Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D.

One aspect of our Music Education Program that I feel passionately about is the many opportunities that my students have over the course of their studies to be in the shoes of a beginner. All of my students take classes in playing and teaching the brass instruments, the woodwind instruments, the string instruments, and the percussion instruments (this is required for teacher licensure). I have yet to meet anyone who is an expert in all of these instruments. That means that each of my students gets to experience what it is like to be a beginner on a musical instrument. And many of them have that experience multiple times during the program.

That means that these musical experts, all of whom have achieved very high levels of musicianship on their primary instruments, find themselves back at square one with a new musical instrument. They get in touch with their “inner beginners.”

As individuals training to be music educators, the inner beginner experiences are absolutely critical. Thanks to those experiences, my students develop a rich appreciation for what their students are going through in their musical studies. Being in touch with their inner beginners certainly makes my students better music educators.

This morning, I was thinking that it should be a requirement for all professions that people get in touch with the inner beginner of their field. So doctors should experience first-hand what it is like not to have the vast medical knowledge that they have. Auto mechanics should walk in the shoes of someone who doesn’t know how a car works. CEOs should live a day (or perhaps longer) in the life of someone who doesn’t know anything about their business, or about how to run a business.

Can you imagine how things might be different in today’s world if all of us were required to get in touch with the inner beginners of our field? There would be much more potential for different types of interchange between people in the same field, as well as across fields. There would be greater empathy for clients. There would be more clarity and transparency in communications.

What do you think of this idea?

Why is everyone afraid of being confused? Of not quite understanding something? Of needing time to think about things and figure them out?

I see my graduate students anxious to have all the answers, to feel settled about what they are learning. They want desperately to succeed in their studies. They take their learning seriously. They want to do a good job on everything that they do in graduate school. Those are admirable sentiments, indeed.

Yet, at the same time, sometimes it takes us time to figure things out, time to settle in with new ideas or perspectives, time to marinate with our thoughts. And we need to be willing — if not relish the opportunity! — to take that time.

I fear that we have become, as a society, impatient with the time, energy, effort, and journey that meaningful learning processes take. Musician friends of mine complain about books/computer programs that promise to transform a novice into an expert musician in no time. This expectation of powerful learning being do-able in no time worries me.

One of my writing group-mates, Cleti, has a wonderful expression. When one of us is pondering new ideas or trying to make sense of an unfamiliar perspective, she will tell us that we need to “sit with it a bit.” I love that image, and I admire the sentiments behind it. Sometimes we just need to sit with things a bit and give them the time that they need to take. We don’t want to rush that process, because the journey is just as important as the destination (if not more so).

How can music educators and music teacher educators counter the expectations and desires of their students to learn/master in no time? What is lost when we as a society refuse to sit with what we need to sit with?

One of my wonderful new students (Ryan) mentioned this week that he has noticed that our faculty members model the same teaching techniques that the students are reading about and discussing in class. I was delighted that Ryan remarked on this point, because it underscores one of my deepest values about education:

GOOD TEACHING IS GOOD TEACHING

Good teaching happens in all sorts of settings and with students of all ages. Good teaching, wherever it happens, has a certain set of attributes, values, and dispositions.

I have carefully selected the faculty members who teach for me in the Music Education Program. I wanted to ensure that our students would have good teaching modeled for them in their own classes and learning experiences, just as they were thinking about becoming better teachers themselves. Ryan underscored that I have been successful in this area, and I am thrilled to hear it.

I also wanted my faculty members to be deeply connected to the real world of music education practice in public schools. Most of them either are currently teaching in public school settings or have recently taught there. It is very important to me that Boston Conservatory prepare music educators for the real world of public school music teaching. An “ivory tower” faculty does not interest me, for the purposes of our program.

I also have been deeply committed to developing within my students the habits of mind of collegiality and ongoing professional development. To that end, it has been important to me that the Music Education Department’s faculty be active in professional organizations and in their own professional development. I am proud to say that many of our ranks are active in Massachusetts Music Educators Association, MICCA, ACDA, MAJE, ASTA, and other organizations. This helps our students to see the many benefits of joining and contributing to these and other groups. Every year, when my students attend the MMEA Conference, this point is made loud and clear, as they encounter their professors in leadership roles in these organizations.

Thank you, Ryan, for helping me and your graduate student colleagues to appreciate one of my deepest underlying values as a music teacher educator.

Like many other music teacher educators, I am sure, I spend a great deal of time emphasizing the importance of teaching using multiple modalities — in other words, making sure that lessons have visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning opportunities. Since people learn differently, it is critical that teachers provide opportunities for all learners to access the material and experiences in the classroom. Furthermore, research has shown that learning is more lasting and meaningful when multiple modalities are engaged. It is as if content that is learned, skills that are developed, and experiences that are shared become embedded in a more powerful, rich web in students’ minds if multiple modalities are engaged in the classroom.

Multiple modalities come up for me in my life all the time. I am an auditory person. I am extremely good at remembering what I hear. Many times, when I encounter visual information that I need to remember, I say the information out loud. When I was a student in high school and college (when I took tests that required a great deal of memorization; I can say happily that grad school didn’t involve that sort of exam), I would read what I had to learn out loud AND I would write notes about it. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was engaging visual, audio, and kinesthetic modalities in my studying.

What I wonder about today is how music teacher education could benefit from a multiple modalities approach, but thinking of multiple modalities more broadly and differently. So in the case of music teacher education, multiple modalities could be:
visual
auditory
kinesthetic
and could be broadened to include multiple forms of learning interactions, like
reading about something
discussing it
observing it in action in a classroom
working hands-on with one or more students
reflecting on observations and field experiences

Specifically, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about how music teacher educators could do a better job at preparing our students to teach special needs students in K-12 settings. Generally speaking, music teachers do not feel well prepared to work with students with special needs. Perhaps taking a multimodal approach (in this broader sense) would be helpful.

At Boston Conservatory, we are working on ways to diversify our approach to preparing pre-service music teachers to work with special needs students. Besides regular coursework and the more typical teaching approaches, we include fieldwork components that involve observation and some hands-on work with real students. Our partnerships with the Kids Are People School (a private school in Boston with a high special needs population) and the Autism Higher Education Foundation (which has resulted in The Boston Conservatory Program for Students on the Autism Spectrum, where several Music Education students teach private instrument lessons to students with an ASD diagnosis) make it possible for many of our students to gain extended direct experience working with children with special needs.

I wonder if other areas of music teacher education would benefit from a multimodal approach (conceived broadly). It seems to me that they would.  More ways to make the material and experiences meaningful can only benefit music teacher education. While the student teaching experience makes tremendous contributions in this regard, it is a capstone experience. These sorts of multimodal approaches should be interwoven throughout the music teacher preparation program.

Rachel Jayson, Boston Conservatory MMED ‘09, said it best when she remarked that the Boston Conservatory Program for Students on the Autism Spectrum is “more than just Saturday morning music lessons.” For the 15 young students with ASD diagnosis involved in the program in the 08-09 school year, participation in this groundbreaking music program has provided them with the opportunity to develop their musical skills on their instruments (piano, voice, or violin), to be sure, but it has also given them the chance to develop interpersonal relationships with other young musicians and with their instructors, enabled them to spend time devoted to something that they are good at, and helped them to develop their communication skills (both through music, as well as through other means).

The program is “more than just Saturday morning music lessons” for the Master’s students in Music Education who are instructors in the program (there were 6 in 08-09), as well. Through the intensive training and ongoing support that they receive from a team of expert consultants that includes autism specialists, musicians with autism, and music therapists, the Music Education students have learned a great deal about working with students of all kinds, not just students on the autism spectrum. One of the most powerful lessons that they have learned is the importance of establishing strong relationships with one’s students — and those relationships might be through music, or they might be through something else. Getting to know your students, and know them well, makes for much more effective teaching, where you can individualize your approach so that you can meet your students where they are. In their brown bag lunches (which take place every two weeks), the Music Education students discuss the strategies that they have developed for working with their young students, and they share creative ways to approach various learning situations. Guided by their expert consultants, they collaborate on finding their way with their students.

I am very, very proud of this new program, which recently ended its first year. The program is the result of a partnership that the Music Education Department at Boston Conservatory entered into with the Autism Higher Education Foundation. As the Program Director, I am the day-to-day leader of the program. Everything on the Conservatory end of things is my responsibility — from selecting the Music Education students who work as instructors in the program, to arranging the logistics regarding space and resources, to collaborating with the upper administration to secure their support and assistance.

Yes, adding this program to my already overloaded plate has been a great deal of extra work for me. But it has also been an incredibly rewarding experience — to make something really unique and extraordinary happen at Boston Conservatory and to make a difference in the lives of so many young people and their families.

In 09-10, we hope to expand the program to 24 students, and we plan to include additional instruments/types of lessons (guitar, viola, cello, composition, and music theory) in our offerings.

AHEF handles the student intake portion of the program. If you know someone who may be interested in the program, or if you are interested, please see www.autismhighereducationfoundation.org for an application. You also can find more information about the program at www.bostonconservatory.edu – go to Music Education and scroll down for the link.