2. The Brindle and McAllister families would face large difficulties living the welfare payments these families receive would not meet their basic needs. The Essex County self-sufficiency wage for an adult plus a preschooler and school age child (as in the Brindle family) is $22.10 an hour without any support. For Atlantic County, which is slightly below the Essex County figure, even with all available support, the self sufficiency wage is still $9.73, something neither of these families would meet as the mothers are not working, and might find difficulty meeting even if they are working, as the minimum wage at the time of the report was only $7.15. The working class families, the Taylors, Drivers, and Yanellis, would still have trouble meeting the standard, as none of them make the Essex County self sufficiency wage or receive public support.
3. The two families on welfare, the Brindles and McAllisters, are both headed by single mothers. Both LSNJ reports state that poverty rates are higher for single mothers, and especially single mothers of color. Especially for Ms. Brindle, who has a preschool age child, the difficulties would be harder. The studies attributed lack of work to lack of access to child care during work hours, something Ms. Brindle would need for her youngest. As neither of Ms. McAllister’s children are working age, it would be difficult for her to support the family on her own. This could be compounded by her race, as the finding in both reports state that poverty is much higher among non-whites.
4. This information has limited use in the classroom. The most use would simply come from understanding the issues working class and poor families have. As an instrumental music educator, I might have to understand that some students would not be able to practice at home. This could be because of their living situation. For example, a student living in the projects or other apartment building might not be allowed to practice because the neighbors would complain. Or students might not want to take their instruments home, because they might not come back. In a family like the McAllisters, there would be a concern that the aunt might steal the instrument for money. So staying after school so that students who want to practice can would be an almost necessary thing, as would changing my assessments to reflect this reality. Another thing I might have to understand is how expensive playing an instrument can be. Many families simply would not be able to afford supplies such as reeds, practice pads, or valve oil. These are things I would have to put into my budget that educators in more affluent districts might not have to. From an pedagogical standpoint, however, I can’t see how this information might help me as a teacher. I feel that the way I teach my students would be same, but expectations and assessments might change. My goals for what I want the students to learn, however, would be the same.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Inquiry progress
We have been exploring the question "How does music shape students' identities and how does this musical identity shape their experience in music education?" To this end, we interviewed four students and the instrumental music instructor at East Side High School in Newark. And as we are coming at this from the point of view of music educators, we have tried to find existing literature on this subject within the music education community.
The first thing we've found is that there is an extreme lack of discussion and research on this subject within the music education community. There has been some research done on students' listening preferences, but none we could find that asks about the role music plays in students' lives. Discussion with teachers and academics has revealed mostly an assumption that music would be important to students in a high school music program. This is perhaps because of the fact that in the great majority of high schools in New Jersey, students entering high school have had instrumental music in elementary or middle school. This is not the case at East Side High, however, so we were interested in exploring how important music was to high school students just starting an instrument.
One thing that was common to all the students we interviewed was the large role of family music preferences on their own preferences. All the students expressed a generally positive view of the music they heard growing up. All of them also told us that music was listened to a great deal in there homes. They all used the phrase "all the time" to explain how much music was listened to in their homes. This phase was also used to explain how much they listened to music themselves.
Another thing we were surprised at was the variety of music students listened to. Based on discussions with the teacher, we assumed all of them would listen to hip-hop or rap the most. This was not the case. All the students listened to various Latin musics. One student liked classic hard rock and"screamo," a very hard style of rock music. Three of the four listed jazz as a music they listened to, and two of them listened to Western classical music.
Based on the limited research we were able to find, high school students tend to show stronger opinions about music than students in grades 4-8, which are the grades when most students begin playing instruments. All the students we interviewed expressed strong opinions about music, especially when talking about music they liked. However, they all said that playing an instrument made them like and appreciate music more. Moreover, playing an instrument fundamentally changed the way they thought about and listened to music. While they all stated that music was important to them before they started playing, all the students said that music became an even larger part of their life once they started playing. This was true whether they had been playing for four years, or two months.
Another thing that was striking was how they described listening to music. They all talked about it not just in terms of opinion or emotion, but analytically. They all talked about differences and similarities between different musicians or styles, and about how the music was put together. Listening wasn't just a passive activity, it was doing something. They all attributed this to playing an instrument, and said that they didn't think about music like that before they began playing. One student even said he doesn't listen to the lyrics anymore! So it was clear that playing an instrument had fundamentally changed these students' musical identities. While we went in asking how their identities affected their experience in music education, it became clear that music education changed their identities. I feel that this doesn't happen in such a striking way to students who begin playing earlier in life, or that it at least isn't as evident. This could be why the question rarely comes up within the music education community.
The first thing we've found is that there is an extreme lack of discussion and research on this subject within the music education community. There has been some research done on students' listening preferences, but none we could find that asks about the role music plays in students' lives. Discussion with teachers and academics has revealed mostly an assumption that music would be important to students in a high school music program. This is perhaps because of the fact that in the great majority of high schools in New Jersey, students entering high school have had instrumental music in elementary or middle school. This is not the case at East Side High, however, so we were interested in exploring how important music was to high school students just starting an instrument.
One thing that was common to all the students we interviewed was the large role of family music preferences on their own preferences. All the students expressed a generally positive view of the music they heard growing up. All of them also told us that music was listened to a great deal in there homes. They all used the phrase "all the time" to explain how much music was listened to in their homes. This phase was also used to explain how much they listened to music themselves.
Another thing we were surprised at was the variety of music students listened to. Based on discussions with the teacher, we assumed all of them would listen to hip-hop or rap the most. This was not the case. All the students listened to various Latin musics. One student liked classic hard rock and"screamo," a very hard style of rock music. Three of the four listed jazz as a music they listened to, and two of them listened to Western classical music.
Based on the limited research we were able to find, high school students tend to show stronger opinions about music than students in grades 4-8, which are the grades when most students begin playing instruments. All the students we interviewed expressed strong opinions about music, especially when talking about music they liked. However, they all said that playing an instrument made them like and appreciate music more. Moreover, playing an instrument fundamentally changed the way they thought about and listened to music. While they all stated that music was important to them before they started playing, all the students said that music became an even larger part of their life once they started playing. This was true whether they had been playing for four years, or two months.
Another thing that was striking was how they described listening to music. They all talked about it not just in terms of opinion or emotion, but analytically. They all talked about differences and similarities between different musicians or styles, and about how the music was put together. Listening wasn't just a passive activity, it was doing something. They all attributed this to playing an instrument, and said that they didn't think about music like that before they began playing. One student even said he doesn't listen to the lyrics anymore! So it was clear that playing an instrument had fundamentally changed these students' musical identities. While we went in asking how their identities affected their experience in music education, it became clear that music education changed their identities. I feel that this doesn't happen in such a striking way to students who begin playing earlier in life, or that it at least isn't as evident. This could be why the question rarely comes up within the music education community.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Inquiry Introduction
Music is an enormous social, cultural, and personal force in people’s lives. Often, the music people listen is tied to who they are and how they see themselves. In other words, music becomes a part of a person’s identity. The main purpose of this paper is to look specifically at how music shapes urban high school students’ identities, and how those musical identities shape the students’ experiences within a music education program. We wanted to know how much music students listened to, how they thought about it in relation to their lives, how they came to like the music they did, and how important music was to them. We viewed this question from the point of view of music educators and as such were interested not just in the cultural and societal implications of the question, but more specifically how musical identities play out within the framework of students learning to play instruments. We are interested in how musical identity shapes how students viewed their music education experience and if it affects their success or failure in learning an instrument. We are looking to see if an understanding of students’ musical identities can help music educators teach more effectively or if it changes the way an instructor teaches. We were curious about this because we have found a relative lack of discussion or research about this question within the music education community and literature.
We interviewed four students in the instrumental music program and the instrumental music teacher at East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey. The instrumental music program at East Side High and at most other high schools in Newark are unique within New Jersey in that most students entering the program have not had instrumental music instruction before coming to high school because of a lack of feeder music programs in the elementary and middle schools. Additionally, Newark has five magnet high schools, one of which is specifically tailored to arts education, and these schools tend to have a higher proportion of students that have had instrumental instruction before high school. This unique situation gave us an opportunity to see how beginning music education at the high school age was affected by students’ musical identities. This was particularly interesting because high school students tend to show stronger opinions about music than students in elementary or middle school (LeBlanc, Sims, Siivola, Obert, 1996), which led us to believe that music tends to be a larger part of their identity than it would be at an earlier age (this is a question beyond the reach of this project and one which we did not explore).
Cited works:
LeBlanc, A.; Sims, W. L., Siivola, C., and Obert, M. (1996). Music Style Preferences of Different Age Listeners. Journal of Research in Music Education 44 (1), 49-59. Accessed 03/29/2009 11:16 PM http://www.jstor.org/stable/3345413
We interviewed four students in the instrumental music program and the instrumental music teacher at East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey. The instrumental music program at East Side High and at most other high schools in Newark are unique within New Jersey in that most students entering the program have not had instrumental music instruction before coming to high school because of a lack of feeder music programs in the elementary and middle schools. Additionally, Newark has five magnet high schools, one of which is specifically tailored to arts education, and these schools tend to have a higher proportion of students that have had instrumental instruction before high school. This unique situation gave us an opportunity to see how beginning music education at the high school age was affected by students’ musical identities. This was particularly interesting because high school students tend to show stronger opinions about music than students in elementary or middle school (LeBlanc, Sims, Siivola, Obert, 1996), which led us to believe that music tends to be a larger part of their identity than it would be at an earlier age (this is a question beyond the reach of this project and one which we did not explore).
Cited works:
LeBlanc, A.; Sims, W. L., Siivola, C., and Obert, M. (1996). Music Style Preferences of Different Age Listeners. Journal of Research in Music Education 44 (1), 49-59. Accessed 03/29/2009 11:16 PM http://www.jstor.org/stable/3345413
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