Art: Dawn Marie Livett
Music goes hand-in-hand with other creative endeavors. This teacher writes, “Through music, from classical to popular, kids encounter themselves and experience the feelings and sensations associated with their worlds.”
Jeffrey Pflaum, a reader of this blog who taught children creative writing for many years, asked me if I’d be interested in reporting on some of his techniques. I am. This post is adapted from one of his blogs.
Pflaum writes that using experiences, reflections, and insights geared to “struggling, reluctant, and average readers and learners” in grades 3 to 6 helps them develop. “One key step to learning about any world is to know our selves first. …
“As an introduction to reading and writing I deal with kids’ inside worlds. What does each child have to know about mind, self, and imagination in order to learn? What makes up this inner universe? Why is it so important to know the contents of our worlds before studying the worlds of different subjects? …
“My lessons connect with the children’s inner lives. It doesn’t help when education builds test walls around creativity and motivation, two huge channels to learning and developing a passion for reading. Education’s role is to open up students’ worlds so they are receptive to new ideas. … Motivation becomes self-motivation and education means self-education.”
Pflaum finds that helping children to develop self-knowledge enables them to tap their inner worlds and use their life experiences to enrich both schoolwork and everyday life. “Thoughts, ideas, feelings, fantasies, daydreams, dreams, dialogues, monologues, memories, reflections, and all the mental image pictures are the stuff of our inside worlds,” he says.
In one exercise, “kids close their eyes, visualize words in the mind, describe them orally and in writing, and then draw/sketch what they ‘see.’ Some examples of words for this practice exercise are: dog, rose, apple, room, sky, rainbow, clouds, parrot, pencil, pen.
“From here, I’ll build two-word sentences such as: Frogs hop; children play; birds fly. And then I probe what they are viewing with questions: What are you looking at? What pictures do you see in your mind? What thoughts are triggered? What feelings are connected to the image? Can you describe the mind-picture and your experience? Draw/Sketch the sentence you visualized (crayons, markers, pencil, or pen).”
Another exercise I liked had to do with using music for creative inspiration. It starts with a counting technique and progresses to listening to music, with the following instructions: “ ‘Sit back and relax. Put your heads gently down on the desks, close your eyes, and enjoy the music. When it’s over, write whatever you experienced inside yourself.’ … They learn to appreciate the contemplation process and the music as it soothes them into their worlds and journeys of self-discovery. …
“Through music, from classical to popular, kids encounter themselves and experience the feelings and sensations associated with their worlds. They see what brings them up and down and learn to create a positive attitude towards contemplation, reflection, and self-expression.”
More ideas for teachers can be found at http://www.JeffreyPflaum.com. Some approaches might also work with adult students.
Educator Jeffrey Pflaum
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
My mom’s passion, when she was teaching first-graders, was to start them on the road to being not just competent writers but authors (or “arthurs” as one of the little kids heard it). I don’t know that she ever used music as a trigger but it seems like a great idea!
Children seem to be charmed by the word “author.” When my older grandson was in kindergarten, John wanted to tell him that I was a writer, but he said, “Grandma is an author.” My grandson just lit up, like I was a movie star.
The label of “author,” in my opinion, makes you a star. Not everyone can say that about themselves. When I was in a local newspaper office to talk with the publisher, one of the editors said, after I mentioned an educational book I wrote, “Oh, you’re an ‘author.'” I’m not sure, but something registered inside me that I hadn’t experienced before.
I hope many of your students came away feeling like they were authors.
Hi Suzanne’s Mom, The kids came to realize that they were the “authors” of their lives. This project’s purpose was to have children develop self-awareness, self-knowledge, as well as enhance their writing/academic skills to find direction and a path to becoming themselves, call it “self-authors.” One benefit from the contemplation music writing lessons (prose) was that it led to poetry writing, both free-verse and haiku. Contemplating inner experiences after listening to music opened the kids up to their feelings, thoughts, ideas, and real-life experiences (mind-pictures), all components necessary for poetry writing. And their poetry has been published across the U.S. and by major commercial book publishers. I still communicate with them on Facebook and in “real life” years later. The “kids”–now adults–have expressed that they, at times, come back to music and writing to bring them peace and get into the present moment when their worlds need grounding. There are success stories: “Noel “Speedy” Mercado was a top NYC DJ on WKTU-FM for 20 years. Professions for former students include: children’s therapist, social worker, speech therapist, teachers, investment analyst, event planner, and there’s one reality TV star.
Cool
Can’t wait to see what kinda nonsense I write after meditating to some AC/DC. Thanks for the tip!