Teacher Interview
The person I chose for my teacher interview was Professor Patrick Schmidt who teaches and does research at the University of Western. I chose him because I felt that he could have a broader view on all the questions I had since he is a "higher teacher" as well as a researcher, so he would have very broad but also very specific answers to my questions. Underneath are the following questions I asked him, along with the answers.
1. What does Education mean to you?
Education has to be connected in many ways to the level of change and transformation. The traditional view of education that we still live under even today is education as information, content and how much you know about things. It is the traditional vision of knowledge, which means “How I will let you know about things”. It continues to be an important part of education but is becoming less and less the most significant part of education.
In music education it is the type of skill you have to do, but how you do it, the way you think through and organize this in an individual way, is becoming more important in today’s world.
Richard Florida, the author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” which deals with the different types of growth and education in different cities. He created a theory that what has developed is a creative society. For example in Wall Street people become creative with money or invest money sometimes in pernicious ways or positive ways, even in an educational environment taking the use of this information that is available anywhere and in different formats and using it in an interesting way makes this the big difference.
Schmidt is currently doing some research with the New World Symphony in Miami, the conductor uses a system with young musicians (about 95) from all over the world, particularly from the US and Canada, and in this system part of their commitment while they are there is to think about entrepreneurship. The critical part of it is that it’s insufficient today in our realm to just be a musician, even the employability for the top player in the orchestra is sometimes maneuvered and dealt with by others in more expensive ways.
Another example is Rob Knopper who is the main percussionist for the Met Opera in New York, but also does teaching online and has created a whole program of a virtual course online for percussion technique, which is also free, and in just 2 days he got 700 to sign up for it.
His main answer to this question is that “Education is more engaging with others and creating a sense of community, and having a commitment and an eye on transformative practices. Education is transforming who you are over time but also creating an impact on people around you.”
2. Tell me about what/who inspired you to teach? Why is that?
Several people inspired him throughout his whole student career (high school, college, grad school). Individuals who trusted in him and believed in him. “If you’re are not committed or have a sense of responsibility to your students you will likely not be a good teacher. You need to have a drive and sense of commitment, and if interested in teaching you should be interested not only in “helping people” but also about who they are, and you facilitating that process, which is also empowerment. Figuring out how to help people empower themselves and think differently, act differently, be differently. Pushing them to be their best, which comes with the idea of empowerment. Have a sense of their own enthusiasm, and if you don’t love what you are doing you should be doing something else.”
It was always different people in his life who also pushed him, they made themselves available and where inspiring to others. In his believe he thinks that’s what an educator should be, besides all other qualities. They should be outstanding, thoughtful and committed to other people as well as to the work they do.
“What inspires me is the commitment to people that all educators should also have, sharing is important, communicating is important, and that learning is really not what you gain (knowledge, content, information), but learning is how you’ve changed through that proses.” He poses very important questions on this topic:
“How did I make that information mine?”
“How do I challenge that from what I knew before?”
“How do I create new ways of interpreting that?”
But most important is “How do I contribute?”
“If in the process of engaging with others and content I don’t change then I have nothing to contribute back, all I have to contribute is what has already been said. In our days society with computers and technology, than this information is redundant because you can find anything online now. Content is always there since you have to talk about something but the transmission of that knowledge is irrelevant because anybody can get that anywhere.”
3. Was teaching always the end goal of your career? How?
He always felt that teaching would be part of what he did but he did not know exactly how and what he would do. His father was a physician and a university professor so higher education was always appealing to him. He taught school for 8 years (2 years in Brazil, 4 years in US and did his masters, than PhD). He has overall been teaching for 22 years now, after he graduated.
He is a trained singer, and did a dual degree in music education and performance as well. Got to do choral conducting but to also perform a bit with the opera course in Rio, and sang for the first 4 years after he graduated. He didn’t love it too much but he did like being in that performance aspect and felt it was exciting during that moment, but now he feels that same feeling when he teaches. When he taught college he felt that same exciting feeling and the same excitement being in a classroom and teaching, he thinks a little differently when he is in this mode. Although he works more in research and policy now and feels the excitement and thrill of being in a classroom environment and he believes that teaching is central to him.
He doesn’t think that people are born with this passion but that it’s built, like most things in our lives. “You go through an experience and liked how it turned out, so you want more.”
What he liked about teaching initially as a young person was the thrill about being with others and engaging with others. He didn’t necessarily know what kind of teaching he would do but he knew he needed to do it, and he didn’t know if he was going to be a teacher but he was always driven to this profession.
4. Do you think there is a different way of teaching the different levels of classes (high school, university)?
He doesn’t feel that this is different because learning ideas is always going to be the same steps. “Doing this by engaging people gets them to provoke their thinking, and push on their level of comfort, creates a safe place where people can think and act out their ideas. Always has a mix of thinking of conceptual in an abstract but also practical way, so that they feel connected with what they do. These examples go with all levels of teaching even in middle school, however the questions you would ask and the kind of focus would be different. In a doctorate class, you would get the students to think about teaching in a higher education, to be doing research as the main thing and getting them to the next level of profession. In a graduate setting it is more the formation of things, and the questions that the professors are looking at, what are the practices, what will you find when you go out and teach. At the end of the day it is all relative and ends up on the same question of “who do I want to become?” ”
5. How do you inspire students to stay in music?
He believes that “there is a lot of ways to learn how to be a musician and how to engage in music and often time’s schools are presenting students with just one way and that has created resistance from kids who are learning to be musicians on their own and want to have different experiences. They want to think about different things such as classical training but they also want to be doing things with their computer, they want to be messing around with the guitar or their instrument and just learn on their own.” He sees the idea of “messing around” as becoming more and more present and it’s not necessarily negative, but there could be something powerful about this. He thinks this is one of the issues of recognition, that we can engage in different kinds of music making and that unfortunately schools are not good in doing this. He doesn’t think there is any evidence that kids are doing less in music and with music, but there is evidence that they are doing less music in schools. “This is the big challenge for us as teachers, to figure out how to facilitate that for them in schools, so that students feel that they can bring their musical selves to school as well. We as teachers also need to understand how to speak their language to be able to advocate for the program, to be flexible so they can be engaged. You need to be connected to the community, to your peers, principal, otherwise you can easily lose the purpose of how we need to change in the curriculum.”
6. What were some challenges you encountered when becoming or after being a teacher?
“You encounter challenges every day, millions of them, like dealing with diverse opinions of parents wanting their children’s education to be structured in a certain way. There is challenges every day in trying to make people think about music as inclusive rather than exclusive.” He understands the concern of quality and education that often times is linked to an exclusive way of looking at it, and in higher education it is more of professionalizing an event.
He also talks about how he’s come across challenges with students, “who want different things and can express this in very resisting ways which could be angry ways, but it’s a challenge to figure out how to find a way to give voice, create spaces where they can say things without being disruptive, how to listen and be mindful about that.”
“There are many challenges some about curriculums and what to do, challenges about your limitations such as things I can do well or things that I’m not too good at. What do you do? How do you use students to supplement what I don’t do well?”
He didn’t always know the right answer to all the questions students asked, but he thinks questions which are more musical are more intriguing, but factual questions are not as intriguing. He could have a more educative moment in trying to discuss for example about Mozart’s music and why he wrote it that way, rather than the factual things such as when he was born, etc. “If you see these challenges as a weighing down than you will likely not last. But if you see these as part of the reason you get up in the morning you will do well.”