possibilities

All too often music teachers are led to believe that performance encompasses the only priority by which we teach. Unfortunately for most of our secondary or elementary aged students, they could not care less about performance in our society. Forced by politicians, school board members, principals and parents to reap benefits quickly, many teachers struggle to balance how much students learn with how often they perform. Numerous times in my own classroom experiences as a student, the class often felt a negative energy or vibe for not performing up to par. I think it's natural for an ensemble to break out of the caged formality of education to want to have fun. Number one, this is evidence that the teacher is doing a good job. The very meaning of the word ensemble, a group viewed as a whole rather than individuality, denotes that there must be a common bond. Good ensembles value their time for fun just as much as their work time. Peter Block acknowledges these facts within his book, "Community: the structure of belonging". On page 53, he mentions that "our conversations and gatherings have the power to shift the context from retributive community to restorative community." In a group, punishment normally has a hypnotizing affect that could put the energy of a group in jeopardy. When music educators build restorative communities, music educators build an ensemble which looks at problems together and takes control of the situation itself.

For example, a group of high school students hope to travel to Disney World to participate as a performance ensemble in one of the major parks, visible to many tourists. The fun involved with the preparation for this trip was tangible throughout the group, yet they knew that the one performance they had meant everything. About a month before the trip, the group found out that one of their basses would not be coming on the trip due to monetary issues and concerns. Most of the students had raised enough money through the annual candy sale and program advertisements. However this particular student could not come up with the final few dollars to pay for the trip. In the end the director had told the student privately that he was not allowed on the trip. The ensemble had heard of the situation and pooled together some of their own money to pay off the rest of the bass's trip.

In Lynn Brinckmeyer's article called, "Possibilities", she makes an important Reimer-like statement which struck my fancy: "We may struggle to discover the beauty in some of our students or colleagues who approach life with different value systems than ours. Can you think of a student who doesn't fit neatly in society? Most likely that one needs our appreciation even more than those who are attractive by society's standards."

In the example above, we see a community coming together to rally for a cause. There are so many negative routes the ensemble could have taken that would have excommunicated the bass student from a wonderful trip to Disney. Likewise, the teacher also could have enforced that the student be kept off the trip therefore loosening the feeling of ensemble and diminishing the upbeat energy the students had as a group. While the performance would have gone on with or without the student, one can see a general outpouring of care for the ensemble and its members as a whole.