Practice Makes Perfect and Stay Vulnerable

This week was very personal for me as I went on a discovery of music and looked back on some very special moments in my life. I came to many realizations and made several connections from music to teaching. I started the week thinking about our discussion topic of how music is compelling from start to finish. While discussing my group members and I discovered that many songs end the same way they started. When a song comes full circle it is comforting and gives the listener a sense of completion. I began to think about this idea of coming full circle in terms of teaching. As a teacher I essentially compose a lesson that is designed around a focus and that focus is discussed at the beginning and end of every lesson. Basic lesson plan structure implies that students will; recall previous information, be introduced to new information, have the new modeled to them, have independent practice, and will be assessed and reminded of the new information. For example, I typically start science lessons by posing a question like; why do puddles form on some surfaces and not others? Then I will share with them that different surfaces have different absorbencies. From there I will model the steps for the experiment they will be doing then the students experiment themselves. Finally we review what was first introduced at the beginning of the lesson and see what the students have learned. In so many ways teachers start and end in the same way. I try to plan my units in a similar way. I start with basic understandings that I want my students to learn and keep going back to them so I stay on track. This type of backwards planning is very useful in having an idea of the big picture and the key ideas of each unit.
After thinking about my lessons as songs coming full circle, I began to think about the actual discussions themselves. For weeks even months now we have been discussing the nature and design of many different art forms. Then we are asked to use new skills and new understandings from our discussions to create a project that displays our understanding of the nature and design of that particular art form. It dawned on me this week that our discussions are practices for our module narration. Just like teachers give daily practice and reviews before a test. In our case the discussions are our independent practice and the modules are our tests. It was a little more obvious to me that our discussions are used as practice this week because we talked about exactly what made songs compelling from start to finish. I also believe it is because in all the other modules I had some sort of prior knowledge about the subject, but this week although I listen to music I had no clue about the terminology or what made me like certain songs. Like I mentioned earlier it was really a self discovery week for me. I learned that I am attracted to songs with upbeat tempos and songs that have a certain consistent quality to them.
For this module the hardest part for me was choosing which song I was going to analyze. There are millions of songs to choose from and I considered many of them before choosing You’re So Cool by Hans Zimmer. I eventually picked this song because of its absence of lyrics. I also began to do some research on the song and was very interested in the composer Hans Zimmer. I found out that he has won several Oscars for his movie scores. One movie in particular The Lion King, he won the individual Oscar for best original score. He has teamed with other composers for other popular movie scores. Most people have probably heard his work and like me did not even know his name. After completing the research on Hans Zimmer I was reminded of how important it is to research topics that I teach. I not only want to give my students accurate information, but when I learn new things I get excited to teach them and I believe that enthusiasm is contagious.
I fell in love with this song as soon as I heard it and this project gave me the opportunity to understand why this song was so compelling to me. What I discovered is that the song reminds me of the simple and happy moments in life. After creating the narration for my project I was stuck as to what visual images I should use to go with the song. Since there are no lyrics, any appropriate images would work. I tried mountain scenes, but they did not match the overall feel of the song. I also tried using free images of other people’s meaningful moments, but since the song was so personal to me I choose to use photos of myself at important or significant times in my life over the past three years. I choose to be vulnerable and include pictures from my life to make my movie more compelling. I believe the pictures show meaningful moments in my life which is what the song reminds me of. My hope is that I do not seem conceded, but vulnerable and open. I believe the same is true of teaching. Sometimes teachers need to be vulnerable. They need to open up to their students in order to build a rapport and show them they are human too. Teachers also need to be vulnerable and ask for help when it is needed. Vulnerability is a quality that I am continuing to work on and develop my skills to connect with my students.