Our First Video Conference

I love teaching students how to play music. My classes often discuss how music tends to reflect the joys, pains, and values of people. Today we had an amazing opportunity to explore the history behind some pieces that we are playing and made some connections to our music of today. My 8th Grade band took a day away from the instruments and did a video conference with the National Museum of African America History and Culture, NMAAHC  This museum is part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

We had a wonderful curator from the museum, Heather Buchanan, who took use though several artifacts. The name of the exhibit was "Living Objects" and the premise was that objects tell a story. We spent time looking at objects from slavery. To help facilitate the video conference, students took actually quotes from January 1, 1863, the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and wrote first person letters using one of the quotes. They wrote to President Lincoln or a fictitious relative or friend. This was meant to allow students to get into the mindset of the times. During the presentation they were asked by the presenter to explain how their person might feel in several scenarios, according the objects shown. One such example was a picture of slave shackles. Using a ruler students determined that the size of the shackles meant that they must have been used for a woman or child. Students then were asked more higher order thinking questions like "how would wearing the shackles make the slaves feel". The experience, exposing my kids to an expert on that time period, was great. Students were very interactive and were anxious to answer. The technology does what technology does...We had two drops, but we were able to get back on quickly. I was really excited to also experiment with students tweeting about the experience using #gcsk12 and #ycbandvidconf

My hope is that after having our video conference, students have more a connection with some of the music we're doing. Understanding the history brings a wholeness to the music. Students need to understand that humanity is a part of creating art, and human experience is not limited to the "pretty" stuff. When we play the blues I want students to understand where that feeling came from, or when we play a negro spiritual like Wade in the Water, I want students to understand, to some degree, the pain and hope in the lyric along with the ingenious coded message.

We are learning to make connections across all areas in the York Chester Band, and our first video conference is another step in achieving that goal.

Digital Learning Day

Digital Learning was such a neat day in the York Chester Middle School Band  We started out the day with a pic of a runaway slave collar on the Smartboard screen. Students were asked "In one word, how does this image make you feel?".

In order to collect student responses I created a Padlet Board for my classes, and then made a QR code for the Padlet URL. My students used a QR code reader to get to the Padlet page. We then collected the "One Word" responses from all of the students in the class. It was fascinating seeing what my students wrote. I then probed them further and had them explain why they chose the word that they did. I am constantly trying to get my students to outwardly express what's going on internally and this exercise seemed to recall get them to open up.

Empathy is sometimes difficult for our students, but one of the things that we discovered through our conversations is that when we can put ourselves in the place of others we stand a better chance of treating them the way we would want to be treated, but when we create a culture of "them versus us" it is quite easy to do the most inhumane things to other human beings. 

It was amazing how the use of technology helped facilitate this dialogue, which led us into the piece of music that we are preparing to perform, a negro spiritual. Digital Learning Day in the York Chester Middle School Band led us down wonderful road of discovery and we are continuing to use technology to facilitate the learning and innovate how we teach our students.