How To teach students to love learning
Learning is so cool. Learning is probably the coolest, most important thing there is. And although there are some to whom this truth comes easily, there are many young people in our schools who dread the learning process, and even go to great lengths to avoid it. Why? These students struggle to find meaning in the tasks set for them during the school day. An amazing characteristic of adolescents is that they live in the moment - but it also means many students are unwilling to give their energy to learning about something if they don’t know how it will impact them immediately. The key to being a great teacher is to put yourself in the shoes of your learners, and find out how to make meaningful connections between their lives and the subject you are teaching.
For music teachers, this seems amazingly simple. Humans love music, and students encounter music in their lives every single day. It’s one of the few experiences besides learning that nearly every human shares. Still, asking a student to use their precious daily energy resources to care about a piece of music from more than 20 years ago can be a challenge as they are already bombarded with an over saturation of music in their personal lives. If they don’t understand how or why it’s important to them, they may tune-out (or even tune-in to music that’s more important to them). It’s important to get to know your students if you want to create the connections necessary to keep students engaged. A student who you’ve caught secretly listening to hip-hop through their air pods might be hitting pause to tune into the lesson where the opening night riots of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1916 is compared to the outrage Lil Nas X’s Montero music video garnered in 2021 (while keeping the discussion 100% age appropriate, of course). Another student whose favorite piece is Scheherazade might be interested to know that Stravinsky was Rimsky-Korsakov’s private student. Creating small bridges and connections ignites students’ imaginations, and allows them to add their own meaning to the learning process.
In every moment of my teaching, I seek to answer one question: how is this impactful to my students? If I answer this question satisfactorily in my students’ minds, then they will be hungry to learn the material I am presenting to them. I seek to create meaning in my teaching in three ways:
Bridging connections between the music that students consume now to the music of the past by using music theory, pop culture, and providing students context that is crucial to them caring about the music we are studying.
Using these connections to broaden the musical interests of students.
Giving students the tools to create approximations of their favorite music and music that is new and different to them.
That being said, even highly impactful learning is extremely hard work, and can be frustrating. Teachers serve as guides through the delicate process of learning, and must be kind, supportive, and caring figures in their students' lives. Students need a voice and to feel seen and heard in the classroom. They also must know that if they fail, their community will be there to help them back up to try again. Building a thriving learning community is the final step to getting students to care about learning. And if students care about learning, the learning itself will happen with little effort.