feature Keeping My Windshield Clean Through
Affective Teaching Glenn Nielsen, McFarland
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In a recent Funky Winkerbean comic strip, retired band director Harry S. Dinkle does a good job of summing up the challenges of being an “affective” teacher when he says, “You have to make sure that your baton movement is clear and precise, otherwise you’re like wipers on a muddy windshield – just smearing the mess from side to side.” And we all know what that’s like: The rehearsal gets bogged down. The storm is upon us. What once seemed like clear instructional pathways becomes slippery and treacherous. The elements of music get muddied. Sometimes lightening and thunder result! Often the whole mess just keeps getting smeared from side to side. Without advanced planning and direction, without clear intention towards being affective, rehearsals may get stuck and worse yet, the intrinsic substance of music education may ultimately be lost. It’s up to the director to find a way to bring light out of darkness. I would like to share how I tried throughout my teaching career to keep my windshield clean.
Even though I retired from public school teaching 14 years ago, I am still work- ing with different performing groups to keep the metaphorical windshield of my rehearsals from smearing.
Soon upon retiring, I began to direct the Madison New Horizon band program. This international organization started 25 years ago with the intention of giving older adults an opportunity to make music. During the summer months, I also direct the McFarland Community Band, a group whose age span extends from teens to elders. My musical journey has involved all age groups and abilities. However, the teaching objectives remain the same: get past the notes and rhythms and concentrate on the affective, expressive quality of music – that nebulous thing that takes us out of ourselves and helps us experience a world far different from our own.
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The start of being an affective teacher began for me, as it does for many people, way before my teaching career. I played clarinet at Luther College and went on to earn my masters in performance at the University of Idaho. Playing under Weston Noble in the Luther College Concert Band was, perhaps, the emotional epitome of my life. As I played with the Luther band, I often lost the sense of myself and felt at one with the music. Weston opened for me what he called, “the special world.” That world is a moment of wholeness, where everything we are striving for comes to- gether for a brief moment. Everyone reacts to this differently. It might be chills, goose bumps, tears, an inward glow or a feeling of warmth.
I had one such moment – one I will never forget – a number of years ago when I attended the MENC National Conference in Kansas City. The highlight of that conference was a concert featuring the Eastman Wind Ensemble and the Luther College Nordic Choir. Both groups had unbelievable technique and gave stellar performances, but the Luther Choir trans- ported the audience to a higher emotional level, one that opened onto Noble’s “spe- cial world” – a place where body, mind and spirit were completely entwined and totally engaged. Captivated at the end of a particularly emotional piece, the audience sat transfixed in total silence until Nobel made the smallest movement, dropped his hands and stepped from the podium.
The more affective spiritual experiences you have as a young musician, the better you will be able to transfer that emotion to your teaching in later years. To do this, it helps to be a proficient musician, not only in technique and tone, but also in expres- siveness. If you haven’t experienced this “oneness with the music” in your playing, it may be difficult to pass it along to stu- dents. I have witnessed this with student
“…get past the notes and rhythms and concentrate on the affective, expressive quality of music…”
teachers. While at McFarland I worked with over 46 student teachers during my 32 years of teaching. Those who did not play their instruments with a high degree of musicianship had a difficult time get- ting past the notes and rhythms and would struggle being an affective teacher. That is not to say that they couldn’t be a good teacher, but it may have been harder for them to become an expressive, emotional teacher.
My challenges in becoming an affective middle school band director were many. How do I get my students to experience that emotional high that I have expe- rienced? As in the Funky Winkerbean cartoon, I had to realize the obstacles that stood in my way: classroom management, lesson plans, dealing with parents and ad- ministration, communication skills, being proactive not reactive and studying scores were some of those areas that I needed to work on. I realized that I needed to be very organized and well prepared for my rehearsals. Only after my band had learned the notes and rhythms could I begin to be an affective teacher.
At times I thought that this wouldn’t be possible with middle school musicians. Maybe I should be looking to work with a high school band. But I really enjoyed working with middle school students. Their energy and enthusiasm, though at times challenging, was refreshing. I soon
April 2017
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