Music lesson at Moision Koulu: steel band shows

Music class (Annika Viitanen, Grade 8)

Students were making posters about their own computer music products. They had worksheets for computer music which were guidelines for them for an entire year. Basically they all sat down to do their own work, and asked the teacher when necessary. (A bit quiet for a music class I thought, but this confirms the emphasis on independent learning.)

In grade 7, music is compulsory, and students learn about rock and roll history, guitar, bass, drum, singing, and a bit of music theory. From Grade 8 onwards, music is optional.

This school has a special music oriented scheme which continues the music training for students who mostly have begun their special music scheme since grade 3, and this scheme itself will be followed up on by high schools. Students learn about music history, singing, classical music, jazz, etc.

This is only possible because the municipal government and local community give a lot of resources. The equipment for computer music production (the keyboard and computer equipment) is very costly.

The school has quite a lot of music-related activities: choir training, 10 gigs and concerts every year. Music projects are common for other subjects too eg theatre.




They have also started a steel band, and I had a chance to see their steel band show. (they had only had 4 hours of group practice together, and started learning it two weeks ago – very impressive). It is not a difficult kind of instrument apparently, and Annikka has marked the notes on the drums so students can get the hang of it more quickly.

(unfortunately the video is not working at the moment because of technical problems...)

I asked the teacher whether she valued the inspiration of interest more than the honing of skills in musical instruments. She said this was a personal choice for the teachers, and she personally tries to strike a balance between the two. There is not much individual music instruction in the school because teachers don’t have much time, but when teaching in group, the teacher cares a lot about the holistic cooperation between the group and learning together on the same level.

Their philosophy is to give students enough time to develop their interests and skills in their instruments – rather than churning out young prodigies in music.

(Reflection: This is good for the kids who can’t stand a competitive training, and reveals their policy of equality rather than elitism. For the more able and interested students, they can generally thrive if there are opportunities to go a bit further. Finland has a significant number of music institutes for additional training for such students.)

Annikka herself is a substitute teacher for a year because the school music teacher is on maternal leave for a whole year. Annikka is a cellist and she has an interest beyond music in law and politics. I asked her how she ended up with music. She said the decision was straightforward for her when she first started playing the cello – she told her mother after the first lesson that she wanted to be a cellist. Things got slightly more complicated after she has started Turku Academy training, and she is considering some other options as well. Maybe further studies in law and politics. Money is one consideration.

Music class at Meilahden ala-aste

Kasia, the music teacher, said the four most important things in music learning is: singing, playing an instrument, listening and dancing (using body expressions). And they focused on learning by doing.

I recorded these two songs:

There were two songs that I recorded:

Autumn

Finnish folk song: Kirppu ja härkä

She has shown me a song that she has composed for the school, and translated for me. A simple, yet remarkable one. Some of the lyrics read: there are many important things in life, one of which is that we are learning together. We will never forget the school.

They also sang other songs including: Souda, Souda sinisorsa (bird swimming in a lake) that is a song composed by Sibelius.; 'water drops' by Sibelius as well, and the teacher just asked the students to listen to it with their eyes closed.

The little children have sung at least 6 songs in the span of 35 minutes, a song welcoming me, a song warming up, the school anthem, the songs in the music book etc.

In the music lesson I could see how they started with the forest, and then the trees (quoting Yolanda). This is a typical feature of Finnish teaching. Kasia let the students sing along, and play the flute after her, without caring too much about precision initially. Kasia only corrected the students when the tune goes seriously wrong. This helps them to build up the confidence to keep it up!