Welcome to your class portfolio!! The purpose of this site is to show CAPE the development of your arts integration partnership, as guided by your big idea and inquiry question. 

Make sure you have the following:

1. Planning Form: You must fill out the planning form by October 15th

2. Reflection Questions: Make sure you have your reflection questions filled out for each semester

3. Class Documentation: Include your best documentation with captions. Note about videos: upload videos to your designated folder (click on link here), and then embed the video on this page by clicking "Drive" (under "Insert") on the right-hand side menu, then selecting your video from that folder under "Shared with me." 

IMPORTANT: 

• Please do not edit any other pages other than this, your class' page!

• Please make sure that all media that you upload only displays students whose parents have given consent to their documentation through the signed Media Release Form. Should you upload images of a student who has not given their consent to be documented, please make sure to blur their face.

Reflection Questions

How do you understand the concept of sensemaking in relation to your teaching practice?

One relevant way that sensemaking bears on the practice at NGHS Music Club is through an emphasis on listening. We listen in many ways: as performers, as audience members, in rehearsal, for play, for pleasure, and for curiosity. As improvisers, listening is a way of gathering information such that we can make musical decisions: when to step up or step back, when to mimic or contrast, when to change or repeat. Listening also brings us to expressive understandings of sound-- what feelings come up, what emotions or ideas are being expressed (intentionally or unintentionally), what vibes are we getting-- which in turn helps us make more creatively detailed musical choices. Thus, listening seems to me to be a form of sensemaking, insofar as it involves a process of sensory experience informing action. 

Another, perhaps zoomed out form of sense making happens before we even sound-- what experiences, memories, emotions, talents, and questions do we bring into the classroom with us and how do they inform our positionality in relation to music? How was your day and how do you want to sound about it? These questions help contextualize student experience and musical interests, as well as help steer us towards exciting and reflective creative projects.

What is something that you’ve learned about your students (and their funds of knowledge) that has influenced your class projects or class structures?

Most of my students this year are juniors or seniors, and as such have lots going on in their lives. Juniors are starting to seriously ideate about life after NGHS. Seniors have more concrete plans: one student is planning to join the military, another is considering a pathway in music and recording. Students are involved in swimming, tutoring, culinary, other music making, and still need time for video games! In a more grim vein, ICE activity has been a serious destabilizing presence in the community this semester. All of these things bear on our capacities, and as such the structure, flow, and artifacts of our classroom. 

We've talked about and experienced the value of a fluid, improvisatory approach in our work. While we have written some original music this semester, we have needed to think on the fly rehearsal to rehearsal on how to move forward, given sometimes erratic attendance, a shifting roster, and varied moods/capacities on a given day (standardized testing and rehearsing hard rhythms don't always mix well!). Sometimes open jamming or casual group listening is the best strategy for creating an atmosphere conducive to creativity and belonging.

Over the course of the semester, we've gradually landed on a core group of 4 students who are at almost every rehearsal. Our sound as a group has become much more cohesive and refined over semester. It is my hope that in the next semester that core group will continue, and our relationships can continue to deepen and inform our creative practice.

How have you investigated your teacher inquiry questions thus far? 

We've explored several structures for improvisation -- learning and experimenting with scales to create melodies, playing off of a rhythmic foundation or riff, experimenting with process (e.g. start by playing with lots of silence and gradually fill out the texture), and using quotes from other songs, for example. After improvising, we reflect on our choices-- what felt interesting, energetic, good? What felt uncomfortable and strange? What were the social challenges (improvising can be scary!) and what were the musical challenges?

With these exercises and tactics under our belt, the biggest project that we've undertaken this semester is preparing a performance for NGHS's winter concert. Two students brought in the beginnings of original compositions, and we spent the better part of two months sculpting them into more fleshed out songs. Often this process would involve improvising on the chords with different ideas or parameters in mind. Sometimes we would shuffle the orchestration or the form to try and arrive at a version we liked best. We even attempted to play one song in several different genres to see if we could find the best fit. Throughout, students were encouraged to be flexible in relation to the material-- we can always try it a different way! Expansive experimentation is our friend, and will help us determine an exciting path forward. 

Leading up to the concert, students decided that they wanted to perform one original composition and one cover (we chose "Notion" by the Rare Occassions). Every other band on the winter concert would be performing covers, and students felt like this would contextualize our original and also provide audience members with something more to latch on to. However, we still brought an improvisatory approach to our arrangement-- we tried out different instruments, we arranged things in different ways to see what we liked, and students were encouraged to bring their own ideas and licks to their parts. The skills that we built through improvisation totally apply, as they have become foundational to our sound as a band and culture as a club.

Class documentation: 

The three recordings above document the trajectory of a first sketch of an original composition to its near complete form. Daniel N. brought in some chords for us to learn, which you can hear in the first recording. Once we were comfortable with those notes, we started to play around with different textures, orchestrations, and rhythms. We also chose some different (but related) chords as a group and created a B section. 

The second recording features a synth arpeggio, a semi improvised guitar part, and a pointillistic B section. None of these components made the final cut, but the recording here nicely communicates the way we would stretch and play with our material. 

The final recording showcases the full version of the song, recorded about a week before performance. It features a new section where students improvise on the original chords, but start sparsely and gradually play more and more notes. A through line in this section is a slowly evolving synth melody, largely improvised. This recording also shows Elijah (drums) working on counting in the band-- students continued to explore these leadership roles in the band, fostering greater ownership over the creative process and their work!

Reflection Questions

Reflecting on your Mid-point assessment and other class observations, what did you notice about how your students learn?

The Mid-point assessment was an extremely interesting exercise for us as a band. Together we listened to Side A of the experimental percussion record Kansai Bruises by Valentina Magaletti and YPY. This record is groove oriented, saturated with electronic noises, and tends towards the boundaries of chaos and repetition. Despite this kind of experimental improvisation being a totally new listening experience for students, they were able to articulate detailed and specific interpretations. Students felt the music was abstract, sounded alien or like "liquefying colors," and was dense with different emotions. They were able to identify specific relationships between performers (one student said the performers are "playing together, but not directly," another that they are making an "intentional choice to sound chaotic").  Additionally, students were able to contextualize this music in terms of other genres or modes that they were familiar with, either by comparison ("it sounds like a weird mysterious video game") or in opposition (students observed that the songs are long and wouldn't go viral, perhaps performers are wanting to create a new genre).

These reflections demonstrate the students' nuanced interpretive skills and ability to connect art to their lives and cultural context. As such, I think one way of understanding our club this year could be: outside of the classroom, students were listening, sharing music, discovering their individual artistic identities, and contextualizing this music in their school community, city, and global music context. In the classroom, students were synthesizing this information in practice through instrumental skill building, improvisation, composition, and critique.

Look back at your planning form and the skills you listed out that students would learn– provide an example of a project you did with students and how it developed some of those skills.

During the spring semester, we prepared work for a concert at the CAPE gallery. Students decided that they wanted to do one fully improvised song (in addition to two covers). We started by choosing a basic palette of chords and pitches, and decided that the vibe should be chill and mellow to contrast the other two songs that would be performed. As we improvised in this sound world, students discovered patterns and musical relationships that they liked, and we would jot them down and keep them as leaping-off points for our next improvisations. Ultimately, students decided on a loose form built on musical ideas (drums and bass start, then keys and guitar, then vocals) as well as expressive ideas (the sound will start serene, but intensify or become "argumentative"). This structure also featured specific interplays between bass and drums, guitar and keys, and the two vocalists, as these were the pairings in our setup that students felt like had natural resonances. We performed this improvisation for a small but mighty audience at the CAPE gallery at the end of April. 

Even though we had several performances after this project, the improvisation at CAPE feels to me to be the culminating expression of our Big Idea. This was the most improvised performance that any of my students at NGHS have ever done, and it brought together understandings built across the whole semester of our musical and expressive relationships. My hope was that students would develop a courageous approach to improvisation and play, which was amply demonstrated by them getting up and improvising in front of a crowd! The process of creating the musical structure for this performance also demonstrated students' deepening understanding of improvisation as an expressive form, as well as an expanding curiosity about sound and performance.

Review your answer to the Fall Reflection Question: What is something that you’ve learned about your students (and their funds of knowledge) that has influenced your class projects or class structures. How has your answer changed or developed across the rest of the year?

Our club had quite a shakeup after fall semester. Our two seniors (in a core group of four students) both dropped out of the club to focus on other priorities at school. These students had been driving forces in terms of bringing in original music and demonstrating leadership in improvisation-- their absence was felt! That said, the two remaining students, Christian and Elijah, absolutely rose to the occasion. They brought up that they felt our band didn't have an identity in the context of the school, and they felt that students didn't really know about CAPE (no doubt because of the hiccups in programming last school year). We decided to do a big recruitment push, which involved Christian and Elijah writing a band bio and reflecting on the values of our club and the kind of students we wanted to attract. They created a bio (pictured below) and we shared it widely via QR code around the school. This resulted in us getting four new students by early February, and this group of six is the band we finished out the year with. 

I mention this here for several reasons. One, the fall semester was also marked by students coming and going due to shifting capacities and commitments. This is a concrete way in which students' lives outside of the classroom act on our work in the classroom, and it requires a great deal of flexibility to navigate. Also, it shows how strongly the students who are consistent feel about the program (it's not easy to maintain a twice a week commitment!). For Christian and Elijah in particular, growing this club was essential for their artistic goals and sense of social belonging.

Additionally, with four new students, there were many new musical considerations! Students were interested in many new genres, we had a surge of requests to play Weezer songs, and some students were fully uninterested in improvisation altogether, preferring to just play covers and hang with their friends. This created a challenging start to the spring as we tried to bridge the gap between the work of the fall semester and the culture of our current group. It required us to recalibrate our goals as a group, slow down and understand everyone's musical interests and identities, and find a path forward that felt collaborative and fruitful for everyone. This is to say, we had an influx of new funds of knowledge that we had to account for! 

What new questions/ curiosities do you have about teaching and learning? 

I am curious about how best to introduce stranger and more experimental sounds into my teaching practice. I felt often in this class that students were reticent to make a "bad sound," and often wanted to retain the musical relationships and values of music they were already familiar with. This isn't necessarily a problem! But I am continually wondering about how to widen our musical tool box and foster a sense of musical (and social!) possibility. I think this question bears more broadly on how to navigate familiarity vs. newness in classrooms, how to encourage more radically collaborative ways of making, and how to leave students empowered and with an expansive sense of possibility.

I also wonder about exploring other ways of sounding-- NGHS has a very modern band focused music program. There is a lot of buy-in from students and a lot of interest in this way of making. I am curious about how to build off of this dynamic and still encourage new/other modes of performance and sounding. 

Class documentation