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early childhood education


Music Teaching for a Lifetime Rick Townsend, WMEA State Chair, Early Childhood Education


Why do we teach music? Why do you teach music? What keeps us in it when the storms rage? I remember reading, several years ago, that the average du- ration of a school music teacher’s ca-


reer was six years (about the same as the average NFL career). The number startled me because, as a young teacher, I person- ally lasted exactly six years before leaving the profession. So what brought me back? And what keeps us all in it – especially today? In short, how do we advocate to ourselves?


Advocacy: Extra-Musical Approaches Our minds immediately begin to recall our long list of advocacy positions. Academic: Improvements in language and reasoning, spatial intelligence, creative thinking, problem solving... Personal: Developing understanding and empathy for other social groups and cultures, a love for excellence, project development and goal achievement skills and understanding of standards-based learning… Social: Teamwork, an outlet for self- expression, appropriate risk taking and dealing with success and failure… Add to these all the physical development outcomes, community benefits, special- needs strategies and you have a century- old advocacy tradition that seems to have stood the test of time. Or has it?


Practical Pointers 20


Advocacy: Aesthetic Education Takes Its Best Shot At the end of the day, our administrators instinctively knew that all these outcomes could be achieved quite nicely, thank you, without music classes. It is aesthetic education, we learned, that transforms lives in ways that cannot be achieved elsewhere in the curriculum. Ultimately, we decided, we must sensitize our people to the richness of artistic pursuits, to the depth of subtly articulated meaning, to the imperatives of rich truths that are not merely articulated nor, especially, counted. This is what sets us apart.


But defining aesthetic outcomes can be tricky business. Discussions about aesthet- ics are historically filled with digressions into so many broadly related topics that even music professionals throw up their hands in frustration when asked to define aesthetic in any meaningful way. Try to raise the point in curriculum meetings, and our administrators are often reduced to head scratching by the time they consider their budgets behind closed doors. And why wouldn’t they? We are the experts, and even we barely address the topic be- fore we reach graduate school.


Purpose: The Gift of a Crisis


Somehow we learned, falsely, that the sheer power of our logic would compel others to join our cause, winning the daily battles for a stronger place at the table. But even though we may not be able to expect our multiple points of advocacy to win every day, we fight a winning battle because of something very special that we bring to the table – something that


may never be packaged nor promoted as effectively as we wish, because it defies packaging, and efforts to promote are intrinsically reductive.


Suddenly, our century-long identity de- liberations are being interrupted. Pulled a Wisconsin has entered the lexicon. Why does it so often require a crisis to sharpen our senses? While some long-time music teachers are choosing to leave the profes- sion in frustration, and others have been scheduled out of their positions, you have prevailed. I refuse to believe that your du- rability is primarily a function of personal finances. Every good teacher I know is capable of making a good living outside of education. I believe that you are still here because you are drawn to a purpose that you know is more important than you or I. And it is this great purpose that defines the true torch that we will eventually pass on to others.


Despite the turmoil that surrounds us – no, because of the turmoil that surrounds us, we can now more effectively than ever reflect on our reasons for continuing to do what we do – music for our lifetime. Hopelessness and frustration is not our song – and most importantly, will never be the song that we teach our children.


So when the fickle news cycles tire of the story, when the vain residue has been trimmed from the conversations, and when all the heated rhetoric and talking points have been exhausted. When the simple poetry of rudimental truth shows in bold relief against a clear backdrop of reason and understanding – like golden apples on a picture of silver, as the proverb says.


~ Rick Townsend


We are seldom wrong when first assuming that a person, deep down, wants to do the right thing.


September 2011


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