Music That "Counts" Sara Munson Christopher Columbus Middle School Clifton, NJ
It’s customary for music educators to consider the ways we can improve ourselves, our best practices, as well as who we are as human beings. It’s convenient to have summer “vacations,” and winter break to ponder how we can refine our craft, especially since, at the time of writing, the NJMEA convention is only a little over a month away. However, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, every day brings a new pseudo “new year resolution” that makes teaching feel like a never-ending cycle of new beginnings. In all honesty, this constant cycle of change in how we teach is a good thing. Personally, I constantly re-evaluate my best practices in order to enrich not only my student’s musical experiences, but social and emotional experiences in the classroom. It’s what they need, especially right now. But as it turned out this past year, my students needed to do some re-evaluating. This in turn gave me a pseudo “new year’s resolution” a little bit early. For my student’s first assignment in music class each September, I like to have them come up with three songs that “lived rent free”; better known as “it got stuck in their head sand they could not stop thinking about it” over summer break. By doing this, I am able to learn my students’ musical preferences as well as connect with them on a personal level; to consider whether or not we have similar musical tastes. More often than not, my students end up educating me on new artists and bands that inevitably end up on my “most listened to” playlist on Spotify. This year it’s Girl in Red, but I digress. Each year I look forward to giving this assignment because I typically receive such a wide variety of musical genres represented in students’ projects. Granted, there’ll always be some pop, a little bit of rap, and more alternative rock than expected. However, this year, I’ve been thoroughly surprised with the niche styles that grace my students’ GoogleSlides. Music from all corners of the globe, some created by artists that only perform covers via Minecraft for their small following on YouTube, filled the virtual pages of my students’ assignment. Such diverse musics color an otherwise monochrome canvas of musical tastes I’ve assumed inhabit the world of Gen Z and younger. Additionally, some students bring classical music to their projects without realizing it. Electronic remixes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s Requiem Mass
never fail to rear their heads within a project or two. The students come to class with such an enormous personal library of music they enjoy. The internet and social media can be a burden and cause a great deal of grief, however it’s undoubtedly introduced younger generations to many different genres of music. Nowadays, students can find any genre of music from any era for free on YouTube and Spotify, or through a subscription such as Apple music. It’s astounding and it makes me both jealous and thankful. I’m jealous that I never had access to this array of music when I was younger, but I am thankful my students get to grow up in a world where international music is so readily available to them. There is one thing, though, that is always surprising to me when I assign this project. It’s the one recurring question my students ask me when they want to include their favorite SoundCloud rapper or Vocaloid pop-star to their project: “Does this music count?” I couldn’t fathom a song that “wouldn’t count” since the project is about revealing students’ preferences. In my mind, if the song encompases some aspect of sound moving through time and the students get some enjoyment from it, then it’s undoubtedly a piece of music that would be fine to present in the project. Why would the students second guess their own musical preferences? When I asked myself that question, I tried to put myself in the students' shoes. Over the past year, many students have experienced heightened anxiety over getting good grades and completing assignments. Students have told me they hand in incomplete work because they simply don’t want to see the red “missing” notification on their GoogleClassrooms pages. So, as I watched my sixth-grade students constantly switch between my rubric and their playlists, I realized the question they were asking was more complicated than I initially thought: “Does this count?” quickly became “does the music that I enjoy count?” Despite making it abundantly clear to the students that I grade this project--and every other project I assign throughout the marking period--with an open mind and willingness to learn about new artists and genres of music, the students still seemed to
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JANUARY 2022
