Thing 5 – Thoughts on “Disrupting Class”

I thought the Techlearning blog about the book, ” Disrupting Class” by Clayton Christianson, was of interest to me. It was so interesting that I plan to purchase the book. In his blog , Mr Christianson admits to not reading the complete book, but says that what he has read shows that the book tries to present all aspects of how we as educators can work to customize education for all students.

As an instrumental music teacher, I am always dealing with the word customization . Each school year, because of the way we have to schedule, I always get a few new students mixed with ones from the previous year. Some have had previous training on the instrument but most have not. Some have come from other schools where Music Basics were presented a little differently. Of course, I spend the first few weeks/months making sure the students are all on the same page ( or pretty close). Then, and only then can I begin to guide them in making their tunes/parts make sense. Thus, here is where the “Disruption…” comes in which gets me back to what the book describes as “customized learning”. I know that this is going to happen every year so it would serve me well to be ready to adjust.

This past year, we had one 4th grade student who had been born with virtually no fingers on the right (bowing) hand. This student wanted to play the Viola. Both Ms. Chang and I put our heads together and came up with a type of glove that could be worn that would allow the student to draw the bow across the strings. The student did fine, but I would like to take some more time to find a way for the bow to be more stable on the strings. This was probably an ultimate use of ” customized learning”