Engaging students in informal methods

This is directed to my follower and professor, but I'm actually making this a rather general post that regards both Lucy Green's experiment (Music, Informal Learning and the School) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation's report (Musical Futures).

Even though I embrace the idea as a good one, I feel like one of those "control freak" teachers brought up by Green when more thoroughly thinking through and examining the methods described in both texts. I guess it's the fact that I'm so used to agendas and plans - and, given that I am used to IEPs and the like, I have difficulty branching out from the idea. Not at all saying that such methods are bad, but my reservation stems from Green's "pseudo-plan" (to coin a term, I guess). Musical Futures provides a greater amount of detail in regards to schedules and plans, but it still emphasizes student leadership and peer learning. What makes their methods incredibly different, however, is that the authors of Musical Futures encourage teacher involvement - to quote page 49: "Don’t be afraid of playing yourself – it can help to clarify what you’re
saying, and students like hearing something that impresses them." The second difference is that Green puts students right into the deep end, as she calls it, and has the students free-form, while the authors of Musical Futures want to ease students into the project.


If it were possible for me to formulate enough planning power in this tired noggin of mine, I'd try to find a way of marrying these two extraordinarily different programs - or at least use elements from each that would ultimately help the students stay motivated and creative.

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Other news - hopeful job offer received this weekend. Turns out there weren't any openings locally with TakeLesson (best buy program) but there's a few openings in an HISD program related to math.