In 1971, Bread, an American soft rock band released a song titled ‘If’ which opened with the line ‘If a picture paints a thousand words’. This line was taken from the old English adage ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ where one picture can convey many messages more effectively than only a verbal description. If this is the case, then how many words would a video be worth? If a short video were to be still framed, where there are 24 still frames per second, then that is a lot of pictures and a rather lot of words! Take for example a recent Hands of the World’s (HOTW) intercultural video, created by pupils, teachers and student teachers around the world, before, at and during lockdown. The video is 4 minutes and 55 seconds long which would equate to 7,080,000 words if going by the above adage! A rather lot of words, however, each person who contributed to the video has a story to tell of their experience at the time of the recording whilst education around the world went through a transition from teaching and learning at school to teaching and learning at a distance using digital technologies.
Before you dive in to watching the video, it is worth reading the back cover of the album or the concert performance notes to develop an understanding of how different transitional stages of education through COVID-19 provided a setting for the narratives behind the recording. The educational COVID-19 transitional stages that will be referred to are:
Stage 1: the period before any mention of a school being locked down
Stage 2: the period when a school was notified that lockdown would happen on a specific date
Stage 3: the initial two-week period of lockdown
Stage 4: the settling-in period of lockdown
Each of these stages has a different style and mood that resonates in the narratives at each stage. This is similar to Rod Stewart’s 1971 album, titled Every Picture Tells A Story, which has a mixture of hard rock, folk and blues. Many different musical styles/ stories in one place: the hard rock loudness and mayhem of the transition from school learning to online learning, the folk narratives at each transition stage and the darker, sadder, blue moments that are part of life transitions. The transitions from one stage to the next have many similarities to different types of transitions in music which Wigram (2004) referred to as Seductive, Limbo and Overlap Transitions.
The Seductive Transition, in music transitions should be smooth rather than abrupt so that the listener is not destabilised. This is similar to Merriam’s (2005) Anticipated Transition where the listener knows where the musical transition will be. Some schools tried to plan a seductive or anticipated approach in Stage 2 to create a smooth transition from school learning to home learning. Some schools that had a week’s notice began putting together homework packs for the proposed two-week lockdown whilst some schools focussed on digital resources. Many teachers tried frantically to record their line of the intercultural song so that they did not let their children down or the HOTW community. Creating Seductive Transitions is not always easy due to things that need finished and things that need planned for, which can result in a rather stressful teaching and learning environment. Also, even with time to prepare, the transition mirrored Merriam’s (2005) Unanticipated Transition due to not knowing what lay ahead. For those schools that were given one day’s notice, there was no time for some form of Seductive Transition resulting in a sudden period, during Stage 3 of destabilisation where the musical style did not resonate with what had come before.
This period of time, for many, resonates with Wigram’s (2004) Limbo Transition where there was a feeling of not knowing where to go or no definite direction or purpose. The beautifully composed music had now lost its direction and was not going anywhere. Where would teaching and learning now go? In what direction, how and for how long? During the Limbo Transition stage, although there is a period of time with a sense of losing direction, eventually a new direction is found. During Stage 3, whilst teachers were going through this stressful transition period, those that had not been able to complete their line of the song were upset that they would no longer be able to contribute. This was due to them seeing the project as it was in the past rather than what it now had to be. This is the transition stage in music where you cannot get away from the past and move the music on to the next section. It is also like being given a musical instrument that is not fully functional when you are used to finely tuned instrument. How on earth can you play that?
It is in these messy transition periods that creativity and improvisation drives people forward, as discussed in detail by Tim Hartford (2016). An excellent example that he gives in his book is of the famous American Jazz pianist, Keith Jarrett. In 1975, Jarrett was to play to a sell-out audience in Germany’s Cologne Opera House. When Jarrett went to practise prior to the concert, the piano that was on the stage was inadequate in that it did not have a full-sized keyboard, it was out of tune, some notes did not work etc. A piano repairer tried desperately to fix the piano, however, the piano was still not acceptable for a concert performance. Jarret had two options, walk away and cancel the concert or risk his career by performing that evening. Jarret took the latter option and used improvisation to give the best performance of his life. This approach was taken by many teachers during Stage 3 where they had to use digital tools that they had not used previously used and improvise with them with many creative results. Whilst teachers were doing improvising, no lines of the song were recorded due the mayhem and stress that goes with the Limbo stage.
During this time, I watched what people were doing to create online classrooms and decided to incorporate the Wigram’s (2004) Overlapping Transition approach where only small changes are made during the transition period. First, I created weekly online music and Makaton sessions for teachers and students to enable them to feel comfortable in the new online environment. The pressure of them having to be the conductor was taken away where I controlled the technology and they participated when given a prompt. Once all were comfortable with this environment, I invited teachers to present at webinars. This was not new to many, however, the video conferencing technology that was used for the Music and Makaton sessions was the consistent factor. The final step was to involve the children where a student teacher, who had attended the online music and Makaton sessions took the lead and taught children from schools in different countries so that they could record their lines using online technology. Alongside this I introduced HOTW weekly challenges that used the same technology that was previously used in the project alongside the focus of using Music and Makaton as a communication tool to enable all to preserve their linguistic identities. The new layer that was added was Chilli Challenges within each challenge to ensure that an inclusive educational environment was created. An example of one of the challenges is the Bear Hunt: https://padlet.com/sharon_tonner2/ugs4ad3xxff. All of these steps provided a simple Overlapping Transition where harmonies, melodies and rhythms from the past were blended into the present to enable the intercultural project to keep going rather than come to a halt.
The recording of the song was completed in the final transition stage where most teachers involved in the project had adapted, as well as they could, to this new and hopefully temporarily way of teaching and learning. There are recordings in the song that were recorded in school hubs with a group of random children rather than a specific class who were involved in the project. There are online recordings that have not been edited to make them look perfect with everyone in sync like a professional orchestra, instead they represent what an online classroom looks like during lockdown where teaching and learning are still in the rehearsal stage.
What happens next in the transition back to classrooms? Which musical transition approach will be taken? Will an abrupt return to the original melody be taken where the ways of the past are returned to because the melody works, it provides comfort, is pleasant to the ear and is easy to play with no rehearsal needed. Will it be seductive where a very smooth transition from one theme to the next is created? Or, will it have overlaps where changes are made by removing one element then adding another? Will education go back to the same way of working or taking the positives from this transitional journey and integrating them into a new education that has a mixture of many music styles and themes that were learnt and created on this transitional journey to create a harmonious learning environment?
Now that you have read the album back cover, enjoy the HOTW recording of A Million Dreams that is signed in Makaton by pupils, teachers and student teachers across the world during COVID-19. HOTW, a place that feels like home…
Sharon Tonner-Saunders is lecturer in Technologies-ICT and Music in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Dundee. She joined the University in August 2008 after working for seven years as a primary school teacher, where the last four years were spend teaching ICT to all primary pupils. During this time, Sharon was awarded the British Council’s eTwinning Award for Excellence in using innovative methods to connect children with their peers around the world. This followed shortly with Sharon becoming a British Council eTwinning Ambassador where her role is to promote and train European educators how to use technologies to create collaborative projects with schools around Europe.
Image copyright: Hywel Branch, Ysgol Hendrefelin School, Wales
Video copyright: Hands of the World, Sharon Tonner-Saunders
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