You know that feeling, in the pit of your gut, that things are on the verge of going pear-shaped? That was me last Thursday night.  It was the Learning2 conference at Nanjing International School and two of my grade 11s were about to learn a student iPad Orchestra. 

Back story... we decided to do the Doctor Who theme song back in April. Bought the score and got some general ideas on how to set it up.  The school had recently bought QLab and so we could match the theatre lights to the live music.  We had the iPads from the Design Centre. It looked really do-able. 

Come August, and we couldn't figure out what software to use. Everybody else who had used it was just using GarageBand or other free programs. The other option was iSymphonic, which is several hundred dollars.  We finally found WoodwindSS and Heavy Brass. Bought 22 leads to run to a mixer on stage. It seemed like it was all going well.

The first rehearsal was a complete disaster. We didn't have the mixer, so the kids couldn't hear themselves well.  Being in Asia, most of our kids either knew traditional Asian notation (numbers and dots) or solfeggi, and the iPads were all Western alphabet notes.  Lastly... um... yeah, we forgot to transpose the music! Sure, we had kids playing French horn on the iPad with French horn music, but the iPads were not transposed and the sheet music was! After a long time of tweaking, we finally got it done. 

The rehearsals were amazing.  We had a smoke machine.  We had an explosion machine.  We had a fantastic video, made by one of the grade 11s, that featured a TARDIS spinning through a vortex with the school and Learning2 logos.  The lights flew across the sides of the stage in time with the music.  The disco ball put stars all over the auditorium.  The kids had come in for a weekend rehearsal and were totally killing it.

It was a lot of hard work, particularly the week of.  The student leaders (the conductor and performer/sound technician), theatre manager, and I stayed at school until 7 p.m. during the days leading up to it, fining tuning everything.  The performance was only 1:40 seconds long, but we wanted it to be perfect.

On the day of, I started getting butterflies in my tummy. One student skipped the tech warm-up. Another showed up without concert clothes. Another kept nagging me to wear super sparkly Converse on stage.  I got a last minute tech change just as we were walking on stage. One student forgot their iPad and RAN off stage to get it.  I was worried. And then it happened... disaster...

The video didn't come on.  The students and I (I was doing the Dalek voice in the back) were sitting awkwardly on stage, engulfed in blue lights, with a silent audience before us. The student conductor was in the wings, desperately chatting into a walkie-talkie about the video not working. The student technician forgot to turn on the sound board and quickly walked back to the mixer beside me to do so.  We waited... and waited... the computer rebooted in the soundbooth and the audience laughed. When the video finally came on, it was only showing half the screen and the titles were all cut off. The kids were so discombobulated that they played poorly - wrong notes and sloppy.  The tech kids running the smoke machines didn't know the new cues and didn't put much smoke in.  The explosion machines didn't go off until 5 seconds after the performance was done. It was such a bad performance that the PA Organization WeChat immediately started chatting about how horrible the performance was. 

I cried. 

​But the funny thing is, the audience loved it. 

The visiting teachers said they were amazed that nobody from NIS jumped up to save the students. It was very clear that this performance was being run by two upper years students who were conducting their peers, and when the crap-hit-the-fan, they had to figure it out for themselves. The visitors said they loved that there was an awkward silence, because the kids on stage learned that sometimes things are awkward and you just have to sit through it. They were very sympathetic about the tech problems. 

We started getting tweets about the performance being "amazing."  The two student organisers and I are cynical about this.  We had a debrief with the theatre manager the next day and have already booked the next school assembly to redo it.  For our own peace-of-mind, we need to prove to ourselves that we can do it super. 

​Anyhow, what I love about NIS is there's definitely a culture of failing-forward. Kids are given the freedom to experiment and to push / challenge themselves.  When things go pear-shaped, the kids are allowed the pain of figuring things out... and then are given chances to try again.

That's what's amazing. 

There's a lot of jargon in the IB. That's one reason why I started this blog - I felt like I was getting avalanched by the amount of terminology we had to memorize. Back then, I was doing both PYP and MYP, and so I had to learn the LP and the TDS of the UOI plus the AOIs, etc.  Over the years, I've caught up with the words. (I can't believe I've been doing MYP Music for 12 years now!!) Unfortunately, I can get blasé about some aspects, and that's why attending workshops is so rejuvenating. Case in point - Command Terms.

Sure. I knew what command terms were. I knew where to find them in the guide. But were they an every facet of my life? Not really. I'm at a school with an extremely high level of English-Language Learners. This week, a member of our Language B department asked us in a staff meeting to write our students' greatest needs per subject. Our Visual Arts teachers wrote, "To write sentences." We laughed, but they deadpanned us and said, "No. We are serious. These students can't speak any English. We need them to start at the very beginning. What are English words? How do you put them together to make a simple sentence."  So in light of this atmosphere, diving into the command terms seems a bit of a stretch goal. How do we get our ELL kids to explain rather than state when they can't actually form sentences yet?  This opinion changed the first time I really, really thoroughly read the booklet, "Further Guidance for the PP - 2016."  

We were marking Personal Projects and getting into our standardizing teams. Our MYP Coordinator printed and bound all the "Further Guidance for the PP - 2016" booklets and I was using mine to mark. (Side note: What an amazing book! I heart it!) For each descriptor, it listed the command term to be used.  If a student stated their goal, it was in the 1/2 band, it they outlined their goal, it was in the 3/4 band, and if they explained their goal, it was in the 5/6 or 7/8 bands. But what do these words mean? Well, under each strand's rubric, there was a table defining the command terms. That was so incredibly helpful. I found myself marking weak students up and seemingly good students down, all based on command terms. As I read each paper, I kept asking myself, "Have they stated a goal with no - zero - details? Have they outlined a really simple goal with a few sentences? Have they explained their goal in good detail or excellent detail?" 

While my Command Terms revelation came with the Personal Project, I immediately started thinking about how this would translate into my classes as well. For example, let's look at Criterion C.i, which is making a plan for an artistic intention. 

State: "My group will perform Riptide by Vance Joy."  
Outline: "My group will perform Riptide by Vance Joy because the chords are easy to play. I will play piano. Nick will play guitar. Mandy will play drums."
Explain: "My group will perform Riptide by Vance Joy. We chose this song because it's very popular right now and we all liked it. The chords are pretty easy because there's only three - C, G and Am. However, you have to use a capo and so our guitar player will need to practice using one.  We need to make sure that everyone in our group is playing in the same key. We've decided that I will play piano, Nick will play guitar, and Mandy will play drums.  I'm going to play the chords in the ..."  etc.

As usual, whenever I come up with an idea, I want to draw it out. I doodle pretty much non-stop when I teach and I often have kids taking pictures of my boards or sketch boards. Shout-out to Lars Jefferson, from the IBMusic WeChat group, who suggested I turn the Command Terms into a poster. I've put it in the Poster and Graphics section, but I'll post them here as well. 

These posters are A3 size.  Just print and cut them out. Or, post them in your students' electronic process journals. 

  (We started off the Arts Open: Category Two workshop with an introductory workshop in which people had to rate their opinions from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) on a number of topics. The instructor wanted to very quickly gauge our comfort levels with the IB. The very last question was something like, "I feel knowledgeable and confident about teaching MYP Arts."  Another lady and I stood by the 5, a group stood by the 4, the majority was in the 3s, and a large number were in the 1s (newbies). My partner looked a little nervous, but reasoned she'd been teaching both MYP & DP Theatre and Music for many years. Both of us were experienced in EY, PYP, MYP, and DP Music and so had a strong overview of the International Baccalaureate in general.   I figured... well, I've been teaching MYP for the past 12 years and I do run a website on how to teach MYP Music... I must be confident and knowledgeable.  Well, it turned out I was confident, but not totally knowledgeable.  It's not that I was totally clueless, but there were subtle differences and nuances that I had missed in my own teaching.

Key Concepts: The Arts' four key concepts are communication, aesthetics, identity and change. Before, I was falling into the 'homo faber' trap in that everything music did seemed to fall into communication. I was chatting with the workshop leader about expanding my skillset, and so I started looking at how I could change my protest unit by picking different key concepts. For our activity, I also brainstormed on aesthetics, identity and change. I wanted to see how the unit would evolve under radically different lenses. 

Related Concepts: These are 12 concepts that are Performing Arts specific. Using them allows you to dig deeper into subjects. I always choose two or three to use. While we were working on our mini project, for some reason I only chose one (I think I was nervous and trying to play safe!). The workshop leader said that you must always choose a minimum of 2, but perhaps 3, at any given time. He said if you only choose 1, then the topic is too narrow and you finish too early. However, if you choose 2 or 3, then you have more directions in which to take the unit... How could I have missed that? I went back through the guide and saw it wasn't even mentioned. Okay... this is why we are supposed to attend workshops! So that we can get more specific, nuanced help from the IB for when the guide is silent!

Statement of Conceptual Understanding: This is a big-idea sentence, related to the key concept and related concepts, that is true across disciplines. I could take this sentence and apply it across any subject, and it would still be true. 

Now, according to our workshop, you are supposed to choose your key concept and your two related concepts, write your statement of conceptual understanding, choose your global context, and then write your statement of inquiry (the old guiding question). 

I was totally confused. Whenever I read the guides, 'Conceptual Understanding' was simply the section title for key concepts, related concepts, global contexts, etc. I went looking in my Atlas Rubicon planners, and there's no field for a Statement of Conceptual Understanding. Then I went looking through my ManageBac planners, and couldn't find it there, either.  

Okay, so I don't feel so bad for being clueless about this.  It doesn't exist in my world!

Global Contexts: These are 6 lenses that allow you to focus your unit. They include:

• Personal & Cultural Expression (the Arts' favourite, but don't over use it!)
• Identities and Relationships
• Orientation in Time and Space
• Scientific and Technical Innovation
• Globalisation and Sustainability
• Fairness and Development

I didn't feel like I had much to learn from this. I'm also the PP Coordinator at my school, and I'm an xBlock teacher, so talking about Global Contexts feels very familiar to me.

The best to way to pick a Global Context is to ignore the title and dive right into their substrands. That's where you find the meat of them. For example, you might want to do something about health. When you look at the titles, the old "Health & Social Education" AOI is missing. However, when you drill down, you find that health is a substrand of Identities and Relationships.

I found this document on my hard drive. It's fantastic, but there's no copyright information saying, "Don't share" or "Hey, this is mine."  I'm going to post it here, and if someone would like me to take it down, I will. However, the people at my table today loved it and I was Airdropping it around. I think you might find it helpful as well. 

Statement of Inquiry: This is a child-friendly sentence that sums up your concepts and global context into a neat package. It's so easy to write, and yet so incredibly difficult. I wrote mine and showed it to my elbow partner. We were provided with a rubric that we could use to assess whether we had written a good Statement of Inquiry or not. He said mine was in the lower top band, and the workshop leader had helped me with it. I was feeling confident.  Well, when it came time for a feedback gallery walk, my potential unit was totally slaughtered! They ripped it a new one! To be honest, guys, I was really gutted. I was like, "Sigh... I need to go back to the number 1 group. I know nothing, Jon Snow."  But then later, a friend pointed out that it was good to be sitting in the experienced group because at least I understood all the feedback they gave. If I was sitting in the beginner group, they'd be like, "That sentence is great!" and I would come away not having learned anything. 

Of course... what we were taught in the workshop, the feedback I received, and the guide, were all slightly different. I think at the end of the day, Wordsmithing is hard and teachers love to spend hours picking sentences apart. There. That's the end of my snark. 

However, I know that tomorrow we'll be developing the units even more, so even though it's the evening and I should be binge-watching YouTube comedians and failing cats, I will be tightening up my units so that I have something to be proud of come tomorrow morning.

Of to start wordsmith. I'm sure it'll go much smoother tonight - today was so loud I could barely think. I like the quiet of falling rain and light traffic 25 floors below me. 

​Time to get to work. 

Hey everyone! I'm doing my Category 2 Arts training in Hong Kong at the moment. My last excuse for not updating this website is gone!

I started this website back in ... I think 2012? Two years later, the IB came out with "The Next Chapter," which is a title we can't use anymore because it's 5 years later. I promised that I would do a total overhaul of all these pages once I finished my training and was more knowledgeable. Well, in 2014, I singled-adopted a little boy, survived a house fire, went through immigration problems, and organised multiple surgeries for my  son... and didn't go for my training. So that was my excuse for not updating the content pages of this blog.  

No more.

Now I am at my Category 2 training and I'm ready to get at it!  

There's a really cool chart on the whiteboard called a WIQI - WOW, Issues, Questions, and Ideas. In the Questions section, I asked, "Is Di to be assessed as an individual strange through a larger assessment? Or is it supposed to be assessed as an individual task?"  I asked this question because our school includes Di within a larger task - how did the students' choice of creative cycle performance demonstrate their transference of knowledge? However, I have a Music Specialist friend who has specific tasks / assignments that are only Di. I'd like some feedback on that.

The workshop leader is cool. He would like the more experienced members of the workshop to lead a mini workshop on Day 3, so I'm hoping to do mine on Di. 

If you've read my blog posts from the past few months, then you know that I'm a total fan of Musical Futures. I think it fits really well with the IB framework, and it fits perfectly with my school's strategy of Inclusion and Student Voice & Choice. 

All well and good, but when I did my training, my kids were in the middle of their creative cycles and so I couldn't backtrack and try out my Musical Futures resources. I did try one activity, and the kids went wild for it - they were chattering, "This was SO MUCH FUN" as they left the room.

Now is semester two and it's time to start in earnest!

The resources we were given are fantastic... but generic.  They don't actually fit to anything I'm doing in my class right now. However, I have a background in graphic design, so happened to ask at my PD, "So... if I were to make this myself, I'd make a series of images and overlay transparencies, then move all those over to a movie editor and just make sure the sound match the picture?"  The instructors affirmed that this is exactly how you did it.

But who has the time? It's a pretty daunting task.

Enter the Amazing, Miraculous, Nanjing International School. For our five days of INSET, we were given five themes and told we could do whatever we wanted during our week, as long as they fit our themes. We had to fill out coloured cards and stick them to different boards so that there was accountability, but then afterwards we were sent off on our own. Fantastic! I choose "Inclusion."

 Musical Futures encompasses inclusion and differentiation because: 
1. Everybody is playing the same song (inclusion).
2. Everybody learns every instrument - guitar, keyboard, drums, bass, ukulele & voice (inclusion)
3. Beginners on guitar uses sponges and only play the red notes, while intermediates play the full chords with no muted strings. Experts play the chord properly (differentiation)
4. Beginners on keyboards play root positions; intermediate play inversions (differentiation).
5. Beginners on bass play the roots shown; intermediates play rhythm patterns (differentiation)
etc. 

I spend Monday just trying to figure out how this whole thing would work. Making the templates. Tuesday, I failed spectacularly. Of course, failure at Nanjing International School is praised, so when I failed, I emailed the Director, Deputy Director and Head of Middle School and was congratulated on my failure. (It's a cool school where you can totally mess up and the admin is happy to hear it!

I forgot that the music was capo 5. D'OH! All my work on Monday, for nothing!!!

But not for nothing. It's really important that we teachers share our failures with our kids. How many times have I gone into a practice room and heard a horrible noise in which half the room is playing in a different key? Clutching my seemingly bleeding ears, I reach for capos (to everyone's relief!) I had made the same mistake.

What should I do? Should I have the kids playing in all the same key? Then they couldn't play to a track. Should I change to the original key? But the chords would be too difficult for beginners. In the end, I decided to put two different keys on the video. 

​Kids need to understand that:
1. It's okay for a group to play in two different keys; it's done so that people have easier keys to play.
2. If you are going to play in two different keys, then the stringed instruments need capos.
3. Basses don't need capos because their notes are easier (if they are playing roots). 

I'm using the "Where is the Love?" video for my grade 7 unit on protest songs. It protests racism and violence.  I'm using "Sunflower" from the Spiderverse for my grade 8 movie soundtrack unit. As my Head of Middle School noted, the kids'll love this because the music is current. Spiderverse only just came out this past winter, so it's super topical. 

​The good news for me is that I learned how to do this fast. It took me 3 days, on and off (including working from home). However, I found a workflow that it super fast and efficient. If you aren't efficient, making one of these videos is an absolute killer! However, I discovered that...
1. Make a template and add it on another layer. Keep copying and pasting it. 
2. When adding the cue notes for upcoming chords, just copy and paste from the other layers so that they are always in the same location. 
3. Name the files 01, 02, 03 with the chord names, like 01 C to F Spiderverse.jpg. That way, when you drag them into your movie editor, they'll all be in the correct order and ready to go.
4. In the movie editor, drag your clips according to the wave length images and not by what you hear. It'll end up being tighter and it saves time because you don't have to listen (listen at the very end to debug.)
5. In the movie editor, drag your clips perfectly and watch the chord progression go by only once. When the sizes are all perfect, copy and paste it repeatedly. Debug again. 

I think the next ones I do should go pretty quickly - in about an hour - because now I've got my workflow like a well oiled machine. 

I'm posting my versions  without music because I don't have distribution licenses. If you want to use these files with your class, please feel free to do so! Adding the music is up to you. 

​Enjoy!

I'm still excited about lap and chair drumming, a month later. I've got to tell you about two awesome success stories in my classroom.

MYP Year 1: Grade 6 xBlock
xBlock is a new course that some schools are doing. Like Creative New Undertakings or Genius Hours, this is a course in which students are allowed to pursue any line of inquiry approved by their mentor teacher. I currently have two grade 6s who want to have a rock band. One is learning bass guitar and the other drum kit. Unfortunately, my drummer was terrified of touching the drums. He was worried that the sticks would go through the skins. He was worried it would be too loud and would upset people. He was worried that he wouldn't be good enough. In general, he was just worried. 

We went into the hallway and turned on the Just Play Drums PPTX file. Together, the two of us went through few tutorials. Once he was comfortable, I headed off to help my other xBlock musicians. The boy worked through the file. First, lap drumming, and then chair drumming. Over the next few classes, he became more and more confident. When he was finally ready to move to the drum kit, his confidence was soaring. He hit the drums loudly and proudly. He was now ready to start working on his piece with his partner.

We made up an xBlock promo video featuring the boy as he explained his progress through the creative cycle. The xBlock coordinator was amazed. He kept saying, "The level of confidence! The use of vocabulary! He really knows his stuff and is talking with a lot of critical thinking!"

MYP Year 5: Grade 10 Music
With the normal turnover rate of International Schools, we often get kids in with very limited music skills. This year, I had a student arrive in grade 10 with zero background in music. She signed up for the course because she loves music... though she had no skills. She attempted finger-picking guitar, and that went okay. She tried ukulele and did pretty well. Then, I gave her the Just Play Drums video.

I was worried that it would seem too childish for her. After all, the block before I had a 10 year old working on it, and she's 17. However, she faithfully sat and lap drummed with fast concentration. Next came the chair drumming. Over the next few classes, I walked around the different groups and didn't focus on how she was doing. On day, I noticed she was teaching another new boy how to drum. She was teaching him pretty complicated rhythms, especially for a newbie, and he was struggling a bit. I followed her back into her group's practice room to see how they were doing --> she was wonderful! It sounded like she'd been playing the drums for two months or more. She had more complicated rhythms than you'd expect for someone only playing for two weeks, and her sense of beat was spot-on.

​So yes, still completely enamored with Musical Futures' Just Play series. 

Here's a little present for you --> another rhythm sheet for your lap or chair drummers. This one is a rumba groove.  Enjoy!

Now, I don't want to have a race to the bottom, but I should tell you that you can buy drumsticks on Taobao for only 1RMB. That's $0.14 USD. Hey big-spender, go out and buy a class set for the price of $4.33! 

I'm telling you this because I learned about chair drum-sets at Musical Futures International this past weekend at a workshop in Hong Kong. You know when you learn something so fundamentally obvious that you just want to do a head-plant? That was me when I first learned about chair drum-sets. I tried to find a student video to show you, on YouTube, but there's none to be found. 

Basically, the kids play drums on their chairs. Yup. That's it. 

This is a screen capture from their tutorial PowerPoint. Your right foot steps up and down (pretending to be the bass). Your left hand hits the seat of the chair (snare drum) while your right hand hits the back of the chair (high hat). 

Then, you are given non-traditional notation - measures with pictures of the drum pieces, showing which are played on which beats. The files you get with MFI include cool rock favourites with the drums simplified and yet varied for the different sections of the song. It's harder than your typical, basic rock beat; it's much easier than intermediate drumming. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it's just right! 

What if you don't have access to MFI files? Well, I made the salsa notation shown above. I simply Googled, "Salsa drums sheet music" and found an example from www.onlinedrummer.com.  Then I went to websites offering free clipart and quickly put together this picture. 
​
Here is an example from a workshop in Cyprus (you'll need a VPN, my China-based friends!) This is a teacher's workshop; however, when I was in Hong Kong, they had a grade 5 class learn this for the first time, and the kids picked it up really well. 

Why am I so impressed with chair drum-sets?
a) It's cheap and so you can get an entire class drumming immediately
b) It takes away the prestige of the drum set, in which only a few chosen kids get to play it. 
c) It gives the basic skills on drum set, so when the kids get into their creative cycle groups and start deciding on instruments, everybody in the group can already play
d) It's a great gateway to playing on a real set. It's a way of talking about proper hand positions, etc., before they get on a real kit

I should say, thought, that standing isn't very helpful. When we learned this in the workshop, the teachers all sat down. This was better because it was more comfortable, but also because it more closely mimicked a real drum set. (Drummers don't typically stand when they play a kit!)

I'm in the middle of the creative cycle right now, so it's too late to introduce this to my classes. However, next semester's grade 6s are definitely all going to try this. I'm excited and am getting ready NOW!

Yet another reason why I love Musical Futures International (MFI) - they get a whole class playing along. It's a perfect example of differentiation. 

Let me just start off by saying I fully believe in playing several instruments. As international school teachers, we expect our students to speak a minimum of two languages, but we know students who speak three or four quite well. Why not with instruments?

MFI has a 'Just Play' system in which students in a class rotate through instruments on the exact same song. Let's say you have a class of 24 students and your instruments are voice, chair drums (more on that in another post!), ukulele, keyboards (more on that in another post!), bass, and guitars. You are going to have four students on each section. The experienced guitarists will simply be given chords; beginners will have sponges placed in their lowest three strings and will play with simplified fingerings. The keyboardists (and note, these are kids who may not know how to play piano!) will be given crib sheets that show root position chords. On the screen, they'll see an animated lead sheet. As the students are learning the piece (discussing its structure, use of chords, improvising solos, etc.), the teacher keeps swapping groups.  "Everybody move to the group beside them and play those instruments!" This gives the kids a foundation on all the instruments found in the room, improves their listening skills because they always have to be focusing on the chord changes on their new instrument, and keeps them from getting complacent ("Sorry. I only play bass.")

Here's an explanation of how it works:

Why is this so helpful to the IB specifically? Well, at NIS, music is an elective. I have some, but not a lot, of choice in students. For example, if I get 10 drummers in one semester, the school takes pity on me and does some swaps. Otherwise, I get whomever I get.  When it comes to the creative cycle, it's sometimes hard to put together balanced groups because we don't want to end up with a pro group and then two groups with absolute beginners who can't play anything! Also, that's not really 'student voice and choice,' which is a strategy statement at my school.  Now imagine a class in which every single child has experience on voice, keyboard, ukulele, bass, drums and guitar. In this scenario, the kids have much more freedom in choosing their own groups and repertoire. Before, teachers might have said, "Well, that group has three guitarists, so I have to give you a pianist."  However, now there's much more flexibility. Now the question might simply be, "Will Bobby be on-task if he's working with Mike?" The question of feasibility in groupings has been solved. 

"Yes, Amy, but what if you get 5 drummers in one group?" Well, that's a comment for the next blog post. See you next week!

I used to be a purist. I used to hate TAB because I wanted students reading bass clef notation. Even kids who barely spoke English, had no music background, and were only going to be in my class for a trimester once in a three year period. Then I realised that was just not going to happen. That's when I started moving to meeting their needs. For example, If kids were 100% beginners on the bass, I'd just have them playing open strings and simple roots. If they had some experience, I moved them to TAB. Once they were intermediates, I started moving them to traditional notation. Musical Futures International advocates something very similar. In fact, they have these really cool Power Points in which animated chord chords show the piano, bass, ukulele, and guitar chords moving with the lyrics. 

Here's something that was controversial (to me), but once I wrapped my mind around it I really liked it. I have a guitar student who is a purist. He believes that students need to start off with the proper chords on full sized instruments because they need to stretch their hands and get used to quick changes. That's definitely true... for guitarists who love to practice for hours a day and will probably take grades 9 -> music. However, for my grade 6 who is taking music as an elective, and only has two classes available, learning the guitar in that short amount of time is very challenging. Musical Futures International advocates putting a piece of sponge under the first three strings of the guitar, then teaching the students the simplified chords. At first, this bothered me because I didn't want to teach the students something incorrect and then have to fix their hand positions later on (a.k.a. perfect practice makes perfect, right?). However, I realised that if the students still used the correct fingers in the simplified chords, then it'd be easier to move to the real chords later. ​

I could literally go on and on about how much I love Musical Futures International. In fact, I'm hoping to get them to run a workshop at Nanjing International School next year! However, I'm going to save that for another blog post (or ten).

At the same job alike (that I discussed below), the same amazing teacher was telling us about Musical Futures. She said she ran all her classes like workshops and they were extremely hands-on. One of the common complaints about the MYP is that class have the potential to turn into music appreciation classes about music instead of being hands-on classes doing music. Thus, I was really interested in what she was saying and immediately looked online to see what was what.

There are two Musical Futures and they are both from the UK. However, I got the low-down on this from one of the representatives, so I'll share as much as I can remember. The original Musical Futures was started as a grant-based organisation in the UK that was trying to motivate students in music classes. They found that students liked music but didn't like music classes and they were trying to reverse this trend. While focusing on UK students, they also started branching out throughout the world. When the grant came to an end, the UK branch now had to fund themselves, while the international branch wanted to remain open-source. This is why there are two Musical Futures right now; one caters specifically to the UK while the other has more of an international focus.  

This past week, I attended the introduction to Musical Futures International workshop in Hong Kong and was completely enthralled with what I discovered. Imagine if a group of IB educators sat down and said, "Let's make a really good music pedagogy to go with our assessment framework."  Imagine if Nanjing International School then looked at it and said, "Let's tweak it to fit our strategy / educational philosophy."  The result would be Musical Futures International.  Let me give you a few examples. At the workshop, they showed us the three types of knowledge that each student should learn. I found myself looking at slightly-differently-worded Criterion Ai, ii, and iii. Wow. A great IB fit.  Next, they showed us their five principles and I saw one of them was, "Student Voice and Choice."  Well, that's one of NIS' strategies. Meanwhile, the entire workshop was based on differentiation and inclusion, which are also part of NIS' strategy and mission statement. Even hear of, "Preaching to the choir?" That was my experience this weekend. Everything the workshop leaders said simply re-enforced the IB assessment framework with the NIS mission statement. Matches made in heaven. 

Now, why am I so excited about Musical Futures International? Because as a pedagogy, it really makes sense for international teachers with a high student turnover rate. Have you read my differentiation description on this blog? Stop for a second and go read it. It's a fun challenge to meet the needs of such a diverse student body, especially when music is an elective and kids pop in and out as they like throughout the the middle years. How do you have continuity of skills when one child has been with me for three years, one child is brand new, doesn't know music, and can't speak English, and one child took music in grade 5 and then not again until the last semester of grade 8? I had been doing the equivalent of music triage, or what I thought was music triage. Instead of focusing on music notation and moving towards performance, I was starting with performance and then working in music notation when appropriate. I had lots of little tricks and strategies to get kids on instruments as fast as possible. I was so happy when Musical Futures International also used a lot of strategies I was using, but tweaking them even further. I felt validated. It was a relief, to be honest. The workshop was really fun and engaging, and it made me want to do more, more, more. And in the midst of this, I knew, "Hey. I already do some of this stuff... I'm okay."