Welcome to Cory Miller's ePortfolio!
My name is Cory Miller and I am completing my fifth year of the Bachelor of Education program at Vancouver Island University, located in Nanaimo, British Columbia. My ePortfolio has been created to allow you to get to know me better and to see what drives my as an educator. In this site I have included information about who I am, my Frame of Reference (teaching philosophy), the eight BCTRB standards (British Columbia Teacher Regulation Branch Standards) connected with artifacts. Please come back and visit this site regularly as it is a constantly evolving project.
My Educational Metaphor
As a professional musician, I wanted to use music in some way as a metaphor for education. Then it hit me, why not jazz. Jazz, as well as education have much in common, creativity, collaboration, learning, social organization and improvising. One of my professors once remarked how lucky I was to have the skill of improvisation. I have subsequently found that it has served me well in the classroom.
In education today, we are being taught to prepare for the "Twenty-first century Learner". Education of the past is more analogous to a classical symphony or an orchestral structure. They are "top-down" models where the conductor (teacher) is the leader and the various instrumental sections (students) are passive learners, listening to the conductor lecture and the band follows the instructions. Moreover, classical musicians are taught to reproduce the score note for note, very little deviation (if any) is allowed. However, jazz music is a completely different ballgame. Jazz musicians work in many different groups, sometimes playing onstage with musicians they have never met. They work in "virtual teams" on a project by project basis. Therefore, jazz musicians have to be comfortable working collaboratively and quickly. Furthermore, jazz music is never entirely written out. There is a chart with the melody written down (the head) and a set of chord progressions. This gives a basic roadmap for the musicians to follow but creativity is the key. For example, there are certain understood structures (formats) in jazz music. The blues is a great example. Every jazz musician knows the blues format and as long as the "key" has been determined, wonderful creativity follows. Jazz musicians possess an ability to work under trying circumstances and yet preform as a creative group.
Improvisation also gives us some insight into education. It requires a mixture of trust and risk taking. Moreover, it requires an ongoing process of attention, awareness, and sensitivity to those around you. Jazz musicians challenge each other to preform better in a spirit of mutual trust, support and partnership.
Schools still struggle today with the relationship between individual and community (Bella,et al 1995; Slater 1991). However, jazz musicians show us how to break free from this. Jazz musicians know how to solo, to stand out on their own, but they also learn how to "comp" (how to back someone up). Comping instruments like the piano bass and drums, have the ability to provide a creative and supportive background for the soloists. Jazz playing is essentially a conversation between all of the musicians on the stand. We tend to concentrate the soloist failing to realize how important the other instrumentation is to the end product. The other musicians are providing a context in which the soloist can speak (Montuori 1999). These valuable concepts crossover to the classroom.
An education system that nurtures our own creativity in partnership with others is what I think we are striving for. Therefore, I hope you can appreciate my metaphor of jazz to education.
In education today, we are being taught to prepare for the "Twenty-first century Learner". Education of the past is more analogous to a classical symphony or an orchestral structure. They are "top-down" models where the conductor (teacher) is the leader and the various instrumental sections (students) are passive learners, listening to the conductor lecture and the band follows the instructions. Moreover, classical musicians are taught to reproduce the score note for note, very little deviation (if any) is allowed. However, jazz music is a completely different ballgame. Jazz musicians work in many different groups, sometimes playing onstage with musicians they have never met. They work in "virtual teams" on a project by project basis. Therefore, jazz musicians have to be comfortable working collaboratively and quickly. Furthermore, jazz music is never entirely written out. There is a chart with the melody written down (the head) and a set of chord progressions. This gives a basic roadmap for the musicians to follow but creativity is the key. For example, there are certain understood structures (formats) in jazz music. The blues is a great example. Every jazz musician knows the blues format and as long as the "key" has been determined, wonderful creativity follows. Jazz musicians possess an ability to work under trying circumstances and yet preform as a creative group.
Improvisation also gives us some insight into education. It requires a mixture of trust and risk taking. Moreover, it requires an ongoing process of attention, awareness, and sensitivity to those around you. Jazz musicians challenge each other to preform better in a spirit of mutual trust, support and partnership.
Schools still struggle today with the relationship between individual and community (Bella,et al 1995; Slater 1991). However, jazz musicians show us how to break free from this. Jazz musicians know how to solo, to stand out on their own, but they also learn how to "comp" (how to back someone up). Comping instruments like the piano bass and drums, have the ability to provide a creative and supportive background for the soloists. Jazz playing is essentially a conversation between all of the musicians on the stand. We tend to concentrate the soloist failing to realize how important the other instrumentation is to the end product. The other musicians are providing a context in which the soloist can speak (Montuori 1999). These valuable concepts crossover to the classroom.
An education system that nurtures our own creativity in partnership with others is what I think we are striving for. Therefore, I hope you can appreciate my metaphor of jazz to education.