The goal in my classroom is not music literacy.
Let's talk about it.
You're listening to that music podcast with Bryson Tarbet, the curriculum designer and educational consultant behind that music teacher at the elementary music summit each week, Bryson and his guests will dive into the reality of being an elementary music teacher, and how music can truly be transformative in the lives of the students you serve. Show Notes and resources mentioned in this episode can be found at that music teacher.com.
Hello, and welcome back to that music podcast, this episode might get me in some trouble, but it's one that I really feel strongly about. And that is the fact that you know I'm gonna pull the band aid off is I don't think music literacy is the driving force behind music education. I want to make it very clear that music literacy is important. And it can really help students especially if they want to pursue music, it may be a more of the traditional sense, maybe the more you know collegiate or just, there's there are definitely reasons why music literacy is important and why we have spent so much time as humans, creating ways to write and read music. But the more I think about it, the more I'm unsure of how important music literacy should be. I think back to my own experience, especially in a choral setting, especially in like high school, where I could do all the music, literacy, literacy things, right, I could read music, I could sight read, I could do this, that and the other thing. But there were certain things that I just couldn't wrap my brain around for one of those things was improvisation. And just understanding how the music fits in and how I can make my instrument or my voice or whatever fit into the framework of the music that I am performing. And for me, sometimes I think the the idea of you know, music is what's on the page was something that I learned, even if it wasn't necessarily taught to me is that the music was the written thing, when in reality, the music is the experience, the music is what we perform what we hear what we share. And in my classroom, my goal is to allow students to create and express themselves through various art forms, primarily music and movement, but also understanding that, we also need to be able to receive that. So sometimes we have to do a little bit of decoding in our brain. And that's really, to me what the goal of music education is, especially in the elementary level, I think I really started unlearning a little bit of that kind of understanding that music at music is the written stuff rather than the performative stuff. When I was in college, I when I was an undergrad, because I had learned I essentially become very rigid in my my performing, because, you know, this is what this note is, this is how you play it. This is how you sing it. And not only did that get in the way of me kind of really understanding how it all fit together. But I got in the way of me being able to connect with it emotionally because I was so worried about the technicality of it that I wasn't really focusing on all in the music of it.
And I tell you all this, not to think not to share the story of me figuring out how music works. But I think we can break a lot of parallels into an elementary music setting. For instance, we tend to focus on the music making, which I think is really important by obviously. But sometimes we can get really stuck in a rut of I need my kids to learn music. I need my kids to be able to read and write music because XYZ and quite honestly, most of the time what I hear is my middle school teachers want their kids to read music when they come to band or choir, which I totally get. It is so much easier to teach
these upper grades when they have music literacy skills to be going to go on. But again it comes back to that point of what is music is music What is written down or is music what we do. And the way this looks in my classroom is a lot of is very similar to what many code I influenced teaching looks like it
is that we are doing a lot of sound before symbol. So I, whenever I was doing like my interviews for my first job and everything, people were asking, like, can you explain what that means? And I really think in the nicest way, it's just tricking the kids into learning something new, so that they don't get to be able to put their, you know, their anxiety guardrails up when I say, you know, alright, we're gonna learn something new. No, here's this new thing, we've already been using it awesome, great job, it's just called this. And for me, that is the epitome of really blending in music literacy in a way that is human centered, because it's showing them how to use something, how to, you know, these different rhythms. This is what is happening in the music you're performing. This is just one way that we write it down. And the way that I look, the reason I really, really love this, is because I think that the way that we use pre notation, for instance, if I'm working on rhythm, you know, we might do you know, iconic pictures of a frog or whatever it is in the song. And then we might bring that into Morse code notation where we have dots and lines for Long's and short shorts, we know quarter notes and eighth notes. And then we might take that one step further. And now we have tos and TTS and we have the standard Western notation. All of these are valid. All of these are ways to represent the music, we've just ended at a different point, which tends to be what traditional western music notation is.
We see these conversations happening about whether or not music literacy is important at all, or whether or not we should have music literacy as the center of our music education programs. And while I think these conversations are good, and I'm glad they're happening, and quite frankly, a lot of them are coming in coming from a place of
honoring and understanding diversity and equity and inclusion. I think sometimes we get the we get the we mess it up a little bit, instead of focusing on is it important, you know, should we do it? Should we not? I think we need to flip it a little bit and talk about the the reality that all music literacy is completely arbitrary. It really just comes down to how many people are going to understand it that way. How many people agree that this is what this is? And I might be getting a little tangential. But I think the reality is, is music is this inherently human thing. Music is this thing that children do from the time they are very young without having to be taught it.
Now you can improve certain musical skills by learning and by, you know, by teaching and things like that.
But when we're really thinking about it, music is this abstract thing. And we as humans don't like abstract, we like things that are very concrete, very yes or no very binary. And that is where we create the structures of you know, music theory, and music literacy, and all these different things to essentially give us common terminology to talk about these innately human experiences. So while I'm not telling you to create your own system of music notation, or anything like that, I what I am, what I do want you to do is I want you to take a moment, and I want you to reflect on the reality of music literacy currently in your classroom. What kind of focus are we leaving on it? What kind of time in our lessons are we spending on writing and reading music? And then ask yourself, are those numbers? Are those the results? What you know, the answers that you came up with? Are those things that you are okay with? And if not, why? How can we and then and then also, what can we do to make it something that we are okay with?
Bringing it back to a little a little bit closer to the theme of this month's podcast episodes, which is, you know, the core choral setting? Yes, I think that music literacy has a very important role in a choral setting, especially a choral setting here in the United States. But
I think that needs to come second to the making of music, the act of making music, which is why I really, if you were to come into my classroom in full disclosure, you know, my choir is very much so an experiment. And it's something I'm learning and redoing, as you've noticed in these last few episodes. But if you were to come into my classroom, you would see that sometimes the students don't even have the music to the song we're learning and it's not because they are memorized it is because they never even had it. They just learned the entire October from rote. And while there are
different reasons
into I have taught songs in different ways. The reality is, is I do want my students to learn. So I want them to have some experience reading it and going through the process. But I also understand that sometimes they're able to learn a certain song faster without having that written notation. And for me, I'm trying to find that balance of what the students are expecting and what I'm expecting out of them. So I want to make sure that they are always challenged, but not frustrated. I want them to be engaged and but also still have some rigorous expectations and some, some musical experiences going on. So for me, if I were to have these students who have never been in a choral setting, and with me, as a teacher, who's still trying to figure it all out, read music, the entire class, I think I would lose them, I think that we would not have the level of joy, that art that is happening in the classroom, because that really for me is where I want to center it around. I want joyful music making to happen. And ideally, I'm going to give them more skills and more tools, and more resources so that they can be able to explore and understand and describe those musical experiences in different ways. But the reality is, the focus of my class is music making, not music literacy.
I know I got on my soapbox a little bit this week. So I'm Hope I didn't ruffle any feathers too hard. But I really think this is at the very least a discussion that you need to have with yourself about what is the role of music literacy in your classroom currently? And what do you want it to be? And if there's a misalignment there, what can we do to take it the next step, and fix everything, or at least take steps towards fixing things so that we are not being complacent in the understanding that we're just not a fan of the way that we currently have a setup.
If you enjoyed this week's episode, it would mean the world to us. If you were to leave us review wherever you're listening. Now, I also wanted to take a moment and if you haven't already joined us inside that music teacher community, which is our monthly membership for content specific professional development, as well as camaraderie from people who understand what it feels like to be on music teacher Island, we would love to have you inside the community. To check it out and learn more, check out the link in the show notes wherever you're listening to now. With that being said, I truly thank you for taking some time out of your day and listening to me talk about something that I thoroughly enjoy having discussions on. And I do want to end this like I end most of my episodes because I believe it is so important. And I want to take a moment and in case nobody else has lately. I want to thank you for making a difference and making an impact in the lives of the students that you teach.
