Education is a journey, and one which we all embark upon before we even know it. The latest leg of my educational journey has been through my Master of Arts in Education, from Michigan State University. Throughout this part of my journey, three main issues have come up over and over again: how the education I am receiving will affect my own teaching of private violin lessons, how it will influence how I homeschool my future children, and, relating to that, how my eyes were opened about our public school system here in the States. To explore these three main themes, I will be focusing on my experiences and learning in three of my classes: Creativity in Teaching and Learning, Developing Positive Attitudes Toward Learning, and the Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences.
During the first semester of my degree, I took the class on motivation (CEP802), which was a great way to start. One of the things I learned about was developing a motivational assessment, in which I was able to examine one of my students, her learning, her motivation, and how these forces related. Everything from the motivational assessment was from one of my students, and I was able to actually use my findings with her. The effect was very noticeable, and she did go on to record her audition last fall. In fact, her confidence has improved so dramatically that she is finally seeking a teacher that can help prepare her for college and professional auditions. While I won’t prepare motivational assessments on all of my students, the tools are there for me to use when I need them. This skill will also be useful as I homeschool my future children, so I can analyze and address any motivational problems as they occur.
I also learned about TARGET: Task, Authority, Recognition, Grouping, Evaluation, and Timing. These are lenses through which one can look at any learning situation to determine its effectiveness and ways to improve upon it. The task should be relevant and important to the student, preferably chosen by the student. Authority should be shared between the teacher and the student, so that the learning is a journey undertaken by both, together. Recognition should be primarily private, rather than public. Both individual and group activities should be included. Evaluation should be constructive and qualitative, tailored to the individual. Timing should be flexible, and allow room for further exploration of deeper issues. Learning about the TARGET framework has allowed me to evaluate my own teaching and make adjustments, and it will be a framework that I use to examine my homeschooling.
Also in CEP802, I learned about the use of rewards. Several different systems were discussed, including token economies. From the research we examined, token economies are good at establishing behaviors, and working to improve simple skills. However, once token economies are no longer in place, their effect - that of the increased behavior - is generally reduced or removed. Because of this, I use token economies to create practice habits, but otherwise I try to avoid them. Often, it is easy to practice an instrument for the first couple of weeks, because it is something new and exciting. But then it becomes harder to practice, because you’re not very good, so it loses its appeal. This is when token economies can be helpful: they can keep a student practicing long enough to see some progress and improvement, at which point many students will keep practicing because now it is fun. I also use these token economies intermittently, rather than continuously. While I don’t think I will use them in my homeschooling, they will remain a tool that I can draw upon.
Another kind of reward is praise, which is often used in public schools. I, too, use it in my teaching, however, rather than praising students for simplistic behaviors like being quiet or sitting still, I praise students for specific improvements. If we’ve been working on bow hold, and they are able to make it all the way through “Lightly Row” with a bent thumb, I’m going to let them know that I noticed and how great that was. I do have students that staying focused the entire time I give directions is a challenge, so I do praise those students for success in those areas, but that is specific to the student.
I also learned the importance of how we praise a student, which I work hard to implement every day in my teaching. It is better to say, “Wow, you worked so hard on that shift, so it has improved a lot! I can tell you’ve really been practicing it,” then “You’re really good at that shift!” The former tells a student that hard work and practice are valued, while the latter tells him that innate ability is valued. This is an important distinction, because when a student feels that working hard is important, they develop a learning orientation. When a student feels that performing well is important, they develop a performance orientation. The student with a learning orientation will constantly seek to better themselves, challenge themselves, and they will not be afraid to work hard to do it. The student with a performance orientation seeks easy tasks they know they can succeed at, and if they fail, they quickly give up. I will be using this knowledge of praise not only in my teaching studio, but also as I teach my own children.
Finally, we discussed intrinsic motivation, how it can be developed, and factors that affect it. Some of these include relevancy, autonomy, and instant feedback, which leads to flow. Relevancy means that the task is important to the student and they see the meaning of completing it. Autonomy refers to a student that picks their own task, which automatically grants relevancy. Instant feedback is important, because it facilitates constant improvement, and leads to flow. Flow is a state in which everything outside of the task is forgotten by the student. Music is great for these things, as once students reach a certain level of proficiency, I can generally allow them to pick whatever music they want to play. This gives them autonomy and relevancy. Even if I can’t let them pick the song (because they still have so much to learn), my students choose to take lessons, so this lends the experience autonomy and relevancy. These two factors greatly increase intrinsic motivation.
Playing a musical instrument also has instant feedback. As soon as a student plays a gross sound, like a screech or a crunch, they know it. When students are beginners, my job as their teacher is to diagnose these gross sounds, and help them avoid them. As students progress, they can perform these diagnostics on their own, which means they can become absorbed in their music, and achieve flow. I will also be remembering these elements of intrinsic motivation as I homeschool my children, and it’s one of the big reasons I plan to homeschool, rather than send them to the public school.
In Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences (CEP882), I once again learned about the importance of autonomy and choice, this time through fashion. While I personally hate fashion and shopping, another definition of the term, “fashion,” is the act of creating. “To fashion something.” In examining fashion, I chose to use this definition, and looked at how I have fashioned the outside of my home, and discovered that what made it compelling to me was that I had created it. While most people likely would not find the land surrounding my house terribly compelling, I have put a lot of work into it, so I do. Similarly, when students have put a lot of work into something they wanted to create, whether they wrote a piece or just learned a song from Harry Potter, I let them do it their way. I do this, because I know how important choice and autonomy are for compelling experiences, and how these increase intrinsic motivation.
I also learned about the importance of connections and relevancy in this class. While most students are not going to see the connections between their music and scales and arpeggios on their own, if I provide the connections, explain the relevancy, then they can be more motivated to practice on their own. In the same token, my own children might not be overly thrilled with everything I decide to teach them, but if I can help them to find the connections between what they have to learn and what they love to learn, they can understand the relevancy, and thus find meaning in the less than desired task.
From photography, I learned about the importance of composition, which is related to the Task portion of the TARGET framework. When taking a photograph, an important way to make it more compelling is to carefully compose what is in the picture. Angles and zooming are explored to create a photo with just the right elements. Composition is also important in teaching, both for my private lesson students and my future children. There is so much to learn, it is easy to be overwhelmed, or to overwhelm our students. But if we carefully pare away to the essentials of the lesson, our students can learn more, and then explore more in depth as their interests dictate. This is possible with both my private lesson students and with homeschooling, but not always possible in the public school system.
From music, I learned about the importance of peeling back the layers, to look beneath the surface. When most people listen to music, they hear the melody, and don’t notice anything else. But if you peel back the melody, and listen to the inner harmonies and the bass line, a lot of very cool musical elements emerge, from chord changes, to interesting rhythms and textures, to suspensions and anticipations. When only looking at the top layer, the melody, this isn’t always possible. When teaching my own children, I will remember to help them to peel back the upper layers of a topic, to get down deep into a hidden, interesting part. Rather than making them memorize names, dates, and places, like I too often had to in history class, I will help my children explore why different historical events developed, and why this is important today. Instead of just memorizing the carbon cycle, we’ll look for it in our daily lives, and how we are affected by it. With the standardized testing that is pushed so hard today, this just is not possible in the public school system.
Again from fashion, I learned that what is on the surface really does matter. How a lesson is presented can have lasting results on how a topic or subject is viewed, and I know this from personal experience. In years that I had exceptional, excited, enthusiastic teachers, I excelled at their subject, no matter what that subject was. Years that they were bored, uninterested, and apathetic about their subject, I was, too. I remember this as I teach, and always try to portray the excitement and love toward music that I feel. Sometimes this can be difficult, but as I want my students to cultivate this excitement and love for music, it is very necessary. This will also be a lesson to remember as I teach my children, which is especially important as we look at history. I’ve only ever enjoyed one history class I took, so I will work hard to portray the subject as interesting and exciting to my children, so they may love it more than I do.
Another way of looking at fashion and how important the surface is, is something I learned from Creativity in Teaching and Learning (CEP818): perception. In this class, I learned the importance of perceiving a topic in a way different from what is usually perceived. For example, when looking at rhythms, usually you see the rhythms on the page, and hear them in the song. I created paper cutouts of rhythms, in which different rhythms were different lengths, which allowed students to physically manipulate the rhythms and how they related to other rhythms. Other creativity tools we learned about were patterning, abstracting, synthesizing, dimensional thinking, play, and embodied thinking. Each of these tools are important in developing creativity, and they can all be used in different ways. As a private violin teacher, I make ample use of all of them, though I have been working on increasing my use of them, too. As a homeschooler, I’ll also be able to use them in teaching my children, and I think we will find we have a lot more fun when we are using these creativity tools, in addition to learning more. However, in my experience, it is rare in the public education system for any of these tools to be used at all.
Throughout my last two years at MSU, I have been learning about the best ways to teach. With every new thing I learn, I realize how public education no longer measures up to what it could, if teachers were only given free reign to personalize their curriculum. The best practices that I learned about for motivation and creativity, as well as science and math, and education in general, are usually lacking. Students are in large classes, all required to learn the exact same thing, in the exact same way, required to test the same way, with the result being a mediocre education for most students. However, if teachers were allowed to teach smaller classes, and didn’t have to teach to standardized tests, they could provide an education like what I have been learning about - individualized, relevant to each student, emphasis on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation, with varied tasks and varied assessments. For these reasons, I have decided to homeschool my children. My local schools are actually pretty great, but I feel that with the restrictions placed on them by the government and lawmakers, they cannot provide the same quality of education as I can, at home.
In the past two years, I have learned a lot that has effected my teaching, in all areas. Most notably, I learned about the motivation of learning, creativity in education, and how to make my teaching more compelling. Throughout these classes, I actively sought to create connections between what I was learning and how I teach. It was through this thinking, and comparing it to my experiences in the public school system, that I realized that a much better educational experience for my children could be found at home.