Be more Jazz

Be more jazz - Lesson plans and freedom

As a student-teacher, one of the first things you are made to learn is how to phase a lesson: in terms of content (what to teach), goals (why teach it) and timing (how long for each phase of the lesson). Typically, that results in a Lesson Plan: a document listing your goals and learning aims for the learners, and showing how the lesson will go step-by-step. The idea is: if your lesson plan is well-designed, follow through with it and everything will be fine.

As a teacher - and certainly as a more experienced teacher - your lesson plans tend to become shorter, with fewer details and fewer timings. You know by now that when you plan something for e.g. 10 minutes, a more realistic view of classrooms dictates that you can never be quite sure that those 10 minutes will be 10 minutes. Anything could happen, and 10 could become 2, or 20. But it remains your choice of course: phasing is important for variety, change of rhythms and focal points, and therefore for class-management as well as learning.

Yet a crucial question in the Literature class is to do with planning: how do I plan?How much time do i allocate for this, that and the other?

That problem is strongly related to another, more pressing and important one: what's your lesson about? what do you want it to achieve?

What is more important to you, and your learners: sticking to the lesson plan you designed come what may, or follow the natural flow of e.g. a discussion you're having?

What's more important, really? The rules of the game, or its spirit? The structure of the plan, or its real aim(s)?

The other day, on an East-Amsterdam market, I ran into a colleague working at a school who made an off-the-cuff remark about Teaching being like Jazz. Well, I'm a jazz-lover, I listen to it and I play it and I love it :) And it occurred to me that yes, indeed, teaching literature certainly is like jazz - and perhaps the whole of teaching as well. Let me explain.

One of the defining aspects of Jazz is improvisation: instrumentalists will improvise, that is, react to the moment by playing something they've not played before and won't play again, and, crucially, something they had not planned on playing. It's a musical reaction to a musical environment that contains not only the music (notes, chords, rhythm etc.) but also the other players. To improvise is to react to what is being played by the others as well as making use of what is common to all: the harmony, the chord progression - the music itself.

Contrast that with a Classical musician, who reads from a sheet-music written by a composer, and where every note indicated must be played in that way. In fact, classical music-sheets generally indicate dynamics as well - where to play loudly or softly, where to accelerate or slow down, where to accentuate one note over another etc. Classical players have a certain leeway in their interpretation, but there is never the possibility of deviating from the sheet-music by adding or subtracting notes, changing the rhythm or adding chords. 

It's not that one type of player is better than another, and there's no need to like Jazz to follow the reasoning behind my metaphor...which by now you've all seen through: Teaching should perhaps be a lot more like Jazz.

Typically, Jazz players will have what is called a lead-sheet: a one-page overview of a tune with the basic melody and the chords. That's it. So everyone in the band knows the main melody and the chord sequence (i.e. the different chords in the tune): that's the common basis, the material used by everyone in the band. Then come the improvisations, where each player, while following the chord sequence (the basic material) will play the notes they feel like playing. The lead-sheet is a basis where some elements are non-negotiable, but the performance will follow what happens in the moment: players react to the music but, again, they react to what is being played by others - in other words, they react to what other players are saying (musically).

In teaching, there is a strong tendency to keep to one's lesson plan (= music-sheet) come what may: you play the notes written and nothing else; you play the note written without deviating from them; you play the note written without changing them, without adding to them...without improvising on them.

In Literature teaching, I think you should be playing jazz and not classical music: the lead-sheet is the list of main ideas, concepts and points of discussion you would ideally want to deal with in class. But really, it is the space offered you that you want to use: you have to be ready to improvise, to react to what learners are saying, to elaborate on it, deviate from it, add to it, make a contrast with, make an addition to.

If literature teaching is seen as a classical music-sheet where every written note and dynamics must be played but nothing else, you do not give space to the listener (i.e. your learners) to exist as part of the music. Your lesson becomes something they receive (listen to) but in which they cannot really participate. 

Be prepared to let go of your plan, be prepared to improvise, be prepared to open the music to all the participants, be prepared to consider your learners as fellow musicians sharing the same bandstand: welcome interaction, welcome the exchange. 

Don't stick to your plan blindly; leave room for improvisation: be more Jazz 😎