Another Year of Teaching DONE.

I feel it is always hard for teachers to remain positive at the end of a school year due to the sheer amount of exhaustion, pressure and new changes that are inevitably about to happen to each and every person in the profession. We (every year) say goodbye to many classes that we have worked with for the year, embark on wrapping our heads around a new timetable and try to reflect on all the positive outcomes from the year as somebody who has survived another term in this unforgiving yet rewarding career choice.

This blog post serves the purpose of reflecting on my year as a music teacher, airing some frustrations with music education as a whole and celebrating some of my minor but significant successes. I write this post at a time of just finishing and handing in my final dissertation for my MA degree at Sussex university, something that I am personally very proud of, I feel the research on student and teacher perceptions of music curriculum has served a huge purpose in establishing my teacher identity, values and vision for future research. I also hope this is a significant step forward to helping change the national narrative of the music curriculum which is heavily topic-focused at present. The thesis is called 'An exploratory case study into the current music curriculum in my context and whether it is relevant, accessible and engaging for students.' I cannot wait to share some of my findings and critical thoughts in later posts once the marking process has finished.

As I submitted the paper the new non-statutory guidance was published by the Department For Education (DfE) grandiosely titled 'The power of music to change lives: A national plan for music.' At first glance, this document looks promising for secondary schools and there are certain initiatives that I can get on board with, for example, the desire for schools to offer an hour a week of musical tuition at Key Stage (KS) 1, 2 and 3. The DfE back this up with a promising statement that 'Music should be planned, sequenced and taught as robustly as any other foundation subject.' (DfE, 2022). However, I am more worried about the selection of resources that will be inspired by the Model Music Curriculum (MMC) that was released in March 2021. To me, this MMC missed an opportunity for KS3 music curricula to be made relevant and readily accessible to many of our students, following the trends that Spruce (2013) recognised with the previous plan for music that was released by the DfE in 2012. It, unfortunately, feels, like not a lot has changed or will change as a result of this. Spruce (2013) highlights that although the wording of this document lives and breathes inclusivity, the plan still has an underlying intention of sustaining social and educational inequalities. This rings true with the new plan for music education. This is even more so prevalent as I remind you that this document is merely a guide to schools and is non-statutory. It has, however, inspired many questions, how many school leaders will even access and read this document? As a non-statutory document, how many will give it thought if it does not fall in line with a school's vision? Will this encourage schools to take on a 2 year KS3 model? How will this change Ofsted's view/judgement on schools that do not offer this provision? I hope that in this instance I am being a pessimist and that real change does happen in the near future that goes towards a consistent national provision for music education in the UK.

My practice as a teacher this year has improved dramatically and this could be down to a number of reasons. I am going into my fifth year in my current school (and ten years in educational posts) and am starting to see siblings of students I have taught before coming through. For some reason, in my context, the sense of commitment to long-serving teachers is subconsciously recognised and respected by those in our demographic. McIntyre (2010) puts this down to the pivotal role that teachers play in the wider community and the influence on familiarity from those invested in the community and actively play a part in the community. This rings true as my father also worked at the school and I regularly have students tell me that I taught their own father history.

I have enjoyed exploring some new pedagogy this year including student leaders and modelling using instructional videos that I have created or that are readily available on the wondrous internet. However, all are not new innovations in teaching, just tools and tricks that we as teachers use to keep things 'fresh' in the classroom.

My biggest achievement and innovation this year is the use of student voice to elicit real curriculum decisions. Student voice as described by Charteris and Smardon (2019) has played a huge part in my curriculum development this year. Charteris and Smardon (2019) explore many facets of student of voice but this year I have mainly focused on three of the main discourses that they identify. The first being 'learner agency' where students have the choice of material, who they work with and are encouraged to learn at their own pace. This links to the 'discourse of personalised learning' where student voice is used to establish interests and experience in order to incorporate 'intrinsic motivations' in curriculum decisions. Finally, the discourse of 'radical collegiality' where powerful knowledge and relevant knowledge are co-constructed between learner and teacher (Charteris and Smardon, 2019). Ultimately, this incorporated a lot of choice in the students lesson that have resulted in further musical engagement, a larger uptake for KS4 and contributed to a gradual culture shift in attitudes towards the music department.

I now plan on enjoying my summer holidays before starting the teaching year all over again, hopefully, a better practitioner, and reflective teacher and with plenty more 'tricks' up my sleeve to further my context's musical provision.

This concludes this blog post and I sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading it. Any feedback and thoughts are always welcome so please feel free to contact me on the relevant page.

References:

Charteris, J. and Smardon, D., 2019a. The politics of student voice: Unravelling the multiple discourses articulated in schools. Cambridge Journal of Education, 49(1), pp.93-110.

Department For Education (DfE), 2022. The Power Of Music To Change Lives: A National Plan For Music. Department For Education.

McIntyre, J., 2010. Why they stayed: a study of the working lives of long serving teachers in inner city schools (Doctoral dissertation, University of Nottingham).

Spruce, G., 2013. 'The national music plan' and the taming of English music education. Arts Education Policy Review, 114(3), pp.112-118.