The big music conference this weekend coupled with the downward spiral of Twitter has given me a bit of an identity crisis this weekend. I'm not an academic anymore: that was a big part of my life for more than 20 years. I still consider myself a scholar, but I scholar at a much more relaxed pace. I'm not sure SMT (or AMS or SEM) is a good fit for me. I'm a public school orchestra teacher, which is rewarding in a lot of ways, but it's not really who I am (yet?). (And I don't think I'm very good at it. Yet.) I do like playing the bass, and I'm ok at it--I get called regularly for gigs. No way that'll ever pay the bills tho. And I'm having fun noodling around on the violin. I like researching and writing, but I don't have the resources (time, library access, teaching subject-specific classes) that I did in the past. I feel like Twitter is my connection to the scholarly community and I'm not sure what'll happen if that disappears. (Life will go on--it's not that serious, for sure.)
I think pedagogy is what I'm about, and it has been for a while, but it's taken me a long time to figure that out. My current (book? series of articles?) project focuses on hip hop and antiracist pedagogy. I think, too, that's the reason the district hired me--they saw that potential in me. I'm teaching orchestra now, but give it a few years and I could be doing bigger things. I don't see myself leaving the classroom. I'm not interested in admin in any way, shape, or form--never have been.
Do I try to find a new social media home? TikTok seems like a good place to share pedagogical ideas. IG is fine for staying in touch with friends and family. FB--nah. Mastodon? Maybe. I have my blog. Maybe a Substack? Not sure anyone would subscribe/read it (I probably wouldn't).
I missed seeing all of you at the rich messiness of music conference, and I do enjoy time spent with you here on the bird app. I'll keep writing and teaching the kiddos, and tweeting until the bird app flies the coop.
BUT THEN I had an idea! Why not start K-12 interest groups in the major societies (AMS, SMT, and SEM)? Given how the “field” is going, more and more people are looking for work outside of academia, and teaching in the public (or private) primary/secondary schools offers a pretty appealing alternative. And I know there are quite a few people who got their start in K-12 and after a few years, earned a Ph.D. and went into academia. People on both sides of the equation have a lot to offer one another: certification processes, talk about standards, pedagogy, clock hours for attending SMT/AMS/SEM, CV reviews, and the like.
I know many of my theory colleagues grade the AP exam. But how active are we in actually developing the AP curriculum in such a way that it more accurately reflects the kinds of theory classes students will be taking in college? (Maybe we are and I just don’t know about it?). What about developing a more general “music studies” AP class that blends history, theory, and ethnomusicology?
Could theorists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists work together to improve the elementary music curriculum? The stuff I need to “un-teach” or re-teach my students is shocking, and my (albeit very brief) experience with our elementary general music curriculum revealed a lot of very serious problems with the materials. (I don’t think it was a case of “we need to simplify it for the tiny kiddos”—it was stuff that was just wrong.)
What about working on high school-appropriate versions of textbooks, or at least developing some concordances with state and national arts education standards? I’ve been toying with the idea of a second edition of Listening to Rap that is geared more toward high school students (see above; the present edition has been used successfully at the high-school level).
Could academics help K-12 break away from the band-orchestra-choir model that dominates secondary music education? Can we move beyond competitive models of musical performance?
Finally, many academics—myself included!—have a lot to learn about good teaching and pedagogy from their K-12 counterparts. Let’s share ideas!
At the end of the day, my high school students will be your college students—music majors or not—in the next few years. Why don’t we work together to smooth the transition from one realm of education to the next?