Soloists and Ensembles
At Domaine Forget Academy of Music, I had the opportunity to collaborate with soloists and chamber groups for an intensive summer of piano study in Charlevoix, Quebec. I highly recommend this program to any performing classical musician. It was an honor to work with Canadian pianists Philip Chiu and Chiharu Ilinama. Video footage from coaching session with Phillip Chiu.
Choirs
Accompanying is a rewarding job that allows me to work with many different kinds of ensembles and directors. From festivals to regional competitions, accompanying brings many fun opportunities to play for others and help groups succeed. Video footage from MMS Choir Performance at Edmonds Center for the Arts.
Narrative Writing: Education through a Collaborative Process
One of my goals as an educator is to put into practice the proactive principles of collaborative education and community-oriented engagement. In order to form and sustain positive relationships with my students, it is my responsibility to be mindful of these key aspects to promote meaningful learning within my classroom and community. An exciting part of getting to know my students includes learning about their specific interests and motivations. I believe that seeking to understand what draws our students to learning, and building a curriculum from this lens, allows the learner’s experience to be significantly more engaging through collaboration. As a private music teacher, this typically unfolds to showcase student-selected songs for recitals or digital composition projects of their own that they are encouraged to create during class time. A shift from director to facilitator takes time, patience, and knowledge of the learning styles and interests of students.
An example of a successful collaborative process can be seen through a case-study over time with an elementary-aged piano student of mine. At the time they began lessons, they grew to expect a 30-minute instructional format catered to demonstrating their prior knowledge (playing their songs from their homework), listening to new teaching concepts, and being told what to take home and practice in order to successfully prepare for the following week’s demonstration. However, within a few months, as they developed confidence in their abilities and developed their own interests, an intentional shift took place within our classroom lesson time from my own voice and direction leading our class, to my student sharing their voice and interests in a collaborative effort to begin customizing their lesson experience to include music that they are interested in learning. Once this shift began, lesson structure and student expectation changed entirely. This process often leads to prompting student questions, challenge, and deeper engagement through a two-way dialogue that students enjoy.
I believe that as educators we have the responsibility to fight the norms of directing dull, standard educational targets and rather to include students in this principle of collaborative engagement. In one example, Danielson’s Framework for Teaching looks at collaborative engagement through instruction and emphasizes a few key practices of “communicating clearly and accurately, using questioning and discussion techniques, engaging students in learning, providing feedback to students, and demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness” (A Framework for Teaching, Danielson, 1996). These are some of the same key practices I have observed within my own teaching that have required me to think and work proactively in the short-term and ones that have yielded a large payoff in the long-term through my specific activities, conversations, and classroom content.
Within my back-end responsibilities around student events and seasonal recitals, it’s imperative that I plan proactively in order to secure a date of performance, reserve and pay for a performance space, and promptly use multiple forms of communication with many busy students and families in order to deliberately allow time for everyone involved to plan and prepare accordingly. As simple as this process may sound, I am continually challenged by these responsibilities and I continuously find ways that I could improve these back-end practices that create my student experience. Danielson’s observation of communicating clearly and accurately is the key domain within my essential learning that I have challenged myself to improve when it comes to planning and sharing my students’ events with everyone involved- in a collaborative manner. Further collaborative efforts towards practicing clear and accurate communication have more recently brought me to implement groups on social media for teachers and staff to work together, which has allowed me the benefit of asking for other sets of eyes to double-check my planning when reviewing our dates, projects, and design work. I’ve also recently delegated promotional design work of posters, flyers/handouts, and even social media postings to other teachers in our studio keen to UX who are trusted to carefully check the information they share and who have a creative eye to thoughtfully curate content in a timely manner. I believe these back-end examples of change within my work recently all tie back into a big-picture front-end goal aimed at working successfully in a collaborative manner with my students. Whether this means behind the scenes, or within one-on-one student conversations, my students are the ones who benefit from these practices by receiving necessary information in a timely manner that has been better curated and reviewed by multiple people. I have observed from these collaborative practices within a team that student content is much more clear and accurate than content generated by one individual working alone, such as myself in the past. When implemented, my students are able to more successfully practice their music on a daily basis through better understanding tangible goals set to deadlines (i.e. performances) that have been planned for them well in advance. Ultimately, collaborative practices in my own work do not only come into play within student relationships but within work with fellow teachers and designers for our studio through learning to “let go” and trust the process and the people behind it through facilitation and room for long-term autonomous practices.
Beyond proactive and collaborative practices within lessons comes a challenge of finding real-world applications for my students that allow them to learn and engage through activities outside of our four classroom walls. Teachers working as facilitators must ask guiding questions and listen to student input to make decisions about content and lesson planning. The results from this kind of collaboration yields long-term success as “young people see their teachers listening to them and treating them seriously. Respect and trust between students and teachers grow as both observe how actions and words bring the curriculum to life” (Democratic Classroom, Apple & Beane, p. 89). I have found that along the lines of these values that as I successfully implement curriculum customized from student interest, a rate of “meaningful learning” is exponentially higher through mutual respect, trust, and further engagement between myself and my students, encouraging them to take their learning one step further and seek out their own opportunities and experiences with their knowledge that take place outside of the classroom.
Lastly, I am striving to harness collaborative efforts beyond student practices and towards effective student self-reflection. There is a relationship between strong feedback and effective learning that is clearly outlined in an HBR article from this past January in which Jennifer Porter shares: “According to research on effective learning, to improve performance, people need three things: A clear goal, a genuine desire to achieve that goal, and feedback that indicates what they are doing well and what they are not doing well” (HBR, How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback, 2019). I believe that helping students identify clearly their goals within their own music (such as polishing, performance, or otherwise) allows them to become stronger musicians and learners all around. This is why providing many opportunities for feedback encourages well-rounded, meaningful collaboration between students and teachers at any age. Through effective community engagement, collaboration, and facilitation, my relationships with students flourish and learning becomes meaningful. In my work within music education, I will continue to strive to fulfill a mission that provides my students with well-rounded, meaningful collaborations to achieve greatest success and fulfillment through music.