April 17-21
First, a comparison of music in the US and music in the UK at the high school level
One of the things I’ve noticed about the teachers here is that they’re extremely focused on helping all of their students passed the GCSE exams. I mean, obviously all teachers everywhere in the UK are focused on this, but at Broughton, it seemed to be very evident. I also think I was even more aware of this because student exams are happening very soon and these are the last couple of weeks to get everything up to par. The GCSE exams are more akin to a high school graduation exam in the subject area. When looking at music comparatively, in the US the music teacher’s ultimate goal is seemingly to get a superior rating at district and state contest. It just seems like this stress in the UK is on a different level. But I’m not sure if teachers in the US would agree. I’m sure US teachers feel a similar amount of stress when it comes to getting ready for district contest. Though I will say, it’s a great deal because you want your ensemble to sound good and hopefully you want your students to have a positive experience and learn something along the way. For this particular gig (a music teacher in the UK), if you don’t do well, students may not pass their exams and you might be in jeopardy in your job. I’m just not quite sure it’s that level of importance in the US. I’m not sure the stakes are that high is what I’m trying to say. And I don’t think it’s fair that teachers here have so much stress on them, especially music teachers. For music it seems especially difficult as opposed to something like a science or math because, in music, students have to turn in two compositions (in addition to a performance, as well as a written/listening test), and the teacher has to help them a tremendous amount as they work on their compositions. These are incredibly individualized, not like what you might do in math or science, and that is why I think it’s difficult. At the same time, some students sign up for Music GCSE because they don’t want to do anything really, and they think music will be easy. So that’s really tough when you have those students who don’t want to do anything and can’t be bothered to do anything. The teachers I’ve seen in all of the schools I’ve been at have had these students and they bend over backwards to help all of the students, especially these, but it stresses the teachers out when those students won’t do what they need to do. I mean, you can’t do the work for them! At the same time, there are students who do amazing work and it is a joy to work with them and coach them in creating their compositions. I have been amazed at some of the things I’ve seen them come up with and equally in awe of how the teachers are able to help them with their music theory, technology, and all sides of what they have to do for the GCSEs.
Broughton High School
The teachers
Last week I was with Stuart Shepard and Beth Peters at Broughton High School. Man, do they work hard! Stuart is there full-time and is the head of department. Beth is there three days a week and this is her first year. Stuart has been there for four years but has been a teacher for 16 years I believe. There are also several contract teachers who come in and teach private lessons. One teaches piano lessons and apparently does the choir at lunch time. Another guy teaches drum lessons. There is also a teacher who teaches woodwinds as well. So it’s nice that they have these teachers. This is similar to other schools I’ve been at as well.
Stuart is a technology whiz! What I learned from him is that before he was a music teacher he worked for Apple doing IT things. So he is very comfortable with music technology. One of the things I have kind of come to discover not just while being with him, but as I have been in multiple schools is that you have to take the technology glitches and teach it as part of what you’re doing. If you just hope the technology works, that’s not a good plan. But realizing and knowing and expecting that it will glitch, or there will be problems, that is part of having technology in the classroom. I don’t know why, but somehow, I realize that I haven’t always thought of it like that. I’ve always figured out a Plan B when technology fails, but I haven’t felt like it’s a strength of mine to face the problem head on and try to solve it myself. But essentially that is a big part of what all of these teachers do. They don’t get super frustrated when technology glitches. They simply try to fix it.
In addition, Stuart has been doing a lot with teacher training for a lot of his music teaching career. This came up a lot because, well, we talked about my job and that that is primarily what I have done at the university level. He told me how much he really enjoys doing it. He didn’t get to do it this year because he had too many things on his plate, and he and his Senior Leadership Team (their administration team - SLT) agreed that he not do it this year. This role is something Stuart is really passionate about and quite good at, as well as has lots of experience in. But I guess sometimes you have to do what SLT needs you to do. I hope he gets to do more of that in the future and less of something else he is less passionate about. But what I do know is that Stuart is a darn good teacher, and his SLT knows and acknowledges it. That is why they want him in the classroom as much as possible.
The students
Much like most of the other schools, their school is years 7 through 11. They do not have sixth form which is years 12 and 13. Their numbers for their music department here are quite similar to numbers at other schools in terms of how many students take music at the senior high level. He said they have about 900 students at the school. From what I can tell, there are two classes of year 10 students in with a total of about 18 students. Year 11, I think he has only one class of about 11 students. But the classes are much smaller than obviously in years 7-9. The middle school students have a similar disposition here as other schools, though they do seem to be a little bit more willing to try and to do the work than in some schools I’ve seen. It’s just a plight of being a middle school student to some degree – they are just not super motivated to do anything. The senior high students, though, from what we witnessed, don’t seem to have a sense of urgency about doing things. It’s like they’re all more willing to try than junior high, but they are not worried if they don’t get things finished, it seems. I don’t understand this lack of urgency, but it does seem to permeate through several of the schools I’ve been to. Again, I think this is not anything different than some of the lack of initiative I’ve seen in students in the US at that same level and even in the university level.
The curriculum
Stuart teaches full time, which includes all years 8-11. Beth teaches the year 7s and maybe also some year 8 and 9. Both of them utilize the Musical Futures Online (MFO) resources, but Stuart embodies the Musical Futures ethos in the way he approaches planning and teaching all of his classes. Beth is learning a lot from him by using MFO resources and it's great to see her jumping in and taking teaching tips from him.
I watched Beth teach a couple of year 7 classes. They were doing ukulele assessments, oddly in the computer lab. I think it had to do with the wifi being down so they were in there so that they could hook in to the land line internet. The way they did it was students have been practicing a song of their choice for several weeks now on uke from the Musical Futures Online website. Their assessment was in small groups (2-5) playing with the recording in front of the class. I like how they did it, very on the ground and not too difficult for the students. The goal is just to get them playing ukes with some degree of success but performing in front of their classmates. It wasn’t perfect but you could see that some students are really getting it and are pretty good at it. It makes me wonder if all of them will do the Music GCSE or at least be encouraged to choose it. But it was a pretty cool and low-key way to get them playing music on an instrument with peers, and to assess their progress! I loved watching that. And props to Beth for letting me sit in on her classes. As a first-year teacher, I would have been so nervous having someone like me in there. But my hat’s off to her for jumping in and learning all of this technology and new ways of doing music that she didn’t know before taking this job. I should say that she did do her teacher training with Stuart last year, so he taught her a lot of what they were doing then and she had a good idea about what goes on in this music program. But before that, she said she got a degree in classical vocal music, so she did not know any of this before she taught here. Again, props to her for learning. And also, I question what the universities are teaching students who study music (not just in the UK but also in the US). It’s a serious problem when they don’t know how to do anything with technology. But I digress.
Year 8 classes were starting a new unit in the computer program Ableton so it was cool to see how Stuart set that up. He has previously created a lot of tutorial videos for them to watch and do as they go. I know this had to have taken such a long time. And they were really well done. Stuart said he’s just learning Ableton so he’s staying one step ahead of the students. That’s interesting to hear that from him because to me, he knows what he’s doing! I walked around and helped students but mostly watched as he helped them to try to better understand the program. They also have Ableton midi pads in their lab; it looks a lot like Ladybridge’s computer labs. Again, Stuart said they got them donated from Ableton. Amazing. And it’s so interesting for me to see that he just had to learn Ableton and figure it out, so he is just doing it. He is more well versed in, I think Logic Pro, but that is not what they are using here. His attitude and enthusiasm is incredible for wanting to learn and be able to help his students. I can tell that he really enjoys working with the students. He just never stops during the school day!
I watched quite a few year 9 classes initially. They are working in small groups to recreate the song Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars. They did this in each class. Students chose their groups and their instruments and their goal is to remake that song and be able to perform it for the class next week. They have been doing this for several classes before Easter and they had two more classes on this unit. I loved this project and I got to work with the groups to help them get things together. It is amazing to me how they can all basically play their parts on their own but they can’t listen to and play with each other for the most part. This happened across groups and across classes. It’s a learning curve for them. But they were largely all working diligently to improve it. It was a big task for them and I was so happy to see this type of teaching happening.
Years 10 and 11
They were working in the computer lab largely, focusing on creating their own compositions toward the GCSE. Year 10 was in their first year of doing their compositions, but I didn’t realize that they could actually create their first composition in this year, and their second one in year 11. So it was cool to chat with them and coach them a bit to help them move forward in their compositions. I was kind of impressed with what many of them were creating. They were working a lot in Sibelius instead of Ableton, which surprised me. And because of that, their compositions actually sounded like what I would equate to middle school band music. I would actually love to have a middle school band perform some of these compositions!
Year 11 was also working in the computer lab on their own finalizing their compositions. Their big deadline (at least for them to turn things in to Stuart) was Friday, so they were spending all their time during class (and at break and lunch, and sometimes getting out of other classes) working on finalizing their compositions and getting everything officially submitted. I felt like Stuart was more stressed about it than they were. Obviously not all of them, because some of them had some great compositions and had submitted everything on time. But some of them, it was as if they didn’t believe that the deadline was happening and that they might fail if they didn’t get their stuff in! Again, I have seen this at other schools here and with students this age in the US, and Stuart and I talked about this. We do think that COVID was a factor in how they think about deadlines and getting things done – it just seems to have changed them in their ability to have a sense of urgency about things. So, Stuart kept helping them until the deadline. The official deadline is not for a while for Stuart to submit their things to the outside board, but he has planned for this type of thing to happen with the students, knowing that they would likely not get their stuff in on the date he set. I hope they get everything turned in by the time they need to! I was stressing for them too! But I have faith that they will get it done.
Large ensembles
Stuart said they used to have large numbers in their ensembles before COVID but now they are struggling to get the numbers back up. The band meets after school on Wednesdays from what I gathered. For their band, again, it is not like instrumentation of a school band in the US, which I love seeing! I’ve seen this at other schools, where any instruments are welcome. So here, they have a large contingent of students who are learning ukulele and are part of the band. In addition, there are also more traditional instruments. I saw a couple of trombones and trumpets, and I think a few flutes. There were several other instruments as well, but I did not get a chance to write it all down. I would say there were about 20 students at the rehearsal that week, and Stuart told me that lots of them were not there this week as well, which worried him. However, he said all of the Year 11s were not there today because they were working on finalizing their compositions for their GCSE submissions that were due the following Friday. The band is getting ready to go on tour in July to Austria. They are performing Pirates of the Caribbean, which I saw the music to at this rehearsal. I was not able to stay for the whole rehearsal, but I was glad to see kind of how he does it. Beth took the ukes in one room and Stuart had the winds in the other room. This was the first rehearsal back from Easter break so it took quite a while to get set up. They rehearse for one hour a week after school, which is not a lot of time! After rehearsal today though, Stuart felt better about their progress on their music.
I got to meet more teachers at this school than I have at any other school. Everyone has been so nice, including the administrators I met, the office staff, and the teachers in other departments that I got to eat lunch with. You won’t meet a nicer guy or better music teacher than Stuart. Yet again, I’ve had such a wonderful time at Broughton High and hanging out and getting to know Stuart and his fantastic music program.
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