to graduation today, I took a few minutes to collect myself and as I was doing my yoga poses and breathing, I thought about watching the people I had known and worked with walk across that stage, dressed in gowns and stoles – and hats, and of their achievements. Some people will not be there today, whether because of work commitments (the real world is a bugger sometimes, and having the day off means a pay cut for many), or because of distance, or even choice – but it doesn’t mean they have achieved any less. It also does not mean they won’t be remembered. You will be remembered. Read More »Applauding achievements: Here’s to you, graduate!

Reflecting on CClasses: We learn differently

It’s 3:15 am and I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about and reflecting on how we learn and what we want to get out of our learning. I am thinking about my Romanticism class that is taking part in the Connecting Classes project. What do we want… Perhaps that is the greatest starting point – to want to get something out of it. In my teaching, in my life, I admit to starting from my own perspective (I suppose in psychology terms each person’s perspective is the ultimate starting point) and then I work out to see how I can understand an experience and best shape it for my fellow learners. What can I use to supplement or enhance? How can it be relevant to that person’s driving passions in music? How can we engage in learning together? How can we amplify each other’s experience?Read More »Reflecting on CClasses: We learn differently

For International Girl’s day: the daughter who stood up to the sea god

I didn’t know there was an international girl’s day until today, and it is perfect for this post. It is dedicated to all the girls out there. Clearing out a cupboard under the stairs, we found some old school work from a long time ago when my daughter was 8. I handed the pile to her and asked if it was to keep or to recycle. She brought me one of the pieces over the weekend and showed me a spiral bound story that she had written. It had a picture of a winged girl on the front, and she said she thought it would be a sweet fairy tale, (the school brief inside the cover was to invent and write a creation type story about the ‘Sea God’) but instead she made her story about a child calling out racism! GO GIRL! It gives me great hope to know this is what she was thinking back then. img_7288

In light of the world, the seen and unseen pressures that people face, the troubles people are unwillingly born into because of their race, creed, or physical place in the world – I often feel the need to share some good things. It is what I can do. So this is one of them. It was my daughter’s invented story. The themes are ever important today-

Children matter. Black lives matter. Women matter.

I am so pleased she wrote it, and am so pleased that her wise school encouraged her to get ideas onto paper and let them flow. Read More »For International Girl’s day: the daughter who stood up to the sea god

Making connections: speaking through the fabric of music

Musical connections are a lot like any other connections. (4 min read) We need to experience them, process, and attribute meaning to them, and that is something that we all get better at with time and practice. There’s that practice word again… This post is inspired by this week’s topic Session 4: Studies and connecting material, and I wanted to liken it to conversation and listening, but there are differences. Although both are aural – spoken word and musical sound, we tend to engage with one very differently to the other. In speech there is a fluid dynamic. It is knowingly experimental and sometimes messy – wait, I didn’t mean that… no, no, it’s more like this… – In conversation it is entirely acceptable to present ideas and change them, or to present ideas and realise that they lacked clarity and then need to add detail.Read More »Making connections: speaking through the fabric of music