Peter Stapleton (Hong Kong)-my Musical Futures story

​I am the secondary specialist music teacher at the Australian International School Hong Kong. I trained in the UK at Huddersfield University and Trinity College of Music, London studying organ and harpsichord performance. I also completed an MA in Psychology for Musicians at Sheffield University. I taught in the UK for about 5 years before moving to Hong Kong in 2001 as Director of Music for Yew Chung International School, Secondary division, and then to the Philippines in 2006 to British School Manila and King’s School Manila as Director of Music, following this I returned to Hong Kong and AISHK in 2014.

I have always believed that the music classroom should be about making music and performing and that every child should be given the opportunity to learn music in their own way.  I first learnt about MF shortly after I moved to Hong Kong for the first time and had tried incorporating some of the original ideas from the Musical Futures Resource Pack (2nd edition). I’m not sure everything necessarily worked as intended, but it was a step towards informal learning and beginning to understand better ways to motivate my students. Once I had moved to AISHK I was given the opportunity to visit Australia and attend “The Big Gig”. Whilst some of the ideas were very similar to things I had tried in my classroom, the whole package of Musical Futures began to fit into place and how I could use it in school. I have been particularly looking at year 8’s and incorporating rapping, with chair drumming and songwriting as these projects work well with each other and at this age group. I also found that ‘Just Play’ supported the idea of ‘I can’ – where students feel they can achieve because they are able to simply play along at their own level.

Music is taught from K – 12 at AISHK although it becomes an option subject at year 9. We follow the NSW curriculum although students can either opt for HSC Music 1 or 2 in year 11 or choose Music through the IB Diploma. The school has about 1,100 students of mixed nationality. A fair number of the school population is transitory as parents return to Australia or their home countries following a few years of expat living. The music programme is part of the performing arts faculty and we run a major musical every 2 years. Students can learn an instrument through our instrumental programme and we run an orchestra, wind band, string ensemble as well as primary and secondary choirs and rock bands. There are regular opportunities for performance including in assemblies, recitals and showcases. Most class music lessons are practical oriented using either Musical Futures or Orff approaches to learning.

Musical Futures Asia has its own Facebook Community, if you are teaching music in Asia please join us!
Our next workshop in Asia will take place at Shrewsbury International School, Bangkok in November 2017

​Do you have a Musical Futures story? Email info@musicalfuturesinternational.org to share yours.

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