The week of May 2-5 I was at Larbert High School in Scotland with Andy McClean and the team of music teachers he works with. I think they have about 10 music teachers employed at this school (not all full-time), as well as contract teachers who come to give private lessons.
Larbert is, I believe, the second largest high school in Scotland and therefore it has lots and lots of programs and options for students. To be expected at a school like this, the music program is quite large. Andy primarily teaches lots of upper-level music technology courses, not music – those are two different tracks that students can choose at the upper level. There are other people who teach music specifically. From what I gathered, music tech courses focus on learning Digital Audio Workstations to create and perform music. And that is what students spend their upper-level years focusing on. Whereas the music option is more about learning hands-on music, perhaps more traditional notation, and more traditional music, which includes a component of more classical music and score analysis. However, this was a special week because all of the upper-level students were taking their end-of-year exams, and therefore they were not in regular classes. This week the only classes that were in session throughout the school were S1-S3; S4-S6 were taking exams. So it was quite an alternative schedule.
This is one of the main rooms where the testing was being held
Andy is a Musical Futures Technology Champion Teacher, because that is primarily his background. He has always done lots of technology, even though I asked him how he started and he said his first instrument was playing clarinet, though he also plays keyboards as a primary instrument. He’s also one of the senior members of the music staff and so a lot of the younger teachers ask him for help in learning how to do new programs and such. He’s a great mentor teacher to the new and trainee teachers, and I think he is someone they look to a lot of the time.
Left to right: Ross, Andy, Rachel, and me (you'll read about them later)
Part of Andy’s teaching load is to go to the feeder elementary schools a few times a week and teach music there. I got to observe him teach a couple of elementary music courses: the equivalent of grades two and five, I believe. He did a great job! Especially considering he has no training in how to teach elementary students, much less elementary music. That’s just not something that happens in Scottish or British schools. But Andy did lots of cool things with them. For grade 5, he taught them beginning improvisation where they were all on a keyboard around the room, and he played a backing track. They played around with three different notes. It was a great hands-on lesson where students were doing the whole time. These students are sharp, and I think they did a really good job with improvisation – taking risks and not being afraid to perform solo to the backing track. In the grade two class, he used the Musical Futures Online website to do a warm-up with them of clapping. And then he divided the class into groups of 4 or so and handed out glockenspiels to each group. Their goal was to learn how to play the notes A and C and to repeat back what he played on piano to them. It was a beginning lesson to all kinds of things like echo, call and response, improvisation. And again, they were all doing the whole time and they seemed into it. These were fun lessons to watch him teach! Even though he said this age group is not really in his wheelhouse, he is doing so many things well to help them learn, to keep them engaged, and to have them enjoy being in music class. So great!
This is the classroom at Kinnaird Primary School. It's in a modular trailer because the school has grown so much recently.
This is Andy's music tech classroom at the high school.
Since Andy was not teaching his regular courses this week, I was able to watch a few other music teachers teach their courses that fit in with the ethos of Musical Futures. I watched a music teacher named Rachel teach a class called the School of Pop and Rock, which is essentially like my rock band class, though it was a full group performance that they were working on of two different pop songs. It was super cool the watch that happen. They were all working on real instruments and she was simply coaching them. I talked with Rachel about her background and she said she’s classically trained in piano and violin. So when she came to teach here, (she’s been here for three years and this is her first school), she had to really learn how to teach like this because she had no idea how to do it, although she said that she does play in a band where they do use more playing by ear and things. But she said her university training gave her none of that – it was very formal music education and classical training. So that was a fascinating conversation. She had to learn how to just let them do their thing. And that’s very different than performing in an orchestra or playing the piano music of Mozart, which is what she was used to doing. It seems she has adapted pretty well. She seemed quite comfortable teaching these students like this, and they really responded well to her. I applaud her for being flexible in learning how to teach music in a way that is relevant to students and learning how to teach music that they are more used to working with. It was very motivating and gave me all the good feels to watch her teaching this class of, I think, S1 students. Sadly, I didn’t get any photos of that class.
I also watched a first-year teacher named Ross teach a music class to some S3 students (basically like year 9 students or 8th graders in the US). These are students who have chosen to be in music. But they were pretty well-behaved and seemed interested in what they were doing. He had them working on instruments on their own to create different chords for their own song. They got to choose between keyboard, ukulele, or guitar. Essentially, they were working on creating a chord progression they liked, based on several selections he gave them as options. The options came from the Musical Futures Online website. Ross actually used several different things from the MFO website that were so helpful and made the lesson run so smoothly. The thing I love that he used was a graphic of a collection of eggs where each egg had three different chord options on them that fit well together. Students were given this as a starting point to mess around with on their instruments. I’ve seen this used at Ladybridge as well – LOVE this as a starting point for creating your own chords/song. I will be using this. Oddly, the students were in Ross’s classroom for two periods, back-to-back, so that was a really long time to work on something like that, especially individually. But that’s what they did. However, he was pretty lax toward the end of the class period because they had worked pretty well the entire class. I walked around and listened to some students’ work and helped some of them. Some really got it and some really didn’t, but that’s to be expected. It was great to watch Ross do this MFO lesson. He told me he learned about it from Andy, because Andy is his official mentor as a new teacher, since Ross teaches both music and music tech courses. I love this because, not only is Ross able to use the MFO resources, but Andy is able to lead him in this ethos of teaching, and it is clear Ross gets it by the way that he let students work on their own and create their own thing – they had lots of autonomy, even as 14-year-olds.
This is one of Ross's classrooms.
This is another classroom he teaches in.
The last class I watched was Emma, who is a professional bagpipe player, teach the school of pipe and drum class. This was an S1 (year 7) class I think, but there were only a few students in there. It was fascinating! This had nothing to do with Musical Futures, but I wanted to see it because when else when I get to see someone teach bagpipes? There were some students in there with beginner bagpipes, and some students who had drum pads and they were learning different songs, kind of individually during class. She did have them do a music notation game to start class because the way they are learning is through traditional notation. We talked about that and she said that is not the most authentic way for them to learn because most bagpipers play by ear. But she says she does that because due to requirements within school, they have to learn to read five lines staff notation, so she teaches this way to reinforce that skill. It was interesting to look at the music to see how it’s notated for bagpipes. And it was really fun to see how those students are practicing away on their own. The beginner bagpipes are just a tube and they don’t have the bag on them because she said that is another level of learning so they’re not there yet. Emma is a cool person and very chill with the students!
All of the teachers have been super hospitable to me this week. They invited me in and made me feel welcome every day before school, and at lunch, and in the in between times when we saw each other. Just lovely people: fun, relaxed, and great music teachers. It seems to me that though they do work hard here, the stress level for what they are asked to do is lower than in the English system. I know they have lots to do, but they don’t seem as stressed out as some of the teachers that I’ve previously been with (through no fault of their own). It seems to be the system they work in, which is why so many English teachers are striking – the work load is unsustainable! I honestly think the Scottish system has it more figured out. By this, I mean, the teachers are not as overworked, and there seem to be more teachers in the schools to do the teaching and spread the workload. And also, specifically for music, I love it all of these teachers go to the elementary feeder schools and teach there as part of their load. That is so useful! Although Andy told me that that is not necessarily what happens at all Scottish schools; he said his headteacher believes in it and therefore prioritizes it. And the teachers don’t get teacher training for teaching elementary music. But at least the students get an hour of music each week at the primary level. So that’s a big step up from not having any music at all, which seems to happen in a lot of UK schools (I think both in England and Scotland).
Anyway, I can’t say enough wonderful things about the music staff at Larbert. I completely enjoyed my time there, as I have it every single school I’ve been to. This experience from January until now has been incredible. This was my last school, so this wraps up my official observations with Musical Futures Champion Teachers!
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