Teaching statement

I am finishing my dissertation soon and am applying for full-time academic jobs. Here’s my teaching statement. It’s adapted from the first two chapters of Electronic Music School: a Contemporary Approach to Teaching Musical Creativity. Also see my research statement.

I have taught as an adjunct at New York University’s Steinhardt School, The New School’s Eugene Lang College, and Montclair State University’s Cali School of Music. At NYU, I have taught the Technology Practicum for Music Education for the past seven years. I designed this course and am its sole instructor. This past year, I also began co-teaching the Popular Music Practicum for Music Education, which I worked to overhaul extensively. This spring, I will be taking over an existing graduate course, Technology Trends in Music Education. At the New School, I have taught Fundamentals of Western Music, an existing course that I had broad latitude to remake. At Montclair State University, I teach Introduction to Music Technology, another existing course that I  modified and updated. I have also taught Electronic Music Composition and Cultural Significance of Rap and Rock, both of which I solely designed.

In addition to college courses, I have also led professional development sessions for various school districts, and consulted for independent schools. My writing has been assigned in courses at Williams College, Berklee College of Music, the Sydney Conservatory, the City University of New York, and numerous other schools and universities globally.

I approach teaching through a combination of constructivism and culturally relevant pedagogy. I structure my classes around the concept of “an art class for music”, in which students learn through creative projects: writing songs and compositions, producing tracks, and making videos. It is a constructivist axiom that classroom music and “real” music should be one and the same whenever possible. Digital audio production is ideally suited to this goal, since student productions can sound quite legitimately “real” even at the beginner level. I believe that when students can exercise agency over their learning, and when they can create personally meaningful work, then they will feel more intrinsically motivated. I want students to learn the material, but I also hope to help them develop authentic creative voices.

Digital production tools are not only useful for creation; they also make it possible to open up sophisticated musicology and music theory concepts to students who do not read notation. I use Ableton Live to visualize music by segmenting, annotating, and color-coding recordings, MIDI and scores. It is possible to tempo-align music that is not metronomically steady, which opens up analysis and visualization possibilities for classical music that employs even very extreme rubato. Having a “Rosetta stone” for connecting different visual and aural representations of music theory and structure has been invaluable to me. I also maintain an extensive collection of free web-based interactive tools that can be accessed from any computer, tablet or phone, and that offer students hands-on experience with melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and form.

My doctoral dissertation is a proposed framework for incorporating hip-hop into the preparation of music teachers at the university level. It is supported by a study of three New-York-based educators who use hip-hop music, aesthetics, and values in their work. I also document the process of putting these educators’ approaches into practice in the NYU Popular Music Practicum course. This study has demonstrated to me how powerful the creative ethos of hip-hop can be as a way to prepare young people to be part of a democratic society. Hip-hop works at a personal level as an avenue for self-expression, and it works at a social level as a lens for racial and class issues. Because popular music is both culturally significant and ideologically contested, its study can be a site of contesting and developing democratic virtues. Hip-hop’s tradition of sampling and remixing are especially useful for speaking back to and critiquing culture.

Assessment is always a challenge in creative contexts. I do not believe that exams are an effective way to evaluate music learning, or to promote the retention of that learning. Project outcomes demonstrate student learning just as effectively, and they motivate that learning more authentically. In my classes, the assessment situation is complicated by the widely varying prior knowledge that students bring with them. This is true for teaching music theory in a liberal arts setting, and equally true for teaching music technology anywhere. At the New School, one third of the students enter my classes with extensive formal musical experience, one third of them are self-taught singer-songwriters and bedroom producers, and one third of them have no musical experience whatsoever. Similarly, my music technology classes must serve everyone from complete novices to highly expert producers. There is no fair way to compare these students to each other.

Fortunately, the creative-project-based ”art class for music” approach suits the needs of diverse students quite well. I can design the project prompts to have low floors and high ceilings. For example, the first project that I assign in Intro to Music Technology is to create a piece of music using only the loops that are included with Soundtrap, GarageBand, Ableton Live, or whatever other software the students might be using. For the beginners, this is a confidence-building exercise, since any combination of the prefabricated loops will at least sound recognizably musical. Meanwhile, the more advanced producers and composers must challenge themselves to adapt to working within tight constraints.

I do not grade student projects based on their musical content, since judgments are intrinsically subjective, and I do not want to reward students who happen to share my tastes and sensibilities, or punish the ones who do not. If a project meets all of the requirements (e.g., between two and three minutes long, using at least one synthesizer drone and at least one melodic part, etc.), then it receives full credit, whether or not I think the resulting music is “good”. I do give detailed subjective feedback, but I keep it decoupled from grades. Students also give each other feedback during the art-school-style critiques we do at the end of each project. Rather than evaluating whether their peers’ tracks are successful or unsuccessful, I encourage the class to determine what the next step would be in developing the track. If it is a messy novice effort, then the next step might be simply getting the clips rhythmically aligned with each other. If it is polished and complete, then we can suggest ideas for how to build on or extend it.

The project-based approach is becoming a standard practice in music technology pedagogy, but it is unusual in music theory contexts. I am a passionate advocate for it there as well, because I believe that it is essential to place theory concepts in the context of authentic, personally meaningful songwriting, composition and improvisation. For example, I assign theory students to harmonize melodies, or write short tunes in a given key or mode, or create polyrhythmic drum patterns. The projects effectively act as open-book exams. If a student forgets which pitches are in F-sharp Mixolydian mode, it is fine with me if they look them up. The important thing is that they can use F-sharp Mixolydian for genuine music making. Project-based theory pedagogy has rich potential, but there is room for growth in my approach. I am working to do more music creation during class time, like singing and improvising as a group.

I am committed to critical pedagogy that connects concepts in music theory and history to broader social, cultural and political themes. This is especially crucial in the study of American popular music and jazz, as they are inseparable from the stories of the Black, immigrant and Native peoples who created them. Beyond equity and social justice concerns, traditional Eurocentric curricula lack essential elements for musical understanding, typically neglecting rhythm, improvisation, blues-based harmony, and most current music outside of a narrow range of “art” music composers. A more inclusive curriculum will have greater rigor and depth, in addition to giving better representation to marginalized groups.

As a teacher of college-level music technology and popular music, I often find myself serving “the other 80%”, students who are interested in music but who were unable or unwilling to participate in ensemble-based high school music programs. I was part of this 80% as a young person, so I am keenly aware how easily students can feel excluded from traditional pedagogy. Beyond the value of “art for art’s sake,” I believe that participation in music creation is a way to rehearse ways of being in the world, and to rehearse ways of being within oneself. I am committed to making music learning and creativity as accessible and inclusive as possible. By presenting a more heterogeneous and less hegemonic curriculum, I hope to model a more equitable society.