Teaching Artistry: Social Impact Through a Multi-Sensory Approach

3/10/2023

Being able to create meaningful connections through music has always been important for me in my life. I remember the first time I was able to make someone smile by playing a piece that reminded them of something they had gone through recently or being able to inspire joy through sound. ‘El Sistema’ was one of the first musical projects that combined the idea of performance with social impact, which has since become a world phenomenon.

I had learned a great deal about its benefits while I had worked for the Philharmonie de Paris Projet Demos that was inspired by the teaching principles of ‘El Sistema’. Throughout the time I worked there, I had worked with great colleagues who helped guide me through the process, the importance of knowing each child’s individual story and why they were there, and have firsthand experience in helping facilitate community building with children who came from difficult home situations.

Now, how do we do that in music? Teaching Artistry promotes creative and educational practice to facilitate community building, social justice, and inspiring the joy of learning music. In this article, I will emphasize and introduce ways of creating deeper connections using a multisensory approach in teaching to accommodate visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and multimodal. Here are a couple of things to consider and to keep in mind while approaching group lessons.

Circle formations encourage community. As you’re preparing your classroom, prepare the chairs and the stands as if you were doing a full circle. It may seem weird at first, as we are used to having that type of half-circle with the teacher at the front. In this case, you’d have the ‘facilitator’ sitting with the students and playing along with them. This type of formation encourages group work and being able to make and share music with one another through open dialogue.
Play listening games. To be able to encourage meaningful listening is to play listening games. I usually pick a theme that is interesting for the children, or I have one of the children pick a theme, which can range from food to scary movies. Afterward, we would return to the piece that we are learning together and sometimes take turns playing measure by measure in time. So, for example, Student A would play measure 1, Student B measure 2, etc. This also keeps the children on their feet and so when they play it together as a whole, they can recall the work they did before, which encourages auditory learning.
Playback. One of the things that was always fun was the ‘playback’. Have you ever had to press rewind on a film to rewatch something that you missed? The idea of the ‘playback’ is to have the teacher play the excerpt that the students might have difficulty with while the students are going through the fingerings. It engages students to engage with their instrument kinesthetically but also uses the auditory to connect what they hear to what they feel.
Pass the note. A fun activity is being able to pass the note around the circle. For first-time players, you can have each student with one note at a time. Eventually, as the students become better at it, you can have each student play two or three notes of the given scale at a time and later add dynamics and different articulations. Disclaimer: This is a great game that can get competitive very quickly! The most important is that the children can develop auditory skills.
Scales Together. Another interesting way to engage both the visual and the aural is to have a small group of students together with a visual of the C major scale on the board. Now, to help train their eyes to read music, instruct the students to play the note that you are pointing to, no matter what it is.
Teaching Moments. Sometimes, it always helps to give the spotlight to one of the students that you are working with. So often, children do not feel like they have a voice, and this is their moment and being able to share or impart knowledge on something that they care about through words helps build confidence. Giving them an opportunity to ‘teach’ something to their peers not only affords them an opportunity to share but also being able to explain a musical concept in how they understand it.

These are a couple of ways that I found effective in being able to not only encourage community among my students but being able to inspire joy in music. To inspire the students is not only through these activities but through genuine kindness, which is the key to music’s social impact. At the Music & Language Learning Center, we apply multi-sensorial approaches in our teaching to make sure that the lessons are interactive, engaging and fun!