Teaching

toc Carolyn's thoughts about teaching

I would like to share some of my ideas about teaching in the hopes that they might be useful or interesting. In my "other" life at Capital University, I teach people to be teachers, so here is the kind of ideas I share with my students who will be teachers.

=Changing Minds= Teaching is fundamentally about changing minds, which can feel risky and uncomfortable to learners. I think we understand this because it is parallel to the process of leading someone to Jesus Christ as Savior. People have a lot of reasons not to change their minds about Jesus and they may feel uncomfortable and confused (or imagine this feeling) when they are asked about their relationship with the living God. So...the skills we use for teaching are the same skills that can be used in doing God's work, which is to create conditions where changing one's mind is a reasonably comfortable process.

This parallel is the basis for the main reason for the Schools of Bluegrass, because the skills we learn as teachers are skills we use as doers of the Gospel. The classes we teach are located in church buildings, which means that should a person decide to explore going to church (and thereby starting to learn about why Jesus is the Christ and The Way), that person already has comfortable feelings about the church building and the type of people inside it.

=Psychology of Learning= If we understand the kinds of things that are going on in students' minds, then we will have a greater chance of helping them to change their minds. There are two main factors that can influence teaching (there are others, but these two are the biggest): what is happening in the mind of the individual (cognitive) and how that individual is relating to others in the classroom/program (social). Understanding these leads to creating better and better ways of building a bridge between what we are teaching (see above--it's not just music!) and the individual.

Cognitive
This section explains how the mind is constructed and the process of learning.

Construct of the mind
Without going into great detail about the history of psychology (I can if you like....), I suggest that cognitive theory is relevant for understanding a lot about how people learn. The best analogy for this is the computer. A computer accepts input and it processes that input in short term memory called Random Access Memory (RAM). It can also store information on the hard disk for the long term. Computers "react" to input and create output.

The human mind works in similar ways, in that we receive input from our senses and then we process that input. Brains can process information differently. For example, a person with learning disabilities might have a brain that processes information non-sequentially, which would cause the person to reverse letters when writing words or have difficulty reading. In this instance, a teacher might choose to slow down the input of information so that the person can process it using strategies to check if it makes sense.

If you open a whole lot of programs on a computer, then it slows down. That is because the RAM is limited and can only process so much information at one time. The same is true for people. In music, we are asking people to do a lot--to use muscles in ways that might be new; to pay attention to melody, harmony, and rhythm; to pay attention to other players so that they stay in time; and so forth. In a given class where students are learning a new chord, you might observe that as students focus on getting their fingers in the right place for the chord, they "lose" some of their other abilities such as being able to do "note-strum" in time. This is because short term memory is being taxed. In fact, if you watch students carefully, you will actually "see" the moment in which their short term memory is full--and it's time to stop teaching because the student cannot handle any more information. To go further in this situation is actually a waste of everyone's time.

Information and processes get stored in the long term memory of the brain, the same way a document can be saved to a hard drive. In order to store something in long term memory, it requires practice! Perhaps you have had the situation of getting a phone number from someone verbally and remembering it just long enough to make a call. That's short term memory. If you say the number over and over across time, then it gets stored in long term memory. In addition to practice, the brain can store information faster if it comes with some cues attached. For example, we have funny sentences we say for the names of strings on our instruments. One such thing is "Great Danes Always Eat" for the violin strings, G, D, A, E. These silly mnemonics (that's a fun spelling word....) help you to connect new information to the network of information already stored. The more connections between the new and the old, the faster the learning. Processes such as learning to do banjo rolls take physical practice in order to get the process stored in long term memory. With practice, anything becomes automatic, so that over time one can do more and more things at the same time. We start with a simple open string banjo roll. Practice it for awhile and then add some chords with the left hand. Practice that for awhile and learn some new roll patterns as well as how to incorporate melody notes. Keep practicing and then learn to sing while playing the melody or backup on the banjo.

When the Light Bulb Goes On
This is the best part of teaching! I have seen it so often when students demonstrate their skills such as at the anti-recital. In fact, maybe we should call the anti-recital "Lightbulb Moments," because it actually displays these times in people's lives. It is even more profound to watch a person change as a result of an encounter with Jesus Christ and, of course, this has eternal implications that make this particular light bulb moment the most precious thing in our lives.

In order to get to the light bulb moment, a process takes place, going from Equilibrium, through Disequilibrium, to Accommodation or Assimilation. (For more information on this, look up the cognitive theorist, Jean Piaget).

Equilibrium
We all have a theory of how the world works. An atheist has one theory while a Christian has another. Forgive the word "theory"--it doesn't mean that the Christian theory is not true or that the atheist theory has the same credence as the Christian theory. "Theory" is an introductory shorthand for the idea that we develop an understanding of the world that allows us to predict what will happen next. This is what a theory is--an organized set of ideas which lead to accurate predictions of what will happen next in the theory's realm. Atheist "theory" is that humans die and that's it. Christian theory states that our souls exist eternally but there are two different places one can go after death, depending on one's relationship with God. People go toward God after death or away from Him. Both ways of understanding human existence have very significant implications for how we live our lives.

As a subset to theory, we have "schemas" or mini-theories about everything we do. We have a schema about holding a pick or about the chord changes in Crying Holy Unto the Lord. A beginning guitar player would play the handshape of a G chord all the way through Crying Holy, which a more advanced student has developed schemas about changing chords and doing so in time.

The concept of equilibrium means our theories and schemas are working as far as we are concerned. It's nice to be able to play a song like Frere Jacques with a single chord--it sounds good and it allows people to play successfully in a jam the first day they pick up an instrument. But then.....

Disequilibrium
Disequilibrium happens when a person discovers a schema is not working. It's not predicting the future very well or there is information that it does not cover. For example, take a song like "I'm Using My Bible For a Road Map." If you play a G chord all the way through, it's going to sound really bad when you get to the A chord in the chorus ("No rough roads along the [switch to D] way..."). So the schema "I can just play just a G chord and I can go to Nashville and play with the big boys" does not explain the bad sound when others are playing an A chord while you are playing a G chord. So....you have to change the schema.

Yet a lot of the time we hang onto our old schemas and theories for dear life, particularly when we have invested a lot of our lives in them. A person who has been active in American Atheists (as I have) has invested a lot into that theory and will have a very difficult time buying into Christian theory because he or she has actively worked toward atheist goals. A person who is fearful of the difficulty of changing chords will want to hang onto the G chord schema for as long as possible.

Disequilibrium is uncomfortable and scary because the big purpose of theories and schemas is to predict the future and all of a sudden the future becomes unpredictable. We humans cannot see the future without God's help, so our minds create ways of predicting the future, schemas and theories. Otherwise we would just crawl into a corner instead of going out into the world and interacting with other people.

When teachers make new learning appear to be do-able, such as breaking down the process of changing chords into small units that people can work on--practicing changing one finger at a time, practicing change the general shape of the chord as fast as possible, practicing going from one chord to another over and over again, and so forth, then students feel less fearful about their abilities to learn. When teachers recognize progress even if the end result is not yet successful, then students feel that the risk of doing something new is less scary. When teachers establish a positive emotional environment using encouragement and caring as a foundation for the relationship with students, then students feel more comfortable.

Adaptation and Assimilation
Developing a new schema can take place in two different ways. First of all, a person can assimilate the new schema into the old one. For example, a guitar player learning mandolin can use the idea of chords, picking, offbeats, changing chords, etc. in learning mandolin. This is why learning one instrument can lead to success in learning other instruments.

Sometimes the schema has to be totally changed. For example, the violin is largely a melody instrument rather than a chorded instrument, so while switching from mandolin to violin works well in terms of the strings being the same, some fundamental aspects about playing melody and how to play harmony without using chord positions require a major adaptation of the schemas. Banjo requires a set of schemas that is unique to the instrument--the idea of embedding both melody and harmony in the banjo roll. Piano lays out the notes in a very different way from stringed instruments.

Total schema changes are very challenging but teachers who understand the old schemas of a student can help them to understand the new schema better, which leads to a greater sense of comfort during the learning process. Becoming a Christian is a total theory change, as pointed out above. A lot of people judge the Christian life based on non-Christian schemas. For example, non-Christians may watch us doing lots of things for our churches or choosing forms of entertainment that don't involve drinking and the many other things that worldly folks do with their spare time, and based on non-Christian schemas may conclude that our lives are boring and that we are uptight since there are so many activities we apparently don't "allow." One new part of a Christian schema is the Holy Spirit who leads people out of the desires for the worldly life and into a life that is centered around the Church (to which we all belong), the church (our immediate place of worship), and our Christian brothers and sisters.

Social
We do not live or learn in a vacuum--other people can affect our learning positively and/or negatively. A negative example would be peer pressure common in the lives of teens unless parents are there to guide children into responsible adulthood.

One of the primary positive learning situations that is based on interactions with others is the way in which we learn our native language(s). Imagine this: people without special training in how to teach language (aka parents, grandparents, siblings) manage to teach something incredibly complex and even abstract as language is during the first three years of a child's life!

The way this happens is through social interaction. Crying is not an effective means of communication because it is very non-descript. When a baby cries, you may not know if the baby is hungry, uncomfortable, etc. So even though parents want to address the needs of their infants, they cannot always do so because sometimes they don't know what is wrong.

We all want babies to learn to talk, so we talk baby talk to them which actually helps children learn to be intelligible even if they cannot pronounce difficult sounds such as "l," "r," "th," etc. When we say something like "Who dat?" to a baby the "dat" offers them a way to say "that" in a way that can be understood by others and that doesn't require the pronunciation of "th."

We are incredibly encouraging as babies start to gain language. For example, babies often find a sound and repeat it. If they repeat the "ma" sound as in ma ma ma ma ma, then parents get excited because that is an important word--"ma ma." Parents repeat the word the baby said and try to get the baby to say it again. It is so exciting to watch this process--it is a true lightbulb moment. Another example of this is the way in which Annie Sullivan taught Helen Keller--by exposing her to a lot of sign language until she had the most amazing lightbulb moment at the pump. This is not just an example of changing schemas (using "cookie" gets a better response than just crying), but it is also an example of how social interaction moves youngsters forward in the acquisition of language.

It's the feedback loop between people that is critical here. My niece, as a toddler, used the word "winkies" for raisins for some unknown reason. Family members understood this word so it worked for awhile. In fact, it was cute and clever. But people not in the family didn't understand. When they didn't understand what she wanted, she discovered that she needed to learn the word everyone uses.

The same works in music. One of the most powerful things that happens is the interactions between students in the bluegrass school. How many people have been driven to learn a song they heard someone else play? They want the chords, they want the words, they want to know how to play the melody. The jam sessions and the anti-recitals fuel this process. This is one reason why God calls us to be in fellowship with other Christians. When people choose to learn something because they have seen someone else do it, their motivation is very high and they also have a lot of social support. It is impossible to learn without some kind of interaction. Even if I am working on the computer by myself, I can use information placed on the web by others to help me. When I first read the Bible, I used a commentary to get a grasp on what was going on.

=Bluegrass School and Principles of Teaching and Learning= So, by way of summary, here are some things done at the Southside School of Bluegrass in relation to these principles. In creating the school, I consciously created structures that would allow learning processes to take place in the most positive way possible.

Short term memory limits:
our classes are around 50 minutes long and because there are several people at different levels in each class, concepts get repeated and reviewed. Teachers spend time presenting new information but also reviewing and practicing old information. Our classes typically are not cognitively overwhelming.

Practice:
we do a lot of the same songs in the classes and jams over and over across months. This helps learning. We also use social learning principles to help students discover their motivation to practice.

Long term memory:
we use all kinds of ways to help students get information into long term memory. For example, in teaching a new chord such as D7 we might relate it to a known chord such as D (especially on guitar where there is only one finger's difference between the two).

I have also observed, particularly when I taught fiddle tunes to the Gahanna fiddlers, that I could teach a fiddle tune one week and for that session students would be able to play it, but they couldn't play it a week later--they couldn't even practice it at home because by the time they got home, it was gone from their short term memories. However, when I retaught the tune the next week, they retained it in their long term memories. I stopped worrying about student practice of new things because I discovered that with the second presentation students learned fast. I also started finding ways of giving students access to new tunes between times--through cassette tapes initially and later on through podcasts on the internet.

Schemas and equilibrium: I believe a lot of us understand this on an intuitive level, whether or not we know the academic words for this concept. I believe learning the actual academic concept allows teachers to build on their intuitions to make learning even faster and more successful.

Disequilibrium:
Disequilibrium comes from experiences and feedback. Listening to the G chord against the A chord in Using My Bible For a Roadmap is an unpleasant experience that can lead to a search for a better way of doing things. Teachers and other students provide feedback as to things that work and things that don't. Feedback should be provided quickly and in the most positive way possible to avoid the kind of disequilibrium that leads people to give up.

Assimilation and Adaptation:
Our teachers and now many of our students know how to play more than one instrument. This means that we have a greater ability to help newer learners to develop good working schemas.

Social learning:
We provide opportunities for students to interact within the classes--and more advanced students can inspire less advanced students in learning. We also provide students an opportunity to interact with everyone in the school and regular bluegrass players not part of the school through the jams at the end of classes and through the Friday night jams.

We also encourage approximation. A very young child who picks up a fiddle can play random open strings during a jam. Eventually he will get bored with the random open strings and will see others playing tunes. Then he will be intrinsically motivated to work on those tunes.

A really special way that we encourage social learning is through having volunteer teachers who have learned independently how to play musical instruments. In other words, because our teachers have not been put through the classical mill, they are more likely to teach in a way that is similar to how parents, friends, and family members teach children language. Part of our literacy problem in the U.S. is because we have created one-size-fits-all approaches to learning to read when, in fact, resources such as curriculum and reading books need to be adapted to each child. Unfortunately, there is a lot of music teaching that reflects the one-size-fits-all approach to teaching. The "language" approach that we are using is a more natural way for people to learn, no matter what their age.

=Final Thoughts= I hope these ideas can help us all to enjoy more lightbulb moments among the people with whom we interact, both musically and spiritually. That's what it is all about.