Our questions for Rob:#Q1: What resources do you wish you had in school?
#Q2: What do you think teachers can do to help students with disabilities thrive in music class? #Q3: When you are performing with sighted musicians, how do you share musical ideas with them (ie, cutoffs, vamps, etc)? References:Baldwin, A. (2017). Community music-making for
everyone via performing ensembles: here are five groups that make an inclusive, musical difference in their communities.(Lectern). Teaching Music, 24(3). Treweek, C., Wood, C., Martin, J., & Freeth, M. (2019). Autistic people’s perspectives on stereotypes: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Autism, 23(3), 759–769. |
Rob Castrogiovanni- July 8thRob is a freelance singer, songwriter, guitarist, and keyboardist who works in the London, Ontario area. He is also the founder and member of Prancerthe band. Rob is blind and spoke to our class about being a musician with different abilities and his experience learning music inside and outside of the classroom.
Readings and Questions (July 7th/8th)#1: In community music-making for everyone via ensemble, the author puts the music directors in the center of decision making, by putting too much weight, in the article’s considerations part. So, doesn't it sound like a managerial approach that will lead to a cooperative of initialized thinking itself?
#2: How do you justify this type of specialized programming when musical programs in Ontario are being cut? #3: In the same community music article the author sounds like it is a very easy job to create this kind of community music school, so, how one might overcome those unpredicted and, at the first glance, easy obstacles, which might be the issue when it comes to creating a new space such as community music-making school, which might become another stereotype in the Institution field? #4: How can we as music educators make the students be aware of the stereotypes conveyed by the media? |
Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell- July 9thDr. Mitchell is a registered psychotherapist and accredited music therapist. She received her PhD in Music Education at Western University in 2019 and her Master of Music Therapy from Laurier in 2007. She has been the Music Therapist in Residence at Laurier University since 2017. She spoke to our class regarding research and the clinical practice of music therapy with children and youth.
https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-music/faculty-profiles/elizabeth-mitchell/index.html References:Ansdell, G. (2002). Community Music Therapy & The
Winds of Change. Voices, 2(2), np. https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v2i2.83 Mitchell, E. (2019). Community Music Therapy and Participatory Performance. Voices, 19(1). https://doi.org/10.15845/voices.v19i1.2701 |
Our questions for Dr. Mitchell:#Q1: How do you see community music relating to personal identity?
#Q2: Are CM and CMT becoming an inevitable playing role of Identity Politics on an individualistic and societal level in the field of Music Education. #Q3: What changes could be made to the Ontario Curriculum in order to foster a greater sense of individuality in music, particularly by incorporating elements of community music? #Q4: With how music therapy uses a prescribed intent for what the needs of the client are, how do you negotiate and create the skills and experiences that align with the client’s musical goals? |
Erik Mandawe- Postponed (Will do a video with CathyErik Mandawe, who also goes by his Cree name Piyesiwak, is a musician, anthropologist, and medical scholar. Mandawe is a graduate of Western’s Don Wright Faculty of Music and was a Liaison/Admissions Coordinator in Indigenous Services at Western. In 2017, Erik was named the first Artist in Residence by the London Arts Council, who describes his artistic practice as being informed by his passion for communication, worldview, travel, and land-based teachings. He spoke to our class about land based teachings in music education.
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Dr. Donald DeVito- July 13thDeVito is a music educator at the Rawlings Elem. Center for Fine Arts. From 2001 to 2018 he was the music director and special education teacher at the Sidney Lanier Center, a public school in Gainesville, Florida, for students with disabilities between 3 and 22. The music program is global in scope and is linked on Skype with universities and music programs internationally through research, cooperative music making, and professional music education organizations. He spoke to our class about culturally responsive research projects in the music classroom.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-devito-16115385 References:DeVito, D., Telles, T., & Hidalgo, B. (2020). Culturally Responsive
Research Projects in a Title I Elementary Center for Fine Arts. Visions of Research in Music Education, 35. http://www- usr. rider.edu/~vrme/v35n1/visions/DeVito%20Telles%20and %20Smith_Culturally%20Responsive%20Research.pdf |
Our questions for Dr. DeVito:#Q1: Where does the boundary lie between cultural appropriation and culturally responsive teaching? We’ve invited experts in, does that mean that practicing their music is now an acceptable practice even though we are not representative of the group?
#Q2: What do we consider an appropriate, positive, and genuine cultural musical experience, without forcing our own experiences on the students? #Q3: How are you being culturally responsive to the students' and parents' understanding of music? What if some families believe that learning other music is against their own religious understanding. |
Our questions for Dr. Bradley:#Q1: By implementation of "Decolonizing Philosophy" and "Epistemological Curiosity" practices and thinking according to the status quo can be changed and challenged. However, seeing slightly changing environments in discourses and trajectories in higher music education, particularly, Western and Post-soviet countries the changes are not present as it might be present according to Decolonization scholarship in the past 40 years. So, does it mean that this reaching state of 'colonization free' (globalization) will be present sometimes, in the future, or music education will never win the battle of coloniality and consumerism and commodification ideologies (for equity to all)?
#Q2: Is there a danger that the concept of Decolonization will become another stereotype or tool for ideologies (Post-liberalism, Post-democracy, Post-socialism, etc,) to reframe and to use for their own power/knowledge relationships and their tactics in higher institutions? #Q3: If we agree that school doesn’t prepare you for life, but rather school is life, how do you think we as teachers need to address this new societal process of acknowledging different ways of thinking within an institutionalized setting. How do we organize our lives around this thinking? How do we address those who are hesitant to leave their areas of comfortability as a teacher in a position of privilege? |
Dr. Deborah Bradley- July 15thDr. Deborah Bradley was Assistant Professor of Music Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She retired from UW-Madison in 2010, and taught in Music Education at the University of Toronto Faculty of Music, and in the Master's of Sacred Music program, from 2010-2014. She previously taught at U of T from 1997-2005. As a teacher educator and choral musician (Founder of the Mississauga Festival Youth Choir), she focuses both teaching and research in the areas of World Music Education (Choral and General Music), and Anti-Racism Education. She spoke to our class about decolonizing music education philosophies.
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/deb-bradley-16aab0b7 References:Bradley, D. (2012). Good for What, Good for Whom?:
Decolonizing Music Education Philosophies. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education. |
Cathy BenedictCathy Benedict joined the music education faculty at Western University, starting July 2015 as faculty and Director of Research. She has taught undergraduate and graduate classes such as Elementary Pedagogy, Orff, Curriculum Design, Critical Readings in Music Education and Music Education and Special Needs Students. She has presented multiple workshops to both national and international audiences on topics as varied as pedagogy and pride, thinking transitions rather than classroom management, the interrogation of classroom rules as policy, the social contract and utopian visions, and music in the elementary classroom and integrated practices. Her scholarly interests lay in facilitating music education environments in which students take on the perspective of a justice-oriented citizen, to this end her research agenda focuses on the processes of education and the ways in which teachers and students interrogate taken-for-granted, normative practices.
https://music.uwo.ca/faculty/bios/cathy-benedict.html References:Benedict, C (forthcoming Jan. 2021). Educating for Intelligent
Belief and Unbelief. In C. Benedict, Music and Social Justice: A Guide for Elementary Educators. New York: Oxford University Press |
Our Questions for Dr. Benedict:Q1: How does this mindset change if we acknowledge that it may not be fear of an uproar, but rather the fear of making students representative of their religion. Eg. The 'Token muslim' to stand and account for all muslims and their perspective. Could the fear be less routed in controversy and talking about taboo topics and more in not wanting to speak to something you yourself have not practiced or understand? The article states that “it would be morally reprehensible not to discuss “controversial moral issues” and that we “must be prepared” to do so (p. 123), but how are we expected to prepare it in a public school setting? We’re missing training/professional/concrete knowledge development to feel secure in this.
Q2: Within a public school context: One of the quote from the chapter states “I purposefully remarked, “Oh, this sounds similar to various religious parables and creation stories I have read.” On another occasion I was addressing how to take notes in such a way that helps situate oneself reflexively and told the class, “I do this all of the time. If I find myself in a house of worship, for instance, I am the kind of person who takes notes on the back of the ‘program’ so that I can continue to think about issues that have been raised.”How does this mindset about openly commenting on how you see experiences reflected in religious texts affect students who are not religious? Do you think that you receive the opposite result where students feel like they are not included or are the ‘token atheist’ who needs to justify their own non-religious beliefs? This could be especially stifling for a student to confront this to a person of power (teacher) who has openly spoken of religion to the class. Q3: In what capacity does religious liberty actually exist because to include everyone you need to exclude practices? There is inclusion but it’s within the framework of exclusion as well. |