inspiring media – Page 3 – Exciting Curiosity

The power of a musical experience – part 1

School is soon to start for another year, and one of the first activities I would often do with my new music classes is a piece called the ‘Doggy Walkin’ Blues’. It’s a fun 12 bar blues with a short, repetitive melody based on a pentatonic scale and once mastered (it takes about 30 seconds) leaves room for incredible improvisation by everyone involved. This structure provides a safe environment for kids just to let themselves go. A shared musical experience is a special thing – it brings people together in all sorts of ways. These experiences help to excite curiosity about music and sound in my learners and encourage confidence in their own abilities. Sometimes we are so into this piece that we keep it going for the whole class!

Music is motion – just keep going. Bobby McFerrin

Which brings me to this inspiring video which I saw a while ago and pops into my head every now and then. It’s Bobby McFerrin at the World Science Festival in 2009 playing around with the audience and a pentatonic scale. What’s curious about it is how do we know what to do? How did we know what note that third … Read more...

Evelyn Glennie on Being Human

Another run, another great episode of Jeremy Vine’s Being Human. This time solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie set out her thoughts on what it means to be human, and I was excited by her mention of curiosity:

Curiosity plays a large part in what defines us as human beings… This sense of curiosity is my main stay. I have found other ways to feel and sense sound using my body as a resonating chamber. I have achieved my hopes and dreams of becoming a musician due to my innate sense of curiosity. I’ve learned to hear by lip reading, and I’ve learned to use my body to feel sound, as if it were a giant ear.

It took a few hundred metres to get the image of running along the road dressed up as giant ear out of my mind, but how brilliant that Evelyn was curious enough to explore listening in other ways that we now can enjoy the amazing sounds she creates and performs to audiences all over the world, in whatever way we hear.

Whilst looking around Evelyn Glennie’s website I found her blog and a post entitled ‘Are you coming from the heart?‘ She … Read more...

Chomsky Style

Passing tests doesn’t begin to compare with searching and enquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. Noam Chomsky

I was struck by the above quote by Noam Chomsky which I read in a tweet by Brian Bailey (@EdTechEmpowers). Inspired to investigate further, I found the video ‘The Purpose of Education’ in which Chomsky talks about various topics around education including the purposes of an educational system, the impact of technology and thoughts on assessment. (The video was presented at the Learning without Frontiers conference in January 2012.)

The Daily Riff has a good breakdown of various aspects of the talk and you can watch it there too (click this link to watch on YouTube), but the parts that stuck out for me were:

That “passing tests doesn’t being to compare with searching and inquiring and pursuing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests. If that’s the kind of educational career that you are given the opportunity to pursue you will remember what you have discovered.”
That “teaching ought to inspire students to discover on their own, to challenge if they don’t agree, to look for alternatives

Messages That Matter

About a week ago I found sparkyteaching.com I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but I ended up looking at their Messages that Matter. These resources are truly inspirational. At first I was taken with poster #2, ‘Learn what counts’ and then saw #10, ‘Live Curiously’ and it felt like someone had put these together just for me! That feeling didn’t stop there – on their blog post ‘The Lost Art of Nurturing Sparks‘ (read it, it’s fab) I also found the same Picasso quote that hung on my classroom wall for years! Click here to read more on that one…

The Messages that Matter are all beautifully designed, wonderful pieces of encouragement and truth that should feature in every classroom and home. Maybe a bus stop campaign?! Each message encourages you to live the best life you can and do the best for every student (person!) you meet. It has certainly encouraged me to think about the ways in which we speak to each other as educators, students, parents and children alike.

It’s about seeing the little people who sit in front of us every day as individual characters not numbers or levels, recognising their sparks

Every kid needs a champion

I’d heard about Rita Pierson’s TED Talk, but I had never listened to it. I decided to watch it this morning and I am so glad I did. Rita reminds you in such a beautiful way that we all need relationships, and you may never know just how much that kid in your class needs you. Be their champion, they may not have another one.

I once taught a memorable class with a wonderful colleague and friend. The kids were hand picked for us (they hadn’t chosen to study music) and we were to teach them. We thought of a whole course for them, worked on it, sat them down, explained what we aimed to do, thought we were off to a promising start, asked if anyone had any questions and one student asked, “How am I here?” It was a good question, one we had not anticipated! Telling them they hadn’t been welcome anywhere else was not the answer, and so we stumbled around and came up with a few reasons. I don’t remember exactly, but I know it wasn’t as inspiring as Rita Pierson’s response to her class!

I told all my students, “You were chosen to be