A lesson for my teacher self

I just finished a piece of writing that for a while I thought might derail me. In the big scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. Only one person other than me will ever read it, and in the end it was written only because it had to be to sustain an important professional relationship. But for a while there, every time I opened the document, or read anything related to it, or attempted to work on it, I felt utterly paralyzed, inadequate and incapable. I don't really understand why it made me feel that way. But I wanted to put it out there because I want to be able to return to this in the future when I encounter students who seem to me to be unaccountably stuck. It was important for me to push through and do this, even if the results are rather meaningless, because it proved to me that I am capable of doing these types of things. It will be important for me to push my students to do what they may feel paralyzed by. But I also hope I manage to maintain at least some empathy.

links for a guest lecture on my work

Did I mention before that I put together and taught a course this past summer called "The Music of New York"? If not, I should blog about that sometime.
Right now, though, that is long over, but I've been asked to do a guest-lecture for my friend Rachel's Art of Listening class on Thursday, and so this post is just to gather in one place some of the videos and etc that I plan to use.
World Map
Drakensberg Boys' Choir

Lebo M Rainmaker

Lebo M Power of One

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon

Paul Simon Father and Daughter (from the Wild Thornberries movie soundtrack)

Johnny Clegg and Juluka Impi

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Tokens)

Solomon Linda's Evening Birds Mbube

Pete Seeger and the Weavers

Freshly Ground I'd Like

Karen Zoid Kaapstad

Karen Zoid Small Room

The Parlotones Colourful

Bok Van Blerk De La Rey

Klopjag Nie Langer (for the students who asked about this, this is an angry post apartheid song. I couldn't find the angry apartheid-era song I played in class today online, but I'll keep looking and post it, or something similar, when I find it.)

talent on all sides

In amongst the marking and scrambling to finish finals, there is a whole lot to celebrate at the moment.
Yesterday was the last lecture of the undergraduate course I have had such fun TAing this semester, and we used the time, delightfully, to hold an open mic session for students and faculty alike. It was really wonderful to have some super talented students show us what they really can do with their voices, and I was particularly moved by A's wonderful song-writing and performing abilities, D's incredible producing skills, and M's very creative combination of beat-boxing and throat singing. You are all so awesome, and it has been wonderful getting to know you this semester. I wish you everything of the best for your future careers, and really hope I'll get to see more of you in future.
And now, in the spirit of the season, I'm posting the YouTube video originally sent to me by NYChoirgirl, that I contributed to our class festivities yesterday. Enjoy!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

And feel like it, too. On Saturday night, NYChoirgirl and I performed our end of year concert with the Stonewall Chorale. It was a super success, with the big Church of the Ascension nearly full, and lots of great feedback from the various audience members I got to talk to afterwards. Thank you so much to everyone who supported us. It was wonderful to see so many smiling faces in the audience, to get such super applause, and to hear your very generous comments afterwards. I'm so glad you were all there, and that you had a good time.
I also put up my Christmas decorations this past week, and now have a string of steady white lights, a string of flashing blue lights, great loops of blue tinsel, and a dozen or so blue and white snowflakes adorning my living room. They blend very well with the blue and white Empire State Building I can see through the window. I haven't got a Christmas tree yet, because live ones make me sad (I hate the idea of cutting a tree down, just to throw it out, dry and sorry-looking, in January), and artificial ones are surprisingly difficult to find in this city. At least, artificial ones under $50. Online shopping has come to my rescue (as it so often does), though, and my little 3 foot pre-lit artificial Christmas tree is on its way. I love putting Christmas decorations up. And now, in the Northern hemisphere, where the sky is dark by the time I get out of class, the lights really brighten things up.
Speaking about getting out of class, I taught my last seminar of the semester today, and now have a large pile of marking waiting for me. It's actually less daunting than I thought it might be, because the student's assignments are so interesting to read. I really like these students, and am going to miss them next semester.
Finally, this is my last evening at home for a while. Tomorrow, Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights I'm attending various Christmas parties, and on Wednesday night, I participate in the NYU tradition of midnight breakfast for dinner. On Wednesday, I also attend my last class of the semester, and a week later, submit my last final. And then, I'm on holiday for just under a month.

Dinner with the President

I have been feeling a little down about the project of the research university for a while, partly because I've seen, through teaching, what a raw deal so many students (particularly, or specifically, undergrads) get when they enter a high-profile research university like NYU, and partly because I've realized that my commitment to education, and my understanding of the goals of the academic project more broadly, are not commensurate with the goals of a large number of my peers and seniors. Before I expand on that, though, let me say that my experiences tonight, to my surprise, have given me fresh hope and new energy.

So here is the full story: About a week ago, I received an invitation to have dinner with the President of NYU, John Sexton. The opportunity was intriguing. I have become disillusioned with the conflicts between the NYU mission to be a university of New York in New York, and what, from the inside, at least, looks like a quest to gain status and rank at the expense of an engagement with the lived reality of this city, which is cosmopolitan in the best and worst ways. NYU, it seemed, was riding the elitist ivory tower image right up there with the most iconoclastic of the ivy league, attracting well-resourced undergrads in order to finance the graduate students who would teach them, while the big-name tenured faculty got on with the business of research. It isn't a terrible model, particularly if you are among the big-name tenured faculty, but for the students, particularly undergrads, who expect to have life-changing, though-altering experiences through their interaction with the best thinkers in the world, finding out that your intellectual heroes have little or no interest in teaching, or worse, great interest, but no time, due to the demands of the tenure track, can be somewhat disappointing. No wonder the academy and its discourse has such a bad reputation in the world out there. You need to be taught academic speak in order to understand the work being produced, but the people most qualified to teach you that would rather be talking to each other than to you, even if you are paying huge amounts of money for the privilege of their attention.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a critique of the faculty themselves. I have benefited immensely from a large number of outstanding intellectuals who have gone above and beyond to help me get to where I am. And I'm also benefiting greatly from the financial management of a university that can afford to fund my education for five years, in exchange for a few semesters of teaching. Heck, I'm one of the biggest beneficiaries of the system. But I'm also critical of that system because it encourages a view of education, the practice of teaching, that labels it the unfortunate baggage of an academic career. Teaching is the despised responsibility. Research and publication are the goal.

Quite frankly, as far as I can tell, there is no point in doing research and publishing work if one has no intention of teaching it. Knowledge is only as good as the use it is put to, and there are only two ways that the knowledge we produce can be put to good use: through our own application of it (i.e. "advocacy" or "public sphere work", both second-class considerations in the academy, and non-entities in the tenure process), or through our teaching of it to others, who will apply it. And we should be publishing so that our insights are available to those who we cannot teach directly.

One clarification here. I don't mean teaching according to the classical model of students sitting at the feet of the master. I mean teaching in the way that it works in a graduate seminar, or in the undergraduate sections I've been lucky enough to work with this semester. Teaching becomes about providing a set of materials and interpretive tools, and then letting the magic that is learning happen. Sometimes, that means that students make use of those tools right there with you, and all of you come away with something from the classroom encounter, and sometimes it means you demonstrate a few ways of using them, and let the students take that away and work their magic, either in private, or, if you're lucky, in the work you get to grade. Either way, no one is the end point of knowledge. It's all a great set of endless possibilities. How exciting!

A while ago, I read this document, published my John Sexton on the university website, in which he proposes a role for "university teachers", as distinct from research faculty. I agree with a lot of what he says, but I find myself opposing the document as a whole on the basis of his caveat that

[the university teacher] will be capable of appreciating and of participating in
the research enterprise. But he or she will have chosen to tilt the
personal mix of research and teaching more dramatically in the direction of
teaching than would be appropriate for one seeking tenure. The university
teacher will dedicate a full professional life to the university as an active
participant in the institution and a premier participant in the education of
students. The university teacher will not be given the lifetime position we
associate with tenure, but the possibility of remaining with the institution for
a whole professional career will be very real

So my big question is: why is it not appropriate for a faculty member who "tilts the mix" of research and teaching more strongly toward the side of teaching, not to get tenure? Why is teaching valued less strongly? What is the mission of the thinking individual if not to disseminate their thoughts? And how, other than through teaching, do we do that?

I didn't get to ask that question tonight, though I'm going to ask it via email once this crazy semester is at an end, in a few weeks time. But I did hear a whole lot from our university president that suggested to me that his goals for the production and dissemination of knowledge line up more strongly with my own than I had previously thought. At the very least, I encountered an openness to conversation about these matters that I had not expected, and that gives me some hope. I still think teaching is undervalued, but I no longer think that the university is all about money and prestige. And that is a big relief.

This I had to blog

I just received an email from one of my students informing me that I missed the point of his recent paper when I was marking it, and requesting a meeting so that he can set me straight! Um, sorry buddy, but if you didn't make the point in the paper, there is a good chance I would have not gotten it. Of course, if you had made an appointment and met with me before the paper was due, as I suggested you should, you may not have been in this situation in the first place....

A long day

If I wasn't teaching, I never would have realized how much time students who leave seeking necessary information about assignments to the last minute take up. I have spent a huge amound of time today meeting with students and answering emails relating to the assignments that are due tomorrow. I really do love meeting with students, and so in general this is a pleasure, but the occasional meetings that consist almost entirely of the student telling me why they have absolutely no interest in the course topic, and don't want to write the essay, get a little tiring. I am so ready for bed right now.
UPDATE:
When the first email in my inbox in the morning is a thank you note from one of the students I helped out yesterday, that makes it all better. And the fact that she has an interesting project is even better.

teaching

I feel like I'm glowing from the inside out at the moment, and while my teaching isn't entirely responsible, it has at least contributed to the feeling. I really get a kick out of that work. Everything, but everything seems to make perfect sense when I'm in that classroom with those students. I don't mean that the details of the work always make sense (they don't always, and I admitted to one group yesterday that I don't really understand phenomenology, even if I can talk a bit about it in the context of class readings), but the broader reasons behind things do. I know why singing is so important to me when I see my students faces as they open their own mouths to sing. They giggle and demure and fain embarrasment, but there is something terribly intimate, and immensely satisfying about making noise together. I have this exercise I used to do with my choir where we pick a note, and then gently swoop down to the bottom of our range from there, and I did that with my classes on Friday and Monday. And I played music to them, and listened to them talk about it, and read what they had written. I watched the expressions on their faces as I told them about South Africa, and about how I got into music in the first place, and the expression of utter relief and delight on one girl's face when I explained that we would be talking about synaesthesia with one of my favourite composers. She has synaesthesia too, and so badly wants to know more. It is an immense privilege to be in New York to do this, because there are so many people around, and so many resources and opportunities for these things. But really, I think wherever I was, at this moment in my life, teaching would feel like this.

Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti died earlier today of cancer. I'm going to play some of his recordings to my undergraduate class this afternoon.

Day one, year two

After a really fun long weekend, the new semester starts today. I'm not actually teaching today, technically, but I do have the first lecture of the course that I'm running a couple of recitations for, so today will be the first opportunity I will have to see the new students and get a sense of the classroom situation. I have been excited about this for a really long time (one of the first things I said to my advisor when I arrived in New York was "I'm really looking forward to teaching"), but I'm also beginning to feel both more clear about the course, and a little nervous. Most of these students are not music majors, and while only very few of them are freshmen, I feel like this is a really important opportunity to open up their academic experience. I am TAing for a course called "Expressive Cultures: Sounds", and the topic of the class is "Contemplating Voice". This course is part of a general academic program that students have to take a certain number of courses from during their degree. For many people, this is a course they don't especially want to do. They are taking it because they have to, and they are taking this class in particular because they think it will be an easy A. For some of these students, this is the only liberal arts course they will take during their entire course of study, and for others, it is the only music class. So I'm invested not just in selling them on the university experience, but also of giving these students a little bit of a sense of the value of something outside of their usual experience. The course lecturer has decided that we will be seeking out opportunities to use our voices during this course, and we will be doing some vocal exercises during every lecture, which is a great place from which to start, but I also want to find ways for students to think about and use their voices that are not necessarily expressly musical. Singing is such an important part of my own life, because of the level of physical engagement it gives me, but speaking is also becoming more and more important, and I hope to use this class as an opportunity for the students and I to think more about how we use our voices in mundane and also creative ways. I want to teach students about what it means to communicate in a classroom so that they have a skill that they can take beyond this course, and I want to teach them about the type of learning that happens when you act or perform or use your body to engage with the things around you. But if the only thing students come away from this course with is the knowledge that they spoke in recitation every week, and were listened to, that will be a pretty good start.

bits and pieces

I'm sitting at my window looking out on the Hudson river. The water is sparkling, lit up by the lights of a thousand New Jersey apartment buildings. The George Washington bridge looks like a string of Christmas lights hung out between two states, and a rather unromantic Fairways grocery store LCD sign informs me that the New York water taxi now goes to Yonkers. How is it possible I'm here? I shouldn't be able to afford it. Not least because I am able to blog from this exact spot because I got a new computer today! My old was is three years old, and still functioning (more as a desktop than a laptop, now), but I was in need of something a little more portable and robust, with wifi. And today it arrived, all shiny and new, in an enourmous box that contained more packaging than computer.
Can you tell I'm excited?
I also attended a very intensive teacher training orientation event at the university today. Have I blogged that I'm teaching this semester yet? In case I haven't, you now know. I'm TAing, along with my good friends Ben and Ivan, for our department's new ethnomusicologist, J. Martin Daughtry. The course is on voice, and I am preparing a lecture on the castrati in choral music, and will be running two tutorial sections. I'm meeting with the professor and my fellow TAs tomorrow to discuss it all.
I am also, following a successful audition earlier this evening, now a member of yet another choir in New York city. This one is 60+ voices, so will make a nice contrast to the chamber choir that I am already singing with.
All in all, a good day!

ensemble

I had my first ethnomusicology ensembe class last night. I am taking Afrocolombian Marimba this semester. Such fun. There is a very vibrant marimba ensemble at Wits, but I didn't have the time for that. Being able to take this one for credit makes a lot of difference.

Last night we began with a bit of background on the styles we will be playing (one of which is Currulao), before listening to the music a little. Our instructor is a fellow grad student who is quite far along in his PhD on this music, and so the examples we heard, and videos we saw are all from his fieldwork.
At first, the music sounded impossibly complex, and way beyond what I expected to ever be able to play. While I really love working with music, I am by no means confident in my musical instincts, and I have too little background in rhythmically complex music to feel at ease with the prospect of playing it. Gradually, though, we broke the music down into its component parts, listening for instruments, clapping different parts of the cross-rhythms, and learning to move in time, and even (rather hesitantly) to dance. By the end of the evening, it was feeling much more maneagable, even more exciting, and very accessible and enjoyable.

The whole experience got me thinking about the way we teach and learn music. I guess a big part of what was important here was seeing how easy it is to simplify things when you know what to listen for. Untill our instructor pointed out the two different rhythmic patterns, and indicated that they were cross-rhythms, all I heard was an impossibly complex rhythmic gesture that I couldn't pin down. As soon as I knew what I was listening to, though, it became two fairly straight-forward rhythms that are just juxtaposed. The effect is something similar to hearing the individual parts of a choral piece played on the piano, singing them separately, and learning them as independent lines, before putting them together in the complete sound. Now, after working with vocal harmony for so long, I find it generally easier to sing when I can hear the other parts, but sometimes it still is helpful to break the whole thing down again, and check notes and lines, and hear things on their own, before putting them in relation to the whole.

I'm beginning to realize how important being a student is to being a teacher. Far more than content, learning to teach is about figuring out how I learn.

And who knows. Perhaps in future years, we'll have a South African choral ensemble class in the department.