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Teaching

Pedagogy of Harmony

The title of this post comes from a phrase coined by Stephen Downes in a Mastodon conversation where he said:

“This and the related discussion led me to think of a ‘pedagogy of harmony’ as my own perspective (as opposed to pedagogy of small, say, or pedagogy of slow – buy also, on reflection, as opposed to Friere’s pedagogy of the oppressed (and later pedagogy of hope’)).

What is a ‘pedagogy of harmony’? I’m not exactly sure, but it combines a feeling of well-being and comfort and inclusion.” (source link to the full thread here)

A day or two later, I received an email from Matthias Melcher suggesting perhaps the concept could perhaps be explained by melodic dissonances and maybe with an audible demonstration. This unexpected email sparked a firework of ideas in my mind. I’ll do my best to put a few of them in an understandable order here.

My frame has to do with painting different images of harmony, how we can practically understand it, and what it has to do with people and pedagogy/learning (that ‘p’ word is a good one, but laden with baggage). Humour me with explaining and dancing around a topic that is as big as history itself, well nearly.

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A Mad-lib Burst of Creativity

I love a good story, and hopefully my students will too! Tomorrow we meet for one last session at the end of the term. At this time of year tensions run high. There are huge expectations on people and with exams and concerts looming, we could all use a little light-hearted silliness.

I made my class a little game: A Mad-lib (I made more games too, but thought I’d share this one)Read More »A Mad-lib Burst of Creativity

Applied Imagination: I think, therefore I can

Yes you can. That’s a powerful refrain in my life, and it underpins so very very much. I had the privilege of teaching on the ‘Applied Imagination’ module at the University of Warwick yesterday. To contextualise, this class sits within Warwick’s Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL) and the students come from all different departments and schools across the university- trans, inter, cross disciplinary are all big themes of the class, as well as thought, imagination, belief, and accomplishment.

It was such a special morning. I set off pre-dawn with my little care packed full of instruments, as my session would use music, but music as a metaphor. I know that people are not going to learn to be ‘musicians’ in a couple of hours, but music is so wonderful – it moves, it grooves, it makes you feel, and for so many of us it remains untouchable. I love to bring people to something that is perceived as being outside their reach. <— Hold that thought; I’ll return to it in a minute.Read More »Applied Imagination: I think, therefore I can

Value of Creative Education

@laura_ritchie modelling our own practice as creative educators in different medium @HerefordArtsCol 

—Sarah-Jane (@sarahjfc) 20 September 2017

I felt privileged to be there. Really, it was moving. You reminded us of what we do and sometimes as teachers we forget- Seeing him get it and the look on his face. When he looked at you like that, that is what it’s all about. Witnessing that learning happen was really something. -Holland Otik

What was this all about? I was invited to speak at the Hereford College of Arts 10th Annual HE Symposium to speak on ‘the value of a creative education’.

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Learning on your own

I love learning and I love teaching, and I love to make things fun. My classes started last week and I made a little video with the help of my son to illustrate what happens while ‘learning’. (insert cheshire cat grin here) If you need a good giggle, this one’s for you. Image CC BY-NC by Greg Hirson

See in learning stuff, could be any subject, there is content and then you have to figure out how to actually assimilate it and make it real for you, so that in the big wide world it means something and is useful. Very often we are given a ‘to do’ list and are set free to ‘learn’. The to do list is the what, and seldom includes the how or why. When I showed this video in class, it made my students cry with laughter, not because it is slapstick, but because it’s true.Read More »Learning on your own

Teaching to let go

(3 min read)

“…the delicate relationship between teaching, giving knowledge, and learning knowledge”

This comes from Chapter 4 of We make the road by walking, a book of conversations between the educators Paulo Freire and Myles Horton. Paulo goes on to elaborate this quote, talking about going beyond the knowledge that the people bring to a situation. (p.151) I am struck by this book, how much it resonates with me and I sincerely wish I had been able to meet these people in person. It’s my holiday read, part of a book club, and I suppose this is my post about Chapter 4. It is a short one, not because there is less that inspired me, but because there was one paragraph that leapt out for me. Paulo speaks about this balance between teaching, knowledge, and learning and adds the authority of the teacher.

“The other mistake is to crush freedom and to exacerbate the authority of the teacher. Then you no longer have freedom but now you have authoritarianism, and then the teacher is the one who teaches. The teacher is the one who knows. The teacher is the one who guides. The teacher is the one who does everything. And the students, precisely because the students must be shaped, just expose their bodies and their souls to the hands of the teacher, as if the students were clay for the artist, to be molded.

The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to be­ come themselves. And in doing that, he or she lives the experience of relating democratically as authority with the freedom of the students.” -Paulo, p.181

This is so true, and a difficult one to learn. As a teacher it is a huge apocalyptic epiphany to know, not intellectually, but to really understand that you (or I or anyone) cannot change another. Read More »Teaching to let go

Picture the sound… #MUS654

One of the elusive topics in music learning and teaching is expression and meaning. How can we work in one medium (sound) and have to explain it in another (words?)? Often the intention of the teacher and the experience of the student can be so far apart, and we may never know it. This week I got creative and a bit silly and set my class loose with the project of picturing the sound. Really – I gave them all sorts of dried pulses, pasta, rice, seeds, nuts, bits of cotton wool, cake decorations, big sheets of paper and asked them to create the picture they heard as people performed to them. This sort of invitation is usually met with two different reactions, often in close succession, excitement followed by a tentativeness and doubt.

Oh WoW!

and then…

but I don’t know what to do?

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I hear what you’re saying…

This morning I woke to a conversation on twitter that caught my eye, perplexed me, and concerned me all at once. It was about how someone was treated rudely on the phone. One person didn’t understand the other, and attributed it to an accent, but this wasn’t very tactful or helpful, and came across as downright rude. Now the thing is, I wasn’t there. I didn’t hear the conversation, but I heard the aftershock. What happened left a mark and caused upset (* see note below). This post is not about the actual conversation, but about the nature of learning and listening. It made me think of the curiosity of communication and teaching. Image CC BY by Double-M

If we only know by shadows, then what truth is there?

The conversation reminded me of the importance of perception, empathy, and a willingness to learn to understand.

In my classes I often talk about communication, as I work with people aiming to perform and teach music in various settings, including 1-to-1. It is a bit heavy going, but I start one class with this quote:Read More »I hear what you’re saying…

#IVTchat More than Notes

This week my class did their first official Twitter ‘listen-n-chat’ and it was great fun! It’s funny how using technology for a purpose can be sort of like having roadworks – it is there to improve the situation, but if you aren’t aware of it and don’t navigate it carefully, you can get stuck in traffic instead of flowing smoothly to your destination. Fortunately my group work very well together and we were able to navigate things and to come out with an enjoyable and productive outcome.Read More »#IVTchat More than Notes