Jazz Music and Constructing Modern Knowledge?

I spent a week with  @garystager and a crew of passionate educators at Constructing Modern Knowledge.

Most takeaways were as expected: project collaboration, chats with high minded ed-reformers, scientists and intellectual giants, as well as witnessing the anti-disciplinary culture of the Media Lab of the Massachusetts of Technology. However, the moment that made the week invaluable was when the educational workshop was interrupted by a jazz performance.


At first it appeared Stager was imposing his obvious affinity of jazz music onto his participants for a welcome break to the project-based dialogue taking over the week. The couple hundred of us sat down for a few songs by jazz masters Jimmy Heath and Emmet Cohen and the tunes they played were just that, a pleasant escape from our work...but then everything reached a new level.

You see, in conversation with the audience after the performance, Heath (86 years young) was asked by the crowd of technology enthusiasts: What do you think of the computer replicating various musical elements? He said: "you realize: what's good is good...I use my mac laptop everyday [and many examples of how powerful it is] but in regards to jazz it does not have a pulse". The "feel and the emotion" that is the human contribution, and always will be the pulse when it comes to using technology. Is it any different in regards to students? If the key is to be motivated by opportunities to ask their own questions and learn together. No different with education, and more affirmation that technology is the power, and answering questions is the motivation.

To continue the wow moments, the two artists over 60 years apart in age were in flow, Jimmy brimming with delight of young Emmet on the piano. Emmet giddy in his own right trading musical barbs with a legend. During some questions during the informal performance Stager asked: how many times do we witness a student looking at a teacher like these two, or we as educators look at a student with such pride.

hmmm, not enough in my case...way to light a fire...

For the rest of the workshop, every speaker that witnessed the jazz display has referred to the connection of the two jazz artists. The metaphor of the democratic nature of jazz in regards to free play within projects. Furthermore, that painful difference/challenge between teaching science and real science.



This workshop truly was NOT a conference. It was an experience full of 'less us, more them' modelling of a school climate of projects and teachers. Stager constantly reminds us to raise the bar and create memories within children in order to create deep learning, and it was wonderfully modeled in a way that we could bear witness rather than be told, demonstrating a high functioning mentor-student relationship.

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