Is a person born creative? The beginning of this chapter from Teach Like a Pirate addresses that phenomenon. The author quotes from Michelangelo, and Maya Angelou and other “creative” people. Burgess shares a story of a colleague telling him, “It’s easy, you are creative”. These six words cause him great distress, because it implies that he just teaches as he does naturally because he was born “creative”. This concept directly relates to music and my middle school general music classes. A student who practices the piano, or singing, or any other instrument a great deal will become a better musician. When we study famous composers and musicians in general music, students learn that success comes from countless hours of practice, not from someone being born “talented” or “creative”. Perseverance is the key to success, not “natural talent” or “born smart”. Composers that we study, such as Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein went to school to become composers, and learned rules and forms and patterns and systems for creating beautiful pieces like “Appalachian Spring” or “West Side Story”. Musicians and music teachers know that creativity comes from enormous numbers of hours of practice, study, and is almost never a “blinding flash of light”.
The author talks about using your hobbies to help you find creativity in your lessons. I love this idea, because I have so many hobbies that I can’t always find time to do them all. Some of my hobbies directly relate to music, and help me in my classroom every day. For example, I LOVE to dance! I have, in the last several years, discovered Zumba and also I took several Salsa dance classes that have made me very comfortable teaching dance steps to several songs in our books. To add to this, I love the theater, so I saw the Gloria Estafan musical and was able to share both the salsa with my fifth graders, as well as share with them her compelling and inspiring story when we sang “Get on your Feet” from our classroom music books. It became a much more interesting class for the students, between learning the history of the Miami Sound Machine, learning about the musical AND dancing the salsa and singing the song! Finally, in the last several years, I have become a runner, and twice a year I run half marathons. One might think this has little to do with my performing arts classroom, but learning a new skill, and the challenges it brings, this can be a great way to connect to the students’ own challenges and their passions outside the classroom as well. Connections with students are the number one way I am successful in my classroom, and sharing my outside interests with them help me from day one with connection.
The chapter about “Enthusiasm” directly relates to my music classroom. I am so fortunate to teach a fabulous subject and to teach it to fifth and sixth graders. There was a time I had to teach chorus to students who didn’t want to be there, and they weren’t graded or held responsible for the class. I found it very difficult to be enthusiastic in the face of their misbehavior and their negative attitudes. I cut my teeth on this experience, (this was my first year teaching in this school) and after twenty five years, I now teach general music to fifth and sixth graders, and I teach drama to small groups of students, I am the musical director for the musical every winter, and I get to accompany the fifth through eighth grade chorus every week, but not run it. How did I get here? Not creativity, not dumb luck, not being so bad at running chorus that they took it away from me. No- I worked my way to having my dream job, being enthusiastic and passionate even when I wasn’t always feeling it, working against the negativity and the difficulties that were always a part of my job description.
Most importantly, if we taught every other subject like we are able to teach music or art, using the creative process for assessments and tools for learning, we might have a happier, healthier, more engaged student population.
