Despite the title, this post is really about the importance of teachers being fully immersed in their craft – in the art and science of teaching – and remaining connected to their content. In educator preparation, we talk about teachers’ need to become reflective life-long learners. To me this has always meant, among other things, teachers reflecting constantly on their instructional efforts with students – how effective a particular lesson was, whether it connected with all students, what available assessment data tell them about next steps, etc. But to a strong teacher, being a life-long learner also means maintaining a healthy curiosity about the world and the content they teach, and understanding that, for example, throughout a four-decade career, there will be advances in their field with which they will want to keep abreast. When teachers have chosen to teach subject matters that are intrinsically interesting to them and/or that they are particularly good at, they will more naturally remain deeply immersed in those disciplines, even outside the classroom. Especially outside the classroom.
I’ll attempt to punctuate this point by telling the stories of two elementary music educators. One was a band instructor in the elementary school I attended as a child. The other taught violin in the elementary school my children attended. I have first-hand knowledge of the approaches each took as they strived to teach music to the children in their care. Those approaches were very different and only one should be emulated. You'll know which is which.
Ms. Saxophone (not her real name)
First up is the story of the band instructor in my school. I
won't use her real name because this isn’t a very flattering story. (The truth is I don't remember her name
anyway. If you are reading this, went to
the same elementary school I did, and remember her name, please keep it to
yourself. I doubt she’s still alive, but
her family members likely are.) I’ll call
her Ms. Saxophone. 😏
Ms. Saxophone’s story begins when I was in 3rd grade, the earliest opportunity I had to take up an instrument. I wanted to learn the saxophone. When I told my parents this, they agreed, and they rented a saxophone for me to use, at probably no small expense. I dutifully took the saxophone to school on days I was scheduled for lessons, but as I recall, throughout the fall of my 3rd grade year, the lessons were few and far between. In mid-November or so, Ms. Saxophone began to prepare us for the Christmas concert. She did this by assigning us to seats in the band. She looked at me, pointed to a chair, and told me that's where I would sit for the concert. At this point in my saxophone career, I could barely play scales much less make my way through whatever songs were on the program for the show. I remember telling her as much. She looked at me and said something to the effect, “don't worry, just pretend to play and no one will know the difference.”
If you know me at all, you know how musical I am, and you can therefore imagine how this broke my heart. I told my parents I would never take the saxophone back to school, and it was a long time before I even approached another musical instrument. In fact, it wasn't until college when I had to learn enough piano and recorder to pass a performance test on each for my elementary education degree.
Mr. Beech
Fast forward several decades to the story of the other music
educator, one I'm happy to name. His name is Martin Beech and he taught strings
at New Garden Elementary School in the Kennett Consolidated School District, the school my children attended. None of my kids chose to become violin players, so they didn't have Mr. Beech in this
context, but they did take up instruments and so my family attended all the
concerts. My vivid recollection of Mr. Beech, at the first concert we attended,
was of him bringing the string ensemble onto the stage. The ensemble was
comprised of perhaps a dozen elementary students each with a violin that
was, ostensibly, in tune. Of course, they weren't in tune, not really. And so,
I and the rest of the audience listened as Mr. Beech helped each and
every student tune their instruments. This took four to five minutes as the
audience waited. Then Mr. Beech conducted the young ensemble as they squeaked
their way through 45 seconds of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.
Every year, at every concert, it was always the same. Mr. Beech would take whatever time prior to his ensemble’s performance was needed to ensure that every instrument was in tune. I was always struck by the patience and perseverance he demonstrated in this regard. Sure, his students improved during the elementary school portion of their violin careers with (likely) smaller and smaller subsets going on to play in middle school, high school, and perhaps beyond. I suspect Mr. Beech took much satisfaction from this demonstration of progress; of germination and growth of the seed he had planted, even if only one or two continued to play after high school. But each year, a new cohort of novice violin players took the stage with him and each year he went through the same patience exercise with these newbies.
Fast forward another decade or so. My wife and I had become Delaware Symphony subscribers. She could not attend one of the performances, so I took one of my boys. I told Dylan to look carefully at the various members of the orchestra as they took their positions, particularly near the front of the violin section (because I knew who he would see). Dylan realized he was looking at Mr. Beech take his position just a chair or two away from the DSO concertmaster. Dylan was floored. I suggested that this was another part of Mr. Beech’s reward for standing on the New Garden Elementary stage year in and year out and tuning violins for a period of time that was often 2-3 times longer than the actual performance itself.
Mr. Beech is a magnificent example of an educator who remains immersed in his content area, his area of expertise. Sure, his work with the DSO was his reward for his patient work with 9-year-old violin players at New Garden but imagine how much better was the pedagogical attention his students received from him because the art and science of his superb teaching was informed by his role as a member of a professional orchestra and his life-long immersion in the performing arts. Music was not just his day job, at least not as I saw it, it was clearly the fiber of his being. It still is, I suspect, although he has retired as a public-school teacher.
I don’t know anything about Ms. Saxophone’s life outside of school or the nature of her passion for music, so I can’t really hold her up as an example of the antithesis of Mr. Beech and his work as an elementary school music teacher. Maybe she also played professionally, I just don't know. I do know she had a horrible effect on me though, that I can tell you. One that, again, if you know me you know I have been most fortunate to overcome.
Until next time…
