Teacher Interview - Jennie Such
Transcription
JO: It starts like, more broad in terms of just your involvement with music in general and then starts talking about music education
JENNIE: Ok
JO: So the first question is, have you always wanted a career in music or did you think about other things first?
JENNIE: Um I also thought about a career in journalism, because I really enjoy writing.
JO: That’s awesome.
JENNIE: Yeah. But I would say really I got serious about music as of probably in high school. quite serious about it in like midway through high school, grade 10 or 11 and then realized that that’s what I wanted to go into. But I’d say up until then it was kind of will I do writing or will I do singing?
JO: Yeah. Did you ever think of doing a double major or?
JENNIE: Do you know, it didn’t occur to me, I don’t even, we didn’t really have, I never had a guidance counselor that proposed that to me as an option. Like that seems to be something people are doing a lot more now and I noticed, I just have noticed since coming here and I’ve been here for four years and I did my undergrad here in the 90s. Like I graduated in 94, 90 to 94, and at that time there were not nearly as many options for students in the type of degree you could get.
JO: Oh really? Yeah.
JENNIE: So they may have had people doing double majors but I never knew of anyone doing that. Yeah which it seems to be more of a common thing now.
JO: Yeah.
JENNIE: and there seem to be many more extremes you can do like you know, your honors bachelor of music. When I did it when I was here, there was an honours bachelors of music in performance or in education which they still have and that but or you could do an artist’s diploma. But now you can do a bachelor of musical arts. You can do a bachelor of musical arts in performance or education. Like there are lots of different scenarios that you can do to make things work for you
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: depending on your skillset academically. That was not the case.
JO: Weird. I didn’t know that that was a recent thing.
JENNIE: I don’t recall that ever being the case at that time. So the curriculum has changed a lot
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: um and so no I’d never considered that as an option really but having said that you know like there are not a lot of good music critics out there.
JO: That’s true yeah.
JENNIE: they’re not trained musicians, the people who are critiquing musical performances often. So I feel like that’s a niche that could be filled you know.
JO: Yeah that’s cool. Alright my second question, um, this is just because I want to know, but like what kind of teaching experience do you need, slash do you need any to get a job as a studio teacher.
JENNIE: here?
JO: Yeah. What kind of teaching experience do you need?
JENNIE: Um you know the, like I was invited to apply four years ago, and at that time I had to submit my teaching (DOCA?) and my resume. So I had built up a certain amount of teaching experience not at the University level but with children and with young adults. More like high school age students.
JO: Did you ever teach in high school or just?
JENNIE: I taught at a private school. (Brigsam?) Hall in Toronto. So I was doing that as a way to supplement my income as a singer, and um I had done some coaching. I had been asked to coach a production of Billy Elliot that was in Toronto it was a Mirvish production. They were looking for a vocal coach so I had some theatre. It’s teaching. Coaching is teaching. There’s a little bit more emphasis on interpretation rather than technique.
JO: mhm
JENNIE: in coaching cause you’re already working with professionals who have that established so but in Billy Elliot I was working with a lot of children actually, and boys whose voices were changing.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: but they were like professional kids. SO I had those two teaching experiences but I think I was, they knew of me because I had worked with some faculty as a performer.
JO: okay
JENNIE: So I had done concerts as a performer with faculty members, so they knew my work as a performer. And my credentials are actually, they’re not academic, my post graduate credentials, they’re more applied based, they’re from the UK. So I think that c
JO: yeah yeah yeah. My third question. This is in relation to the different students you have. So do you use different teaching strategies for different students, or like how do you know what people respond to?
JENNIE: So my, and I sort of just developed this over four years, cause when I started you know, I didn’t have a fully developed teaching philosophy in a way
JO: yeah
JENNIE: and I knew what worked for me as a singer and I had this table of exercises that I did personally in my own warm up and I’ve done a lot of reading and attending conferences and things like that too to sort of just gain more information about those kinds of things. I think that really good teachers are able to sort of be spontaneous and inventive on their feet so that they’re adapting their ideas to fit the student. And there’s a certain um I think that you become better at doing that and (something else I have no clue). So because like anything, you can have a certain affinity for that kind of thing and sometimes performers have that built into them because they’re used to having a certain amount of spontaneity in their craft, which can translate into teaching too. But I think uh I mean my thing is kinesthetic learning because that’s what appeals to me as a singer. Not everybody responds to that kind of teaching so then it’s important to have a certain amount of being able to communicate in a different way. Like maybe that person is you know cerebral and wants to know about the, in more detail the musculature. Or you know maybe some people are just too inhibited to move a lot or they find it embarrassing or whatever so you sort of over, I think as you become more experienced you have bigger vocabulary of expression. The concepts are pretty much the same, I would say every teacher I’ve ever had has been trying to accomplish the same thing but people have done it in many different ways.
JO: Yeah that’s what I’ve noticed too. And like some of them work really well, and some of them, like a teacher will say something and I’m like “I have no clue how to achieve that”.
JENNIE: Right so then that is, it’s up to the teacher then to first of all be able to sense that that, that they’re, that the student isn’t actually [getting it] if they’re not comfortable saying so and sometimes you might not feel comfortable saying I really don’t get what you mean to a teacher. But so it’s the teacher’s job to like intuit that in the first place, and then be able to switch tracks quickly and try to explain it in a different way. So I’d say I do a lot of um trying to get people to feel things. Try to um I use lots of little props and things to get people to, to have sensations. And then I think there’s a certain amount of, uh, I use text a lot. So using words using the air pressure that consonants provide and then just using, uh talking about text so that the singer uses their imagination and gets out of maybe cerebralizing the technique too much and gets into actually communicating the words. And sometimes that takes care of a lot of technical problems. So using kinesthetic techniques for me, using text and then I’m trying to think, um I think just looking for clues in the music itself. Rhythmic things, I spend a lot of time trying in technical lessons doing things in different rhythms, to try to, to be able to feel, to support pitches they may not always support because of the way the rhythm is written. And I have a staple of exercises I use for certain issues that become second nature to people. So I think as, I’m noticing now that I’ve got a crop that I’ve been with for four years, I’ve noticed that, and this happens much earlier with some people right, who I just click with, but I find by the time we’re in fourth year together it becomes much more collaborative. Like, I mean I work that way anyway, I don’t, I really don’t like this sort of like “that was wrong” kind of approach that teachers have. So it’s always as communicating as adults like a give and take kind of thing. But especially in fourth year then it’s almost like well “what do you think if we try this?” or “how should we fix that?” and oftentimes we can kinda figure that out together. I think my own, I try to be, you know I’ve had a lot of good and bad experiences with teachers. So I think both experiences have been valuable because
JO: Then you know what to do and what not to do yeah.
JENNIE: yeah what works for you and what you really disliked in teaching, in teachers. And you know, it’s just good to, it’s as important as what you liked in a way.
JO: That’s super relevant to the next question
JENNIE: Ok
JO: Which is basically apart from your background as a performer, where or from who do you get inspiration for new things to try or things that influence your teaching?
JENNIE: I would say that just, I mean as luck would have it, when I started this job I also got a job at the theatre. Whatever kismet happened, I was just lucky that those two things coincided, and so I’d say that’s my biggest influencer, because though that job I’ve been working with a lot of coaches who are not necessarily voice coaches but they’re also movement coaches and they have a lot of open classes for both staff members and company members to take part in.
JO: cool
JENNIE: So I would say that kind of work has been just really influential in the last few years and thinking about text and the spoken voice. I work with a couple of actors regularly privately at home and I’ve learned a lot from them.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: because they have a different way of approaching singing. Like it’s much more playful, there’s like a playfulness and curiosity. There’s not as much like eating themselves up about doing things right. They’re giving themselves a lot more freedom to kind of just explore and make mistakes. And for not doing “pretty” necessarily or there’s uh... So just, that kind of playfulness that actors have and I think that they have time in theatre school to kind of explore that, like to actually build that as a skill. That has been really eye-opening for me as a singer, just to, just to kind of approach learning music in a different way, and approach practicing in a different way. And using the spoken voice and how that can translate into the singing voice as well.
JO: Yeah I’ve noticed that a lot with like, when you watch movies where actors are trying to get into singing. Like I just watched La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone and just the way that they sing is so different from the way that anyone here would sing.
JENNIE: yeah
JO: but it’s not that it’s bad or it’s wrong, it’s just, like it feels like it’s a blend of speaking and singing.
JENNIE: There’s like um, when I heard musical theatre like people talk about singing and like a “legit” sound there’s this um this this concept of it being somewhat presentational. Like it’s a bit of a manufactured sound. And I actually, I think that is a danger of classical voice. Like if people are trying to model themselves after a very mature voice, or they’re singing repertoire that’s too difficult for their voice type, not appropriate for their voice type then I think you can get, run the risk of having a kind of manufactures, presentational sort of sound. And I think what, certainly what actors and musical theatre performers are looking always to be is authentic and real on stage. Even though musical theatre is a totally unreal kind of art form. But it’s, you know in some ways the music is a little bit less demanding than like an opera score. So the focus is gonna be, can be a little bit different, you don’t have to be as vigilant about certain aspects of singing you know? And then more of it’s just part of the style that it can be in a more spoken, declamatory kind of way, producing the sound. But then when you look at the classical actors, who are who are in the Shakespearean plays, they are not, the interesting thing I find really fascinating, that classical actors are not mic’ed on the festival stage but the musicals are.
JO: weird
JENNIE: whereas it’s just like an opera operas are not mic’ed but musical theatre is so it’s I’d say that actually the classical theatre like the Shakespearean training and classical singing training are actually very similar. There’s a lot of similarities about you know phrasing, breath control, breath management, and the detail, like the detail that actors go into with the Shakespearean you know, monologue is the kind of detail that a singer would dive into as a lead you know? The attention to with language and how that looks up at the music and the pacing is exactly the same the classical actors. And that training is not put into singing in musical theatre because they’re also learning how to dance and act. They’re doing a whole bunch of things. So I’ve gotten a lot of, I found that the, it’s interesting cause with the job when I get into the meat of the season, like when it becomes more of a long distance marathon and the opening night’s finished, and they’re just into shows eight shows a week, then it’s the actors who are a lot more vigilant about keeping up the training of singing, than the musical theatre performers.
JO: Weird
JENNIE: And I think there’s a link there. It’s like a, it’s a different kind of art.
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: There’s like a vigilance that opera singers also have to always be practicing and to always be in you know working their voice, working their instrument. It’s a little bit more athletic in a way the voice, and musical theatre performers are very athletic with the dancing but not so much with the singing maybe.
JO: Well my last question is what do you like the best about teaching at a University level?
JENNIE: Oh, well first of all it’s the biggest joy to get to, like to work on this kind of repertoire. You know cause like there are so many amazing gems right?
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: Lied and french song. I mean it’s just like, it’s wonderful to get to work on that music. Like that sort of standard of music that you have to learn at a University level. So I feel like my learning doesn’t ever stop… is I’m always learning new repertoire for one thing and working with many different kinds of people with many different kinds of challenges. Like that’s always changing, and the other thing I like is the longer trajectory. So it’s different than like coaching at a theatre where I might get two times a season with each person. I get a much longer relationship with my students, so that’s like, really satisfying.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: to watch that progress.
JO: for sure
JENNIE: so those things I really really enjoy about teaching at a University. And also I mean because of the specificness of my training there are not a lot of jobs that I’m really qualified for, and like I mean this is something that you know it’s like we do something that’s quite niche oriented
JO: yeah
JENNIE: and um so it’s like it’s a pleasure to be around people who are turned on my that, who enjoy the slightly geekiness of it all.
JO: yeah that was my thing about wanting to teach University over anything else is that you’re dealing with people that are just as passionate as you are.
JENNIE: That’s right. Because on the most part people are here because they want to be and it’s hard to get in, so it’s, yeah I think that would be very different than maybe teaching at a high school level. And certainly different than private students. Because private students are much more transient. You’re not necessarily having the longer relationship with a private student so it’s like the consistency of the lessons you do you see, hopefully with most people you see progress which is kind of cool.
JO: Yeah that’s awesome.
JENNIE: I hope that was good.
JO: Yeah that was great!
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Below are the audio files for my student interviews. I interviewed David, a psychology student at Kings College here in London and Sarah, a medical sciences student at Western.
I found it interesting that first of all, their interviews were considerably shorter than the interview with my studio teacher even though I asked the same amount of questions both times. I think this has to do with the level of experience between the two groups. My studio teacher has had many more years of life and much more experience relevant to the questions, and therefore had much more to offer in an interview.
One thing I found interesting about Sarah was that she is heavily involved with music, and is passionate about it, yet she does not want to go into music, and it's not due to her experience with music in schools. We've been talking a lot this year about the negative effects that music programs in schools might have on prospective music students, as if the current state of music programs is turning kids off from going into music. Sarah shared that she had a fantastic experience with music in school, but she simply has other passions that she would like to pursue just as much as music.
With David, it was almost the opposite. He had considered going into music at one point, but he explains that he didn't think he was "talented enough". He had had fantastic experiences with music outside of school, but was not very pleased with his school music classes. It makes you wonder if we as a society put too much emphasis on school music, and don't give extracurricular programs enough credit. People tend to thing that high school music is the end all be all for music students, and everyone in University seems to be here because they succeeded well in their high school music programs. David felt that he wasn't very good/didn't like band in school. Would his thoughts on going into music have been different if high school music programs had a wider dynamic of classes that spanned beyond band and orchestra? Would his thoughts on going into music have been different if we valued extracurricular music activities as much as we did scholarly ones?
Transcription
JO: It starts like, more broad in terms of just your involvement with music in general and then starts talking about music education
JENNIE: Ok
JO: So the first question is, have you always wanted a career in music or did you think about other things first?
JENNIE: Um I also thought about a career in journalism, because I really enjoy writing.
JO: That’s awesome.
JENNIE: Yeah. But I would say really I got serious about music as of probably in high school. quite serious about it in like midway through high school, grade 10 or 11 and then realized that that’s what I wanted to go into. But I’d say up until then it was kind of will I do writing or will I do singing?
JO: Yeah. Did you ever think of doing a double major or?
JENNIE: Do you know, it didn’t occur to me, I don’t even, we didn’t really have, I never had a guidance counselor that proposed that to me as an option. Like that seems to be something people are doing a lot more now and I noticed, I just have noticed since coming here and I’ve been here for four years and I did my undergrad here in the 90s. Like I graduated in 94, 90 to 94, and at that time there were not nearly as many options for students in the type of degree you could get.
JO: Oh really? Yeah.
JENNIE: So they may have had people doing double majors but I never knew of anyone doing that. Yeah which it seems to be more of a common thing now.
JO: Yeah.
JENNIE: and there seem to be many more extremes you can do like you know, your honors bachelor of music. When I did it when I was here, there was an honours bachelors of music in performance or in education which they still have and that but or you could do an artist’s diploma. But now you can do a bachelor of musical arts. You can do a bachelor of musical arts in performance or education. Like there are lots of different scenarios that you can do to make things work for you
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: depending on your skillset academically. That was not the case.
JO: Weird. I didn’t know that that was a recent thing.
JENNIE: I don’t recall that ever being the case at that time. So the curriculum has changed a lot
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: um and so no I’d never considered that as an option really but having said that you know like there are not a lot of good music critics out there.
JO: That’s true yeah.
JENNIE: they’re not trained musicians, the people who are critiquing musical performances often. So I feel like that’s a niche that could be filled you know.
JO: Yeah that’s cool. Alright my second question, um, this is just because I want to know, but like what kind of teaching experience do you need, slash do you need any to get a job as a studio teacher.
JENNIE: here?
JO: Yeah. What kind of teaching experience do you need?
JENNIE: Um you know the, like I was invited to apply four years ago, and at that time I had to submit my teaching (DOCA?) and my resume. So I had built up a certain amount of teaching experience not at the University level but with children and with young adults. More like high school age students.
JO: Did you ever teach in high school or just?
JENNIE: I taught at a private school. (Brigsam?) Hall in Toronto. So I was doing that as a way to supplement my income as a singer, and um I had done some coaching. I had been asked to coach a production of Billy Elliot that was in Toronto it was a Mirvish production. They were looking for a vocal coach so I had some theatre. It’s teaching. Coaching is teaching. There’s a little bit more emphasis on interpretation rather than technique.
JO: mhm
JENNIE: in coaching cause you’re already working with professionals who have that established so but in Billy Elliot I was working with a lot of children actually, and boys whose voices were changing.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: but they were like professional kids. SO I had those two teaching experiences but I think I was, they knew of me because I had worked with some faculty as a performer.
JO: okay
JENNIE: So I had done concerts as a performer with faculty members, so they knew my work as a performer. And my credentials are actually, they’re not academic, my post graduate credentials, they’re more applied based, they’re from the UK. So I think that c
JO: yeah yeah yeah. My third question. This is in relation to the different students you have. So do you use different teaching strategies for different students, or like how do you know what people respond to?
JENNIE: So my, and I sort of just developed this over four years, cause when I started you know, I didn’t have a fully developed teaching philosophy in a way
JO: yeah
JENNIE: and I knew what worked for me as a singer and I had this table of exercises that I did personally in my own warm up and I’ve done a lot of reading and attending conferences and things like that too to sort of just gain more information about those kinds of things. I think that really good teachers are able to sort of be spontaneous and inventive on their feet so that they’re adapting their ideas to fit the student. And there’s a certain um I think that you become better at doing that and (something else I have no clue). So because like anything, you can have a certain affinity for that kind of thing and sometimes performers have that built into them because they’re used to having a certain amount of spontaneity in their craft, which can translate into teaching too. But I think uh I mean my thing is kinesthetic learning because that’s what appeals to me as a singer. Not everybody responds to that kind of teaching so then it’s important to have a certain amount of being able to communicate in a different way. Like maybe that person is you know cerebral and wants to know about the, in more detail the musculature. Or you know maybe some people are just too inhibited to move a lot or they find it embarrassing or whatever so you sort of over, I think as you become more experienced you have bigger vocabulary of expression. The concepts are pretty much the same, I would say every teacher I’ve ever had has been trying to accomplish the same thing but people have done it in many different ways.
JO: Yeah that’s what I’ve noticed too. And like some of them work really well, and some of them, like a teacher will say something and I’m like “I have no clue how to achieve that”.
JENNIE: Right so then that is, it’s up to the teacher then to first of all be able to sense that that, that they’re, that the student isn’t actually [getting it] if they’re not comfortable saying so and sometimes you might not feel comfortable saying I really don’t get what you mean to a teacher. But so it’s the teacher’s job to like intuit that in the first place, and then be able to switch tracks quickly and try to explain it in a different way. So I’d say I do a lot of um trying to get people to feel things. Try to um I use lots of little props and things to get people to, to have sensations. And then I think there’s a certain amount of, uh, I use text a lot. So using words using the air pressure that consonants provide and then just using, uh talking about text so that the singer uses their imagination and gets out of maybe cerebralizing the technique too much and gets into actually communicating the words. And sometimes that takes care of a lot of technical problems. So using kinesthetic techniques for me, using text and then I’m trying to think, um I think just looking for clues in the music itself. Rhythmic things, I spend a lot of time trying in technical lessons doing things in different rhythms, to try to, to be able to feel, to support pitches they may not always support because of the way the rhythm is written. And I have a staple of exercises I use for certain issues that become second nature to people. So I think as, I’m noticing now that I’ve got a crop that I’ve been with for four years, I’ve noticed that, and this happens much earlier with some people right, who I just click with, but I find by the time we’re in fourth year together it becomes much more collaborative. Like, I mean I work that way anyway, I don’t, I really don’t like this sort of like “that was wrong” kind of approach that teachers have. So it’s always as communicating as adults like a give and take kind of thing. But especially in fourth year then it’s almost like well “what do you think if we try this?” or “how should we fix that?” and oftentimes we can kinda figure that out together. I think my own, I try to be, you know I’ve had a lot of good and bad experiences with teachers. So I think both experiences have been valuable because
JO: Then you know what to do and what not to do yeah.
JENNIE: yeah what works for you and what you really disliked in teaching, in teachers. And you know, it’s just good to, it’s as important as what you liked in a way.
JO: That’s super relevant to the next question
JENNIE: Ok
JO: Which is basically apart from your background as a performer, where or from who do you get inspiration for new things to try or things that influence your teaching?
JENNIE: I would say that just, I mean as luck would have it, when I started this job I also got a job at the theatre. Whatever kismet happened, I was just lucky that those two things coincided, and so I’d say that’s my biggest influencer, because though that job I’ve been working with a lot of coaches who are not necessarily voice coaches but they’re also movement coaches and they have a lot of open classes for both staff members and company members to take part in.
JO: cool
JENNIE: So I would say that kind of work has been just really influential in the last few years and thinking about text and the spoken voice. I work with a couple of actors regularly privately at home and I’ve learned a lot from them.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: because they have a different way of approaching singing. Like it’s much more playful, there’s like a playfulness and curiosity. There’s not as much like eating themselves up about doing things right. They’re giving themselves a lot more freedom to kind of just explore and make mistakes. And for not doing “pretty” necessarily or there’s uh... So just, that kind of playfulness that actors have and I think that they have time in theatre school to kind of explore that, like to actually build that as a skill. That has been really eye-opening for me as a singer, just to, just to kind of approach learning music in a different way, and approach practicing in a different way. And using the spoken voice and how that can translate into the singing voice as well.
JO: Yeah I’ve noticed that a lot with like, when you watch movies where actors are trying to get into singing. Like I just watched La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone and just the way that they sing is so different from the way that anyone here would sing.
JENNIE: yeah
JO: but it’s not that it’s bad or it’s wrong, it’s just, like it feels like it’s a blend of speaking and singing.
JENNIE: There’s like um, when I heard musical theatre like people talk about singing and like a “legit” sound there’s this um this this concept of it being somewhat presentational. Like it’s a bit of a manufactured sound. And I actually, I think that is a danger of classical voice. Like if people are trying to model themselves after a very mature voice, or they’re singing repertoire that’s too difficult for their voice type, not appropriate for their voice type then I think you can get, run the risk of having a kind of manufactures, presentational sort of sound. And I think what, certainly what actors and musical theatre performers are looking always to be is authentic and real on stage. Even though musical theatre is a totally unreal kind of art form. But it’s, you know in some ways the music is a little bit less demanding than like an opera score. So the focus is gonna be, can be a little bit different, you don’t have to be as vigilant about certain aspects of singing you know? And then more of it’s just part of the style that it can be in a more spoken, declamatory kind of way, producing the sound. But then when you look at the classical actors, who are who are in the Shakespearean plays, they are not, the interesting thing I find really fascinating, that classical actors are not mic’ed on the festival stage but the musicals are.
JO: weird
JENNIE: whereas it’s just like an opera operas are not mic’ed but musical theatre is so it’s I’d say that actually the classical theatre like the Shakespearean training and classical singing training are actually very similar. There’s a lot of similarities about you know phrasing, breath control, breath management, and the detail, like the detail that actors go into with the Shakespearean you know, monologue is the kind of detail that a singer would dive into as a lead you know? The attention to with language and how that looks up at the music and the pacing is exactly the same the classical actors. And that training is not put into singing in musical theatre because they’re also learning how to dance and act. They’re doing a whole bunch of things. So I’ve gotten a lot of, I found that the, it’s interesting cause with the job when I get into the meat of the season, like when it becomes more of a long distance marathon and the opening night’s finished, and they’re just into shows eight shows a week, then it’s the actors who are a lot more vigilant about keeping up the training of singing, than the musical theatre performers.
JO: Weird
JENNIE: And I think there’s a link there. It’s like a, it’s a different kind of art.
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: There’s like a vigilance that opera singers also have to always be practicing and to always be in you know working their voice, working their instrument. It’s a little bit more athletic in a way the voice, and musical theatre performers are very athletic with the dancing but not so much with the singing maybe.
JO: Well my last question is what do you like the best about teaching at a University level?
JENNIE: Oh, well first of all it’s the biggest joy to get to, like to work on this kind of repertoire. You know cause like there are so many amazing gems right?
JO: Yeah
JENNIE: Lied and french song. I mean it’s just like, it’s wonderful to get to work on that music. Like that sort of standard of music that you have to learn at a University level. So I feel like my learning doesn’t ever stop… is I’m always learning new repertoire for one thing and working with many different kinds of people with many different kinds of challenges. Like that’s always changing, and the other thing I like is the longer trajectory. So it’s different than like coaching at a theatre where I might get two times a season with each person. I get a much longer relationship with my students, so that’s like, really satisfying.
JO: yeah
JENNIE: to watch that progress.
JO: for sure
JENNIE: so those things I really really enjoy about teaching at a University. And also I mean because of the specificness of my training there are not a lot of jobs that I’m really qualified for, and like I mean this is something that you know it’s like we do something that’s quite niche oriented
JO: yeah
JENNIE: and um so it’s like it’s a pleasure to be around people who are turned on my that, who enjoy the slightly geekiness of it all.
JO: yeah that was my thing about wanting to teach University over anything else is that you’re dealing with people that are just as passionate as you are.
JENNIE: That’s right. Because on the most part people are here because they want to be and it’s hard to get in, so it’s, yeah I think that would be very different than maybe teaching at a high school level. And certainly different than private students. Because private students are much more transient. You’re not necessarily having the longer relationship with a private student so it’s like the consistency of the lessons you do you see, hopefully with most people you see progress which is kind of cool.
JO: Yeah that’s awesome.
JENNIE: I hope that was good.
JO: Yeah that was great!
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Below are the audio files for my student interviews. I interviewed David, a psychology student at Kings College here in London and Sarah, a medical sciences student at Western.
I found it interesting that first of all, their interviews were considerably shorter than the interview with my studio teacher even though I asked the same amount of questions both times. I think this has to do with the level of experience between the two groups. My studio teacher has had many more years of life and much more experience relevant to the questions, and therefore had much more to offer in an interview.
One thing I found interesting about Sarah was that she is heavily involved with music, and is passionate about it, yet she does not want to go into music, and it's not due to her experience with music in schools. We've been talking a lot this year about the negative effects that music programs in schools might have on prospective music students, as if the current state of music programs is turning kids off from going into music. Sarah shared that she had a fantastic experience with music in school, but she simply has other passions that she would like to pursue just as much as music.
With David, it was almost the opposite. He had considered going into music at one point, but he explains that he didn't think he was "talented enough". He had had fantastic experiences with music outside of school, but was not very pleased with his school music classes. It makes you wonder if we as a society put too much emphasis on school music, and don't give extracurricular programs enough credit. People tend to thing that high school music is the end all be all for music students, and everyone in University seems to be here because they succeeded well in their high school music programs. David felt that he wasn't very good/didn't like band in school. Would his thoughts on going into music have been different if high school music programs had a wider dynamic of classes that spanned beyond band and orchestra? Would his thoughts on going into music have been different if we valued extracurricular music activities as much as we did scholarly ones?
david.3gp | |
File Size: | 1596 kb |
File Type: | 3gp |
sarah.3gp | |
File Size: | 1415 kb |
File Type: | 3gp |