My second reflection assignment this week is to summarize the socioeconomic status of my school and community, and explain how those factors impact music selection and how it is taught.
Though this is something I have always taken into consideration on a subconsciously level, especially due to the fact that I often need to rethink and tailor my private instruction (on clarinet and sax) based on the current location I live in (which changes every 1-3 years), it is not something I have found myself putting into words in quite some time.
The community in which I currently give private instruction is a very eclectic one. I live on Oahu, in Hawaii, which provides quite a varied spectrum based on the little bit of travel I do from town to town to give different lessons, but I also live on a military installation, bring an equally varied and unique set of factors. Let's start with the local island population. Oahu is the "big city" of the island chain, with two thirds of the entire population of the state living on this one island. Due to the fact that it is so isolated, everything here is more expensive because it simply costs more to ship everything here. With the prices of everything being so high, especially real estate (very high prices for very little space, land is obviously limited here) many families live generationally in one home to save costs and pool resources. The homes often get passed down through the family as time passes. Education often does not go past high school, and if it does community college is the popular choice. The public school education system here is poor at best, largely based on very low state standards, so that even a really good school here would only possibly be considered average in an area like suburban Washington D.C. or other major city suburbs. This in addition to heavy Christian influence brought by western civilization leads to low birth control usage and large families. Oahu means "the gathering place" and as such is a melting pot of the Pacific. Polynesian culture and descent is the local population, but they make up only 6.8% of the population, while the most dominant population is that of the Japanese at 23%. What comes in as a distant second placer in Honolulu's population is the white non-Hispanic race, which accounts for 18% of the people. Other racial groups and their percentages are as follows: multi-racial, or those resulting from marriages between two or more racial groups (14.9%), Filipino (11.6%), Chinese (10.7%), Hispanic (4.4%), other Asian groups. The general feel here is to live with "aloha" which in this case means to take it easy, and not be in a hurry for anything. Proportionally few native islanders have ever left the island chain. As far as music programs, they are few and far between, but the systems that have it are generally pretty good, and have very committed students and parents helping to propel the programs. One great aspect of the island is the continued proliferation of the Royal Hawaiian Band, a professional full-time) if you can earn of spot) concert band that does two performances every week and numerous parades.
Then there is the military side. The military populations of families are varied, but they usually follow stereotypical trends. For example, generally the most educated families are the officer’s families, which are a lower percentage of the base population. Officers require more education to even be commissioned in the first place, and then they make more money allowing for greater selectivity of their children's educational experience. Many of the enlisted family population have significantly less education, though it often is grouped by military specialty. For instance, in the band field (to which I belong) it is quite prevalent that junior soldiers who just enlisted as musicians have Masters degrees in music, while infantry soldiers (who make of the brunt of the population on the post) often come into the service right after high school, often from rural areas attempting to improve the socioeconomic status that they were denied as children growing up. I have been in the Army for about nine years now, and though there are plenty of exceptions to this trend, it is far too often proved true. The families of these particular soldiers go to the cheapest option for public education, which I have already described here as being sub-par at best. There is one on post middle school that has a band, choir, and orchestra program, which is improving in recent years due to new hires. This post is home to the 25th Infantry Division Tropic Lightning Band, but other services are represented with a musical presence on the island to include the: Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Army National Guard. A joint military service concert takes place once a year in the April/May time frame.
As you could imagine, this provides a strange but enlightening environment for me to work in. From one student to the next I can never predict what their particular level will be, because the starting points for many of the students varies from elementary school to high school. Work ethic is probably the biggest issue from student to student. I might one day have an officer's child, a real goal-oriented driven individual with "helicopter" parenting, and the next lesson have an island child show up 15 minutes late to a half-hour lesson due to being on "aloha time." Musical selection for these students changes fairly drastically from one student to the next, and I often do not set a regimen for them until I have had them play a few lessons for me using music from their current band classes. For some, a very traditional approach using traditional literature (scales, etudes, duets) is the most productive, while others need more contemporary music exploration, improvisation, and laid back weekly requirements just to keep them on task and keep them in lessons. I try to mix both regardless of the student, but parents often have an expectation as well that to a certain extent needs to be lived up to. I almost always need to include some "island style" music to keep both students and parents happy. With one student I might be able to use "big words" to describe my points/analogies, and with others I might need to relate a technique to surfing while saying "bra" which is the slang island term for another slang term "bro." With some students I can rely on parental support, where with others I need to encourage more heavily intrinsic motivation, often trying to get them to come see the performances of the Army Band so that they will learn and be instilled with the qualities of professionalism and timeliness, yet still hearing highly entertaining music of widely varying styles. Right now just being in the Army Band is enough for most band directors to promote my name as an instructor, but I have been places in the past (and will most likely in the future after moving again- most likely D.C.) where I get "vetted" by band teachers and students take one or two lessons for free before both they and the parents are convinced of my ability to help their child improve.
As stated before, I have never really put many of these thoughts and concepts into words before, so this turned out to be a very productive and enlightening assignment for me that could prove very useful in the future.
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