Hi. My name is Darrin Thornton, and I'm an assistant professor of music
at the Penn State School of Music. Today I'd like to talk to you about
lifelong musical learning, and how we as teachers can teach toward
that concept of lifelong music learning. I'd
first like to start by setting the stage for lifelong learning by starting
with our heroes, who are the adults, who have continued
to be engaged musically. Characteristics of adults who are musically
engaged generally involve this notion that music is a natural part
of life. It has been since the beginning of ancient human time.
More relevantly now, the choice
in adults' busy lives to be engaged in things
with discretional time is a very important thing, and those who choose to
do musical things with that time are making very specific choices
for very specific reasons. Adults tend to engage in music in one of
two ways. First, what I call direct K-12
extensions of musical engagement, like band, choir,
and orchestra. Then there are the many indirect K-12 extensions of
music that adults tend to engage with that may not have been
taught to them directly in their music training K-12, but they're using
those skills now in order to engage in music the
way they want to. When adults are asked why they engage in music,
many of them answer in these following ways. The first category
is quality of life issues. "It helps me breathe
better." "It helps me feel alive." "It helps me engage with others around
me." "It gives me a sense of community." There's a sense of
meaningful purpose and fulfillment in their engagement that they talk about.
It provides a connection, again, to their humanity as another category.
A large one is identity, particularly with people in the retirement
phase of their lifespan, where they have been known as
an accountant or known as a doctor and now they're retired, and this musical
engagement gives them an identity and a group of people with which to identify.
So how musically engaged adults continue to learn is a question
that we as teachers in K-12 settings
should consider, because adults tend to continue their learning
musically in formal settings, self-directed settings,
and community settings, much like many of our students
in K-12 settings. They have the formal settings with us,
and maybe even in a church organization or other formal groups. They have
many self-directed settings, especially if you consider listening to be
an engaged musical activities, and then there's the many community
settings that students are engaged in as well. This really does parallel what
adult learners and engagers are doing as well. We need to make
those lines a little bit more apparent. So I asked this question:
After pondering
that question, I'd like you to take a moment to work through this activity
in a small group. So just list four to five
examples of what you consider to be musical life skills that you would like
all of your students to know before they left your charge and went out into the world.
Then share one or two of your group's findings with the larger
group. Hold onto those because we're going to use them
later in the exercise. This quote by Mantie
and Tucker depicts a perceived gap between what students
consider to be real life music and the music
that they study in school. This depiction of that gap
again paints the picture of the void that we need to close in regard
to the relationship of in-school music and
out-of-school music as we move forward and toward
the concept of teaching toward lifelong musical learning.
I propose action that builds
musical life skills into our curriculum as teachers
as well as our assessment processors. Teaching toward
lifelong music engagement has three main components that I think are important.
First, you need to encourage a value for lifelong music
engagement. You do this by preparing learning
experiences, which contain personal desire, on the part of your
students and interest - your students' interest. You also give students the
opportunities to acquire this knowledge and those skills
that will enable them to participate successfully in a variety of
meaningful musical experiences in their lives now as well
as in their lives as adults. The second major
component of teaching towards lifelong engagement is
focusing on the process. Processes within
music making, including listening, provide
rich opportunity for you to illustrate the transfer
between learning in one setting and learning in another setting.
The second component of teaching toward lifelong music engagement
is a focus on the process of musical
engagement. Processes within music making, including listening,
provide opportunity for us to illustrate the transfer
between learning in various settings, so in-school versus
real life. We're doing the same musical skills in
both and you're the same person, and what you're doing here is related to what you're doing there.
As you plan music experiences that allow for this
transfer to be apparent, you want to do so in
many music making opportunities, both in school and out of school.
Focusing on this process
allows educators to readily accommodate the music in the
real world into their K-12 illustrations
examples and even repertoire from time to time.
What is learned and owned in this
process orientation by the students sticks with them longer as
learning that they remember and feel capable of doing, which transfers
into adult life. The most important point within this thread is
the fact that we as teachers need to more readily make these
lines between what we're doing in school and what happens in real life music
much more apparent. So draw bold lines
in unabashed ways. With your students,
their parents, your community, your senators, and so on
and so forth. This quote by Jellison illustrates her thinking relative to
how we as teachers should think of our students now
as we're preparing them for the future. At this point, I'd like to return
to those musical life skills that you identified earlier.
Have you worked through this exercise of drawing direct connections
for music engagement and life from the activities that you've identified?
Also, discuss ways that you are, or hope to as a
teacher, planning for these connections and making them transparent to
students in the community. Then you can report out in the large group.
I hope that you found that exercise to be illuminating
and I'd like to leave you with this diagram of teaching
toward lifelong music education, which has, on the left side,
both in school experiences plus out of school experiences for the
student right now equals in life experiences that promote
lifelong engagement. So if you get them to understand the connection
now and realize that they're already being
musical in a real life way, that hopefully that will transfer
to their thinking as adults when they consider music as a way 120 00:08:26,100 --> 00:08:19,779 of enjoying their life more fully. Thank you.