In The Music Education Program, steps are taken to ensure that involvement is voluntary. For a start, the teacher/s must be voluntarily involved and is/are trained via a professional development program that emphasises the voluntary nature of the program for all involved. A teacher undertakes training in her own time but the training does not prescribe community visits as part of its brief. As we have already seen, a teacher trained via the Music Education Program is already considering her interactions with children from a different perspective. She is already doing ‘outreach’ within the school grounds.
Garber (2004), in her case study of The Music Education Program, comments on various factors that suggest that children in general are willing to participate. There is a high rate of return of permission notes over shorter periods of time than for many other activities. The day of the outreach sees children rushing to the office to ring a parent for verbal permission despite repeated assurances that they can go to another class or stay with the class teacher if they do not want to attend. Children have been known to become quite upset if something prevents them attending. This reaction could, of course, be to do with simply wanting to be where their peers are. At the same time, most children not only attend, but also participate willingly and, if the first visit may have an element of curiosity about it, there is usually a willingness to continue to engage. The pre- and post-visit briefings are designed to ensure that children have the environment in which to make their feelings known. These sessions are discussions where the teacher is simply one participant, rather than regulating the conversation. Interestingly, few children choose not to engage, once arriving at the venue, although there are no repercussions for non-involvement. There is also little in the way of ‘domino-effect’ where the disengagement of one child encourages the disengagement of others.
Post visit briefings in particular can elicit a range of comments that give insight into how the children feel. Given the efforts made to ensure comfort, security and freedom for the child, it’s hard to imagine that the positive feelings expressed consistently and predominantly in these
briefings are all the result of adult wishful thinking. The children do seem to have a good time. Attending parents comment on the mature behaviour of the children. There is never any need for ‘behaviour management’.
It may be that younger children have no reluctance to engage in outreach activity because they view it differently from adults. Certainly, the first observed cased of a student having problems with the actual situation of residents occurred with a Year 8 boy, Allan (Journal 17). This boy was part of the original cohort who were introduced to The Music Education Program in Year 2. The program was piloted at its first high school, Kent High School, when Allan was in Year 8. An early outreach visit took the Year 7/8 students to a nursing home that Allan and his Year 8 peers had last visited in year 6. At a certain point in the proceedings, Allan left the room and went outside. There was no attempt made to get him to come back in but, after some minutes, I went out to check that he was OK. I asked him if he was alright and he replied: “Yes but I can’t stand it.”
“Can’t stand what?” “The suffering.”
Usually a boisterous and cheeky boy, he remained quiet on the bus ride home but was eventually cheered by some empathetic interaction with his peers. This incident didn’t stop Allan participating and, indeed, another male peer who had been coming to music class but not to outreach came on several subsequent visits, whether in support of Allan or otherwise is unclear. Perhaps younger children feel more removed from the outreach situation and do not identify with it in the way that Allan did as he moved into adolescence.
There has been just one occasion in the eight years that the Hand-in-Hand outreach program has been operating that involved an entire class of Year 1 children reporting feelings of fear and anxiety on an outreach visit (Feedback 4). The teacher leading the visit contacted me in great concern after this visit, which, unsurprisingly, had appeared unsuccessful even before the de-
briefing. It transpired that the school involved had a policy of each class teacher taking her own class in rotation. Not only were the teachers in general not exercising free choice but the particular teacher on this class was new to the school and had had almost no time to familiarize herself with the program. The facilitator had observed the signs of anxiety in the new, young teacher which was confirmed by her comments. A nervous teacher will not necessarily affect the attitudes of the children, particularly if they are experienced at outreach visits. The Year 1 class in this case was on a first visit with their new class teacher who was not only inexperienced but insufficiently briefed by her school.
The Music Education Program team met to discuss the issue and it was agreed that the class should be invited to attend another outreach as soon as possible (Journal 18). Much to the relief of all concerned a) the children all volunteered to go again and b) the visit was a great success with completely different feedback from the class.
6.7.3
Conclusion
The critical incidents reported in this chapter demonstrate aspects of the Intent which underlies the MEP. In the next chapter, the issue of Identity will be explained in a similar way, through discussion of critical incidents.