There's a brighter future around the corner and we get to build it with them"

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Musical Futures Australia Champion Teacher Michael Newton was part of a group of MF International teachers who travelled to America in July 2017 to take part in our friends Little Kids Rock's annual teacher conference Rockfest.

Read his summary of the trip and what he plans to take back to his school in Perth, Australia.

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"There's a brighter future around the corner and we get to build it with them" (David Wish – Founder and CEO of Little Kids Rock). Hang on to that thought.
 
"What was I doing in the USA? After a 40-hour journey to get there off the back of ski trip in the 1st week of holidays, and production rehearsals in the second, I was seriously asking the same question. Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge how incredibly privileged I am to have been invited by Musical Futures to head over to the USA with them for the Little Kids Rock (LKR) Rockfest Conference in Fort Collins, Colorado (thanks Ian, Ken and Anna!).
 
I have just spent close on 2 amazing, intense, and beautiful weeks hanging out with arguably some of the best and most innovative music teachers from Australia, NZ, and the UK. I’m not sure I’m in that category, but there you go. We’ve swapped ideas, challenged each other, problem solved, brain stormed, and laughed. Laughed so much for so long it hurt. It was the Little Kids Rockfest, but the big kids rocked just as hard as the little kids. The people I travelled with were a truely awesome bunch of individuals. It’s rare to connect and bond as quickly and as well as we all did.
 
LKR is a not-for-profit organisation promoting and rolling out ‘Modern Band’ in US schools. It’s an impressive organisation. Modern Band teaches kids to perform, improvise and compose using styles they’re familiar with such as rock, pop, reggae, hip hop, and R&B. I did workshops on integrating modern band into alternative ensembles (I played the steel pans – how cool is that?), scaffolding, how to get kids arranging pieces into different musical styles, and some really cool stuff on pBones and pTrumpets (plastic trombones and trumpets). We also did some workshops on Latin and Hip-Hop in LA. I’ve come back with a head full of ideas, possibilities and things to try out and experiment with in class with the kids. "There's a brighter future around the corner and we get to build it with them".
 
We heard a compelling argument from Dr Ruth Wright (a leading music sociologist from Western University, Canada) on why music education is a human right under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. By the way, she’s right!
 
I won’t go into all the ideas I’ve come back with (we’d be here all day), but here’s a few things that leapt out at me. They’re in no particular order, and with varying degrees of relevance to music education, and/or education more widely:

What drives us as music educators?

• I need to play more. Specifically, I need to practice more. Are they one and the same thing? On Monday (with Ernie running Chapel Band rehearsal) I was able to pull out the Bassoon and noodle around for the first time in ages. Half way through I decided we should start handing over the running of Chapel Band to the kids. It works on every level.
• It’s OK to give students control, and it’s OK to learn with them. We don’t give them enough credit for what they’re capable of. I’ve come back wanting to learn as much in my classes as I teach. It’s even better if the kids can teach me. "There's a brighter future around the corner and we get to build it with them".
• Disruption points are everywhere (this was a panel discussion point). If we don’t do some disrupting too we’ll just keep cranking out the same old things. Irrelevance lurks at the end of that pathway.
• Are we teaching to reproduce ourselves? I hope not. The thought of lots of mini Newts-clones running around terrifies me.
• Our main purpose as music teachers is to enable our students to “do music as best they can, for as long as they can” (Ruth Wright). How powerful, how insightful, is that? Sadly, it hasn’t always applied in Music Ed (in my experience anyway). 

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The value of being part of a community brought together around music and music education

• Every American I met was a beautiful, friendly, polite person. They put some Australians to shame. From the snapshot I saw of the USA it is already a great country. Don’s efforts are irrelevant. The USA will remain great in spite of politics, not because of politics. With the current debate(s) coming our way we should aspire to the same.
• There’s a lesson there for all of us. I’m sick of the spiteful and squabbling politics. Let’s bypass them. Let’s bring back the love and laughter.
• We can’t wait for governments or institutions to act. When (or even if) they do, it’ll be too late. We can’t afford to wait for better leadership. If we want better, we need to be better now, and it needs to be us that leads the better. The rest will catch up eventually. MF and LKR are classic examples of that. They live and breathe the way they want the world to be, and their impact and influence in education is growing and spreading.
• Small actions matter. A lot.
• How important is humour? It’s too easy to get caught up in stuff and lose it. Let’s bring back the love and laughter.
• Stay fresh. Don’t become a method.

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The impact on learning

• The way we learn is changing. We are passing on what we learnt on tour to the wider Music Ed community through the weekly Musical Futures Australia Chat group on Facebook. For all its pitfalls, technology brings us closer together and helps us learn from each other in ways unimaginable even just 10 years ago.
• The world is changing too, rapidly. The possibilities are endless. The down-side is dislocation, isolation, fractured communities, and schizophrenic identities. So I’m going to risk a little educational dream.
• Music is something you create and make with others. It’s the natural antidote to dislocation and isolation. When we make music, we collaborate, we have common goals and direction, we form relationships. Music reaches out across divides and gathers people together. It’s so important to do music as best you can, for as long as you can.
• All of that involves compromise, negotiation, discussion, creative thinking, empathy. Without it the whole project collapses. Isn’t this what we need?

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What next?

• Can we figure out a way to adapt and apply this approach as widely as possible? How powerful could we all be as teachers, as schools, as communities?
• I’m not saying music education is the answer, I’m not saying it’s better, I’m not saying it’s a cure-all, and I strongly believe music ed done badly does more harm than good.
• What I am saying is the MF & LKR approach to learning music - informal, collaborative, creative and project based - is very powerful and has a huge amount to offer. Much, much more than at first glance. In and outside of the classroom. Hackathon is great example.​

That thought’s a remarkably powerful one. "There's a brighter future around the corner and we get to build it with them".