The Beers' Readings, chapters 1 and 10, addressed academic and adolescent literacy. These chapters covered a variety of details surrounding these specific topics, such as the achievement gap and how to close it, the different kinds of literacy that different eras have demanded from school children, the type of literacy that the 21st century demands, and the eight specific types of skills that children need to learn and embody in order to thrive in the 21st century. In the following paragraphs I will discuss some significant points that were made in the text, my response to those different points, as well as how they can be applied to my specific classroom.
At the beginning of chapter 1, Beers was discussing the academic achievement gap and how the No Child Left Behind legislation was seeking to close it. However, he stated that the NCLB act essentially failed to address other societal gaps that underlie this academic achievement gap. This legislation is failing to recognize the health care gap, the technology gap, and the gaps that exist between low and high income families and schools, just to name a few. As a future music educator, I need to keep these gaps in mind as I enter my future classrooms. There are many different classrooms I could end up teaching, but for many of them, student progress will be measured based upon musical performance. If a child is not able to play or sing will, I should consider the different reasons why this might be. Perhaps they do not have a safe space to practice at home. They may not have access to YouTube that the other students are using to progress outside of class. Or, tragic as it may be, perhaps the are simply losing motivation because they know they will not be in band the coming year, due to their instrument's rent price being too much for their parents to afford. When I find that a student is not able to sing or play as well as the other students, I should first look to their background, upbringing, and home life to detect whether their low achievement is actually a result of limited technology, low income, etc.
Later in chapter 1, Beers tells the story of a boy named Collin. This student was failing his English class, but he had a blog where he addressed environmental issues. After taking a look at his blog, Beers concluded that Collin was in fact very smart, he just was not interested in the material he was learning in his English class. Instead of writing a style analysis on a poem, he would much rather keep a blog and write about issues that were near and dear to his heart. Beers states, "In this school, Collin's passion for the environment would be his entrée into all sorts of learning, and Collin's literacy would be celebrated, not hidden underground". "This school" that Beers talks about is a hypothetical school where children are seen and heard for their individual voices, and where learning is centered around the students' individual interests and gifts.
This is another idea I plan to keep in mind as I step into my music classrooms. An advantage to teaching music is that there is a wide array of genres and styles at our fingertips. With today's technology, music educators have so many resources available to teach almost an genre, era, etc. One thing I will need to keep in mind is that kids have grown up in different musical situations, some not even really being introduced to music. For example, I plan to teach violin privately. It is not fair for me to expect all of my students to grow and thrive through classical training. Classical training does hold a variety of benefits concerning technique, but if one of my students has a heart for worship music, then I should strive to incorporate learning worship songs into my curriculum as well. As I teach a variety of students, I should take advantage of the multitude of music available and teach students based upon what kind of music they are interested in. Of course, this will be more of a challenge in a classroom setting than in a private lesson, but the challenge of figuring out how to incorporate personal musical interests will be one worth working through.
Chapter 10 specifically defines and discusses literacy. Beers defines literacy as being able to navigate through people's values in the marketplace. Essentially, literacy is the ability to effectively thrive and navigate through the challenges and situations unique to adult life in the 21st century. Beers lists three distinct types of learning skills, those being information and communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills. With these developed skills, children will be able to succeed in today's culture. The job of teachers is to figure out how to teach these skills through their subject-specific curriculum.
Beers then goes on to discuss Tom Friedman's idea of a "Flat World" and the different skills needed to survive and thrive in it. A "flat world" is a competitive world in which those with the best skills will obtain work. Friedman lists eight different roles that students need to be able to take on to live effectively in today's day and age - the "flat world". He states that students need to be good collaborators and orchestrators, synthesizers, explainers, leverages, adapters, green people, personalizers, and localizers.
One specific role that I considered to be of use specifically in the music world was the adapter. Beers says, "companies want one person who can do three things well because they cannot afford to hire three people who can do one thing well". I have found this to be very true in my life. As I have navigated my way through being a musician and have tried to find paying work as one, I can attest that the more skills you have, the more likely you are to find a paying job as a musician. I already understand that it will be incredibly important to teach my students not only how to play one instrument or sing/play one style of music, but to also teach them how to read notes, play and sing a variety of genres, improvise, compose music, and those are just skimming the surface of the vast array of skills a musician can have. As I train students in music, some students will discover that they want to pursue music with their life. That discovery carries with it the responsibility to understand everything there is to know about music, and my diversified curriculum can help with that.
Overall, the Beers readings helped me to understand on a deeper level how important communication, interpersonal, and other types of skills are in the 21st century, along with how important it is for educators to figure out how to teach those skills through their curriculum. From taking my students to a nursing home to interact and perform for the residents, to pairing them up with different classmates to learn a song, to challenging them to learn a new genre of song they have never learned before, there are so many creative and stimulating ways that I can round my students in both musical knowledge and knowledge that will help them to thrive in this "flat world".
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