I started my blog My Music Classroom on August 31st 2014. I wrote my first post just before starting my third academic year at BCCS, full of ambition to post regularly and build it into a positive space for reflecting on life as a music teacher. In reality, it has become a rather sporadic space for me to drop ideas and thoughts as and when the mood and inspiration strike. This does seem to happen particularly often when I have a lot of marking to do, coincidence?! Anyhow it has allowed me to continue to have a voice in the music education field and connect to other music educators. Something I value hugely.
Going forward, I hope to continue to use the blog to explore ideas, question assumptions, engage with research and share reflections from practice: always through the lens of someone who is in the room and doing the job: a practising educator drawing on experience, curiosity and professional reflection, rather than seeking to offer definitive answers from a distance. I want to contribute to conversations that reach beyond individual classrooms and departments, connecting the experiences of practising teachers with wider discussions about music education.
I don’t expect to have definitive answers to anything I write about. I am confident I have experience and expertise I have developed, but most of that much of this is rooted in my own context and there is always much to consider across the wider sector. I am probably more naturally drawn to a meandering and reflective bit of writing a definitive set of answers, but would like to give my writing a little more structure and direction.
So I have come up with three themes moving forward and will try to hold myself to account with more sustained and deliberate content.
Theme One: CURRICULUM
What should students learn, and why?
The substance, sequencing, coherence and purpose of music education.
Theme Two: PEDAGOGY
How do we help students learn it?
Teaching approaches, musical understanding, assessment, creativity and classroom practice.
Theme Three PROFESSION
What do music teachers need to know, understand and be able to do?
Teacher expertise, professional development, subject knowledge, leadership and the future of the profession.
These three themes are closely connected. Curriculum decisions influence pedagogy. Pedagogical choices depend on teachers’ knowledge and expertise. And the strength of the profession shapes our capacity to develop, challenge and improve both curriculum and practice.
I don’t see these as three separate areas of interest, but as different ways of examining the same bigger question: what does a meaningful, ambitious and sustainable music education look like? The intention is to explore the broader set of questions about what we teach, how we teach and the expertise and understanding that underpin our work as music educators.
LG
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