Ele­men­tary Music School Teacher Kather­ine Fras­er and her stu­dents lis­ten, impro­vise, com­pose, and reflect on these cre­ative school music experiences:

“Hi, my name is Kather­ine Fras­er. I live and teach in Toron­to, ON. My stu­dents are Grades 1–8 at Jean Lumb Pub­lic School. Our music pro­gram includes lis­ten­ing, cre­at­ing, mak­ing sounds, mak­ing sounds sound dif­fer­ent, exper­i­ment­ing, dis­cov­er­ing, danc­ing, and celebrating, 

Here are some games that focus on lis­ten­ing and cre­at­ing:

• Emp­ty Repeat­ing Can­vas
• Impro­vis­ing to graph­ic notation
• Sym­bol chalk­board graph­ic score

Here is anoth­er exer­cise that builds a groove with impro­vised loops

• Build­ing a groove

Here is a video of stu­dents com­pos­ing using their own orig­i­nal notation

• Stu­dents com­pos­ing using their own notation

What Does Suc­cess­ful Music Ed Mean To You?

Here is  a video of my stu­dents and me reflect­ing on what suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion means to us, or read on for the transcription:

Kather­ine Fas­er: “Today we are dis­cussing what suc­cess­ful music edu­ca­tion means to you. So, any ideas?

Stu­dent #1: “It means any­time that we get to come in here and learn about music and play dif­fer­ent instruments.” 

Stu­dent #2: “ I also think that in a pro­gram like this, you come here and you explore what you want, even if you’ve nev­er done it before. [The pro­gram] has a big impact on the music itself, and I think it’s a real­ly great expe­ri­ence if you to come here to learn and prac­tice and just express your­self in music.” 

Kather­ine Fras­er: “Express your­self. And for me, a suc­cess­ful music pro­gram is that my stu­dents come in and they feel real­ly self con­fi­dent to take risks when we are impro­vis­ing, com­pos­ing, but also when we’re rehears­ing and per­form­ing. That they see them­selves as musi­cians in this space. Any­thing else?” 

Stu­dent #1: “I think it’s impor­tant that we’re actu­al­ly learn­ing the cor­rect thing. Like when you teach us a song, we learn where it orig­i­nat­ed, or who made it and things like that So we’re actu­al­ly prop­er­ly learning.” 

Kather­ine Fras­er: “I agree. Do you have any­thing else you want­ed to add?” 

Stu­dent #2: “I could add that I think it is real­ly fun that we come here and you teach us cer­tain music styles and then you give us a chance to turn it around and maybe com­pose some­thing that we thought of and use the impor­tant facts and feelings. 

Kather­ine Fras­er: “Love it. And the last thing I want­ed to say was that it is real­ly impor­tant to me that my stu­dents feel seen and heard and the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as well, and that they’re rep­re­sent­ed here in the room and in the pro­gram, and that I don’t make all the deci­sions on where the units are going next, where the lessons are going next, what songs we do for shows. We decid­ed that togeth­er. Any last thoughts? 

What’s your favorite sub­ject in the whole school? (laughs) That’s a loaded ques­tion. All right. Thank you.”

What brought you to cre­ative music? 

View this video for my thoughts on cre­ative music mak­ing or read on for the transcription:

“Hel­lo, my name is Kather­ine Fras­er and I am the grade one to eight music teacher here at Jean Lumb Pub­lic School in down­town Toron­to. I’m here to answer a cou­ple of questions. 

The first one is, ‘What drew you towards this music mak­ing in your own teach­ing prac­tice?’ The answer to that is twofold.

First, it’s cir­cum­stances. This con­tract I’m in now is my thir­teenth con­tract in my fourth province in sev­en­teen years. So every music job I’ve had has had dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties, dif­fer­ent stu­dents, dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions, dif­fer­ent instru­ments. I’ve had to become a very cre­ative teacher and adapt. That has also giv­en me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rein­vent myself every cou­ple of years or two, and there­fore I have been able to try new things. 

The sec­ond part of it is curios­i­ty because I noticed that lis­ten­ing games and activ­i­ties and com­po­si­tion impro­vi­sa­tion units def­i­nite­ly inspire more cre­ativ­i­ty and excite­ment than tech­nique-based lessons work­ing up to a per­for­mance. So with cre­ative music mak­ing, more stu­dents became involved in my pro­gram, and it became our music pro­gram. It was less teacher-dri­ven, less mine. 

Cre­ative music mak­ing has moved in my teach­ing prac­tice from one aspect of the pro­gram to the main focus. 

Also, I’ve found ways of cel­e­brat­ing cre­ative music mak­ing in con­certs. A con­crete exam­ple is this year I part­nered with the awe­some music project www.theawesomemusicproject.com here in Toron­to. It  is a Toron­to-based orga­ni­za­tion that cel­e­brates music sto­ries, and fundrais­ers to ben­e­fit men­tal health. I had the stu­dents go home and fill out a Google form with their fam­i­lies inter­view­ing some­one about their favorite song and the sto­ry behind that song. Then the class­es and I lis­tened to the song selec­tions, chose one per class. We arranged and learned a ver­sion of it with the instru­ments avail­able to us. For the con­cert, it was a video where it had the cho­sen song’s fam­i­ly mak­ing  an intro­duc­tion about why it was impor­tant to them, fol­lowed by the class’ per­for­mance of that song. It real­ly brought the com­mu­ni­ty voic­es in and it was a very cre­ative, whole school, long project. 

How am I help­ing cen­tre my stu­dents’ music lis­ten­ing and sound­ing prac­tices? I find when stu­dents cre­ate their own music, they’re bring­ing their own music pref­er­ences into their projects. So right now, Jean Lumb Pub­lic School stu­dents are work­ing on a com­po­si­tion unit. The first part is done in Sound­trap and Garage­Band, They were encour­aged to import files into their pieces so they could either record them­selves mak­ing music or bring in some YouTube sound files. Then the next part of the project had them using West­ern Euro­pean clas­si­cal music nota­tion. So they were writ­ing on a staff with notes but they were able to choose what­ev­er instru­ment that they want­ed that we explored before the unit. That free­dom real­ly helps them find success. 

Right now we’re on the last part, which is orig­i­nal scores and so the stu­dents can devel­op their own nota­tion. Some are inspired by graph­ic scores, and they are real­ly ris­ing to the occa­sion. Their orig­i­nal scores are so intrigu­ing, so cre­ative, and so their own. 

And last­ly, what are your hopes for music edu­ca­tion? That music teach­ers find the sup­port and con­fi­dence they need to demon­strate to their stu­dents, their admin­is­tra­tion and the com­mu­ni­ty that music edu­ca­tion does not have to focus sole­ly on the prepa­ra­tion and exe­cu­tion of Remem­brance Day, win­ter and spring con­certs fea­tur­ing West­ern Euro­pean com­posers and instruments. 

There’s more. Stu­dents deserve more, and though per­for­mance might be a pas­sion for some, it’s not for all. Stu­dents and teach­ers need to lis­ten to more music, more sounds, and more voic­es. Pro­grams need to be com­pre­hen­sive and cov­er all aspects of Music Edu­ca­tion: cre­at­ing, lis­ten­ing, cel­e­brat­ing, per­form­ing, research­ing heal­ing, reimag­in­ing, and won­der­ing. Thanks for listening.” 

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Kather­ine at Katherine.fraser(at)tdsb.on.ca.