Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter
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CAT Tracks for June 16, 2009
A GOTCHA |
Editor's Note: If you grow weary of my "ramblings", you will definitely want to skip the intro. If you are interested in music, scroll down to the article...and you will miss nothing of substance. If you are not into music and/or the fine arts...hit your delete button...NOW!
You probably think that I spend all night roaming the Internet...looking for stories to satiate your lust for the educational, the weird, and the inane.
And you'd be right!
...sometimes...when I can't sleep...and don't want to start a new book in the middle of the night.
However, most of the time I take the easy way out. I awaken with the rising sun, pop the top on a cold one (that 24-hour thing), and access a news "portal" for education stories...a website that provides links to headlines of an educational nature. All I have to do is scan the headlines...see if something reaches out and grabs me.
They've modified the website (a step backward in my humble opinion) so that now, when you click a link, it takes you to another page on their website. This page provides one of two things...the entire story if it is short, OR the first part of the story if it is longer. In the event of a "longer story", the link "more..." appears at the end of the story. Clicking on "more..." takes you to the original story on the original website...CNN, MSNBC, The Christian Science Monitor, et al.
Well, unlike 20% of United States students, I did NOT know what the "P" in music stood for. So, I read the article...and still didn't know.
I mean, there were a lot of "p words"...passage, performance, participation, process, perseverance, and even problem (solving).
But, the article never came out and said unequivocally what the "p" was in music.
Heck, I started having flashbacks to my youth, evidently brought on this early-morning stress. Was it like that old line..."Railroad crossing, look out for the cars...can you spell that without any R's?" (I told you I was old. Double heck...I started wondering if I was going to have to amend my refrigerator magnet...come up with a "Baker's Case")
After reading the article, I looked at the bottom for the "more..." link. Nada! Okay, I did just skim the article. Went back and read it slowly...carefully. Still no "p"...
Okay...teachers (especially old math teachers) are always telling their students to check their work. They even advise checking your work in a different manner...if you added the long list of numbers top to bottom, check your work by adding them bottom to top. (Don't lay that calculator stuff on me right now...I can't handle anymore stress. Plus...I said OLD math teachers!)
Since two readings did not produce a "p" AND since I'm an ex-math teacher, I figured my new improved approach would be to read the article looking for percentages...specifically 20%. (I am so ingenious sometimes that I scare myself. Who woulda thunkit?)
And, I did...
There was 57%, 47%, 16%, 22%, 27%, 21%, but NO FREAKING 20%. (Yes, since I am a "highly qualified math teacher", I even caught the "half" in the first paragraph and mentally switched it to 50%. Heck, it even crossed my fertile brain that maybe they had decided to round off to the nearest "ten". However, I quickly discarded that approach when it produced not one, but three answers! (Oh, I know we are in the "fuzzy math" era...there are no incorrect answers. WRONG!!! I'm "old school"...math problems have ONE ANSWER!
What I put myself through on behalf of you CAT fanciers...
After waaaaaaay too much time spent trying to find out what the "p" meant in music - actually, another "What the..." crossed my mind - and only succeeding in getting PO'ed, I tried yet another approach.
As they say..."The third time is the charm."
My third and final approach was to ignore the fact that there was no "continued" indicator at the bottom of the story. I decided to go straight to the source...The Christian Science Monitor.
Voila...
...the rest of the story...with the simple revelation...that the "p" had to do with "piano dynamics"...and playing softly!
Now I understand the origins of "Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player."
So, the next time you tire of reading my ramblings...wishing, hoping, yea praying that I would just get to the point...REMEMBER the many, many behind-the-scenes hours that I spend in preparation for your few moments of intense pleasure! ;-)
And, if that don't work, hey, don't kill the messenger!
A final word...
As far as "popping a top" at sunrise and searching near and far for a "baker's case"...that was actually one of my "editorializing to heighten emotion" lines. The "top" in question this morning was a diet Dr. Pepper!
(Dang...THAT bit of information was probably more revolting than the inferred beer. Hey, as they say...truth is stranger than fiction!!!)
From the Christian Science Monitor...
What does 'p' in music mean? Twenty percent of US students know.
A report card on arts education released Monday shows room for improvement.
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Half of American eighth-graders can tell that a clarinet is playing the solo when they listen to the opening passage of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."
That's one finding of "The Nation's Report Card: Arts 2008" – the first snapshot since 1997 of students' performance in music and visual arts.
The report shows little change in arts participation and achievement. For instance, 57 percent of the students attended schools with music instruction at least three or four times a week in 2008, and 47 percent had access to visual arts instruction that often. These figures show no statistically significant difference from those in 1997.
But on a national test, there were continued gaps in scores among socioeconomic and racial groups, as well as low scores on some test items. Those findings leave arts advocates concerned about the quantity and quality of instruction.
The report card "invites some hard questions ... that can help raise the bar for arts education," said Patrice Walker Powell, acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, during the event releasing the report Monday. "Why are we seeing lackluster levels of student achievement in some fundamental areas of music and visual-arts learning? Are we providing [arts specialists in schools] with enough training and support to reach all students?"
As states and school boards struggle with competing demands amid the economic downturn, she added, "We must be vigilant about the availability and application of [arts] resources across all demographic groups, including disadvantaged communities."
One particular concern: Fewer students reported visiting an art museum or exhibit with their class at least once during the year – 16 percent in 2008 versus 22 percent in 1997.
In a statement, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted the value of arts in the learning process. The report card, he said, is a reminder that "the arts are ... important to American students gaining the 21st-century skills they will need to succeed in higher education and the global marketplace – skills that increasingly demand creativity, perseverance, and problem solving combined with performing well as part of a team."
The report did find some promising changes. For example, in the classroom, more teachers asked students to write about their own artwork: 27 percent of students did so, up from 21 percent in '97. That could be indicative of "a larger awareness ... about the breadth of arts curriculum," says Barry Shauck, president of the National Art Education Association in Reston, Va. "As a result of the reflection they do ... their own work becomes that much richer."
The report card is part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which tests a wide range of subjects over time. In a nationally representative sample last year of 7,900 public- and private-school eighth-graders, about half were assessed in music and half in visual arts.
On a 300-point scale, average scores ranged from about 105 for the lowest-scoring group to 194 for the highest. On "creating tasks" such as drawing a self-portrait, the average score was 52 out of 100.
Examples shed some light on the scores. In music, 52 percent of students could identify Africa as the region of origin for a musical excerpt and describe a characteristic of the music's style. Only 20 percent identified that "p," when printed on a page of music, stands for the piano dynamic marking and signals to play softly.
In visual arts, 53 percent could describe differences in certain parts of an artist's self-portrait, but only 19 percent could connect the characteristics of the portrait with what the artist was trying to communicate.
Because of changes in scoring procedures, only the multiple-choice portions of the 1997 and 2008 tests could be compared. Students did slightly better in music in 2008, but in visual arts there were no significant differences.
