I was happy to see that Bauer wrote about flipped classrooms in this week's readings. I first became aware of flipped classroom teaching when I was working with a charter school -- the 7th & 8th grade math teacher decided to try flipping, and found it worked quite well for her purposes and the purposes of her students.
I have long thought about how flipping might work for an instrumental music classroom. At first glance, it seems pretty counter-intuitive - for instrumental music, all students need to have access to the instructor on a regular basis, and the instructor needs to have direct access to the student to assess proper executive and musical skills. Giving students instruction via video can be risky for instrumental instruction, especially when new techniques and concepts are being introduced. At the same time, how many students are looking up new techniques and ideas on YouTube and Vimeo and other video sites? I was impressed at the beginning of this school year when several of my middle-school violinists came in telling me about how they'd gotten together over the weekend and looked up how to do that 'shaky-hand thing' -- vibrato. Their technique wasn't solid, but they'd taken the initiative to investigate and experiment, which really impressed me.
Instead of 'conventional' flipping where the teacher creates or finds video to teach the concept in question and then has student practice that skill independently or in small groups in the classroom with the teacher available for assistance, I think that flipping the instrumental music classroom needs to look and work more along the lines of creating centers and generating space for lesson time with students, even if only on a group basis. When I did my student teaching, I was in one of the more affluent Pittsburgh (PA) suburbs. 75-80% of my students took private lessons, and all of the cellists (and most of the bassists) had instruments at home to practice with. My students where I am now are not as well-off, and only three of my hundred-or-so students take private lessons with any regularity, while only one or two of my students who play the larger instruments have those instruments available to practice on at home. Only my high school students don't have to share their large instruments, so my middle school and elementary students don't even have the opportunity to take an instrument home to practice over the evening or weekends without making special arrangements. While I'm working on changing this, it's a slow and expensive process -- do I buy strings, accessories, new music, and get some repairs done this summer, or do I blow my entire budget on buying one new instrument of questionable quality? It's not a fun choice to make.
One of my goals for the upcoming year is to give each student SOME kind of lesson on a regular basis. Most likely it will be rotating small group lessons where I get to see kids every few weeks. While this might not be flipping in a traditional sense, I do see it as a type of flip -- generally lessons would be conducted outside of class time, and instead I'm burning class time to make it happen. Students not involved in lessons will get time to work on independent projects -- small ensembles, composition and theory projects, and other exploratory-type activities where I can set up things ahead of time and let them go with minimal intervention. Web quests will also likely feature prominently in these centers, or possibly even 'practice-quests' where I give students a list of tasks to complete to ensure they are practicing the assigned material in various ways. I will then put the practicing as an ensemble that would have happened that day on the student as a responsibility. I know I'll need to support at-home practice more -- I'm thinking of ways that I can make practicing easier and more fun, so it'll be more likely to be accomplished. I'm already planning on setting up a website over the summer so I can link to recordings of the full ensemble for our pieces as well as each individual part (my high schoolers will be helping me make recordings for my middle schoolers, so that will take some of the responsibility - and stress -- off of me!). There's lots of potential for expanding the classroom and making space to spend more time with each kid individually. I'm nervous that our ensemble skills will suffer from reduced rehearsal time, but I'm hoping that the payoffs will make up for that through improved executive skills and improved awareness of the music, plus getting myself better acquainted with each student's strengths and weaknesses. It's going to be an interesting experiment, to be sure, and I'm looking forward to seeing how many different ways I can incorporate technology into these lesson/centers days next year.
Hi, Jami:
ReplyDeleteYour game-plan for the upcoming summer and school year sound extraordinarily ambitious and exciting. In my previous district, I was the only band teacher at the middle school campus, and had to do many of the things you have in mind (minus the technological aspects then, however): namely, the in-class "flipping" you describe.
While it may seem risky to rotate individuals and sections during regular instructional time, it can most definitely be done if you've established classroom procedures and expectations well ahead of time (that is florid, teacher-speak for "broken in the classes like a horse"), which - based on the tone of your blogs the past several weeks - I'm sure you're quite excellent with.
Once students have been read the "Riot Act" (even their "free" practice time while you work with sections must be structured and specific - you know that), you have the flexibility to say, "Violas, join me in the side office for sectionals, etc." and can work with the confidence that this is time well-spent, especially if you do not have access to the kiddos outside of the regular school day.
Not having access to the students outside of the regular school day is my CHIEF complaint about my current post. With our traveling schedule between intermediate, middle, and high school campuses, I find it difficult to make many of the breakthroughs I felt I was able to accomplish thanks to after-school sectional work and even simple interaction with students years ago. To offset this, however, we structure classes to do precisely what you describe, albeit with more than one teacher present.
This is a trade-off. I haven't felt entirely successful where I labor currently - many times, I long for the days of my previous post (working alone, but having complete access to every facet of the program) - though I do appreciate the fact that, say, a woodwind specialist is regularly present when I have a double-reed question, for example. This does occasionally pose the issue of "too many chefs in the kitchen," I've found, however, but that is the subject of yet another sermon...
In any case, I'm confident you will make this work, and the tech aspects of our discussions over the past month will no doubt make both of our jobs easier in terms of supplementing the intangibles we dole out each day.
Good luck, Jami!
Best,
Ernest