Yep. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I've spent a lot of time telling people about this. I'm really not interested in teaching a classroom full of kids right now (that could change though). I love the one-on-one time with my horn students. I love how in depth we get with our lessons. I love how I can have a brief period of time to get to know each and every one of them!
I believe by knowing what type of kid I'm teaching horn to, I can better explain things in the language they'll understand. I can discuss rhythm differently and on higher levels with my math wiz kids. I can talk about music as a structure or language to some of my more 'humanities' inclined students.
I think I finally figured out what one of my Jr High kids is - or at least might be... a programmer. Periodically we talk about his favorite class where he builds robots that do stuff. Today I asked how he made robots do things. "I just program things into the computer that tell it what to do."
Brilliant! I've got a little programmer on my hands! Then I realized later... how the heck do I converse with a programmer? That is a whole world I've never really understood.
So I'm sending this question to anyone reading this: how do programmers think? How do they see the world? Are any of you out there a programmer or close friends to one? Married to one? What have you experienced?
Anyways, I'll wrap this up by posting a link to a board on my pinterest. (You can follow all my boards here.) I figure my 'classroom' is just practice room after practice room until I graduate to having my own studio one day. Here's a look at my dream music/practice rooms:
One of my favorites is this one:
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| September 1969. “Practice Room: the bright way to a sound-absorbing studio. There’s rush matting on the walls and an underfoot of sunny, shaggy carpeting.” Perfect! |
I'm such a retro girl at heart.
I think the core of programming is logic applied to creativity. Kind of like a haiku or jazz music I guess, there are rigid constraints and rules. But the rules aren't there as blocks to creativity, they're there to push you forwards. In some programming languages the rules actively invite you to bend them or break them.
ReplyDeleteIs your programmer interested in jazz? That might be a place to start.
I have no idea if he'd like jazz. My guess is that he's probably had limited exposure to it. That'd be a whole other thing we'd have to tackle...
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