From Return to Normal to a “New Normal”? A Call to Revive Music Teacher Motivation and Reflection

What is “Normal”?

What exactly does normal mean? In relation to COVID-19 and music learning, one definition from the Oxford English Dictionary, is “conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected” (n.d.) We use the word “normal” regularly in everyday discourse, but have you ever stopped to think about the implications of the definition for music education in the United States? What do we define or perhaps accept as normal? Here, I offer one possible example drawn from some recently collected research data.

From 2020 to 2021, a colleague and I conducted a survey of fifth- through eighth-grade music teachers from across the United States (Cronenberg & Williams, 2023). Since it was 2020 to 2021 and we were in the midst of ever-changing and geographically-specific COVID-19 restrictions, we asked survey respondents if any of the music learning opportunities normally available at their school were cancelled or suspended for 2020 to 2021. Over 60% said that something about music learning was different at their school because of a COVID-19-related restriction. As is likely unsurprising, respondents identified choir and band as the music learning most often cancelled or suspended from 2020 to 2021. Music teachers from across the country shared changes to their music teaching experiences in an open-ended question on our survey. Teacher responses such as “extra curricular ensembles have been cancelled for the year” and “concerts and field trips are cancelled” described typical events in the life of a middle level music education program that did not occur from 2020 to 2021.

These findings are likely unsurprising given the concerns about spread and aerosols from 2020 to 2021 and at a time when many schools were still dealing with virtual instruction. But my point here is that the “normal,” or usual or expected, music learning experiences for middle level students were easy for teachers to identify. Although this was not the case everywhere, one teacher said: “My school normally has band and choir for 5th grade instead of general music. This year, 5th graders are receiving general music in place of band and choir.” Although this music teacher was simply stating facts, the juxtaposition of general music as “other” or abnormal, compared with band or choral ensembles that were “normal,” irks me. I acknowledge that for many music teachers and students, the loss of these “normal” experiences was concerning and perhaps upsetting. I completely respect colleagues who want to return to the music-making that they love. However, as the teacher above suggests, during virtual instruction in many schools, general music became the “last resort” of continued musical learning used to fill the instructional gap left by ensembles rather than acknowledged and uplifted for its value as a malleable, diverse, and democratic site of music learning adaptable to all students at all levels. I long for a time when general music is not the “back-up” music curriculum for middle level students but rather one of many valuable options for cultivating middle level students’ lifelong interest in and engagement with music.

Returning to “Normal”?

Certainly, returning to normal might be a good thing. Those for whom joy is found in the collective musicking of the ensemble should in no way be belittled for their desire to restore their programs, recruit new members, or make music with their students. There is important community to be found in the ensemble environment. The ensemble is, for many music teachers and music students, a place of belonging within a school.

But have we really stopped to consider in what ways a return to normal might also be detrimental? A return to the expected—the pre-COVID-nothing-has-changed expected—seems to me to be unattainable and undesirable. Yet, it is the pathway I see many in the field choosing or perhaps being required to take. Music teachers are not entirely responsible for this return. I do not want to overlook the expectations that have been placed upon music teachers by their administrators and school communities. While administrative restrictions dictated what musicking could not occur during 2020 to 2021, administrative dictates have also quickly restored past practices, often without reflection, as schools have returned to in-person learning. For example, I know some middle level general music teachers who, before COVID, were required by administrators to present public concerts each semester even though their general music curriculum was not primarily performance-based, and thus concert preparation took time away from other learning goals. This is one example where teacher reflection in the return to normal might instigate a conversation between the music teacher and the principal about the best venue to publicly share what students learn in general music. Perhaps a concert is still best, but perhaps an in-class informance, bulletin board display, student-created website, or other means might better suit the curriculum.

As we collectively think about whether returning to normal is a good thing, I draw on Jorgensen’s (1997, 2003) notion of dialectical thinking and try to embrace the both-and of this situation. Through dialectical thinking, we do not have to choose between option A and option B, rather, we can try to think about how both options are beneficial and how to find an appropriate balance for the specific circumstance. It is both good that music learning as we understand it in the United States is reemerging in the school and that we need a chance to consider what we have learned and what we have lost in the rush to return to normal. As Jorgensen states:

At the heart of transforming musical education are the people involved in it, particularly students and teachers. Teaching and learning are human endeavors, holistic experiences that are construed intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. A dialectical view of the relationship between the curriculum and the student suggests that the human dimensions of music education are just as important as the material to be learned and taught and cannot be separated from it. Building curriculum solely around subject matter, programs of study, and abstract objectives derived from expert knowledge of the field of music is short-sighted because it fails to take sufficient account of the ways in which knowledge is socially and individually constructed and of the centrality of teacher-student interaction in the learner’s and teacher’s experience. (2003, p. 124)

It is the human experience of the shutdown, the reopening, and the return to normal to which I would like to turn as I consider whether music teachers have truly had an opportunity to consider how to or why we ought to transform music education at this pivotal moment in time.

Time to Reflect and Respond?

The school shut-down in March 2020 was abrupt, and teachers and administrators moved into survival mode, hurrying to create Band-Aid-like policies and procedures. The scramble to facilitate virtual and hybrid learning in 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022 left little time for more than reacting to the latest administrative guidance, dictate, or change. And even the return to fully in-person learning in 2022 to 2023 was a scramble, leaving teachers looking for supplies that had been packed away or resetting their classrooms after 2 years on a cart or a computer screen. Indeed, the past three plus years have left all teachers more reactive than proactive, never truly pausing to reflect, to take stock, to plan for the future. Where in this ever-shifting rush to react was the human experience?

In Experience and Education, John Dewey (1938/1998) suggests that the quality of an experience is what makes it educative and describes two important aspects of experience. First, an experience has an immediate emotional effect on the experiencer. Certainly, this is undeniable for almost any educator over the past 3 years—we have all been on an emotional journey of some sort. Second, what makes an experience educative is that the experience influences later experiences; in other words, what you experience today has a relationship to the choices you make and the things you learn in the future.

When, as you have navigated the ever-shifting expectations of the past few years, did you find time to pause to reflect on all that you learned? When did we, as a field of music educators, have a chance to consider what we were experiencing and how it taught us new things about music teaching and learning? Have we truly stopped to think about how what we have learned is influencing our current experiences?

Every music teacher can give examples of how they modified their practice during virtual learning. We can all easily give examples of how music teachers learned to use various online platforms, create and edit learning and performance videos, create community in unlikely spaces, and think differently about how composition, improvisation, and listening might be integrated into the curriculum. There are also the stories of ensemble directors who needed to transform their curriculum for virtual or hybrid teaching and discovered the merits of composition or chamber music for enhancing their students’ learning experiences. Some general music teachers found that their students delighted in using online tools to design original video games complete with composed theme songs or character motifs or that disengaged students suddenly became engaged in virtual learning when asked to use items around the house to make music in the style of the ensemble STOMP (see Cronenberg & Tang, 2023). Of course, some teachers grumbled or perhaps refused to change. However, for the most part, music educators harnessed their creativity and ingenuity in the urgent need to learn new knowledge and skills. The need to think about music learning differently was a shared experience across the field. But what has happened to this new knowledge and skill? How has what music teachers learned influenced what is happening now in music classrooms across the country?

At the heart of the issue lies the importance of teacher reflection. In the 1980s, Schön (1983) described the reflective practitioner as a teacher who both reflects-in-action—that is, in the moment of teaching to improvise and shift in order to improve learning—and who reflects-on-action afterwards to improve practice in the future. The improvisatory nature of music teaching in the virtual environment is obvious. But I wonder if enough quality reflection-on-action has occurred. Consider this for a moment: Do you feel that you have had enough time, energy, sleep, or headspace to truly be reflective as a teacher in the past 3 years? I, for one, have not. As a teacher educator, I am constantly trying to help my students see the importance and power of being a reflective practitioner, but I certainly have not had the space to do so adequately myself. And I feel this need viscerally.

Personally, one of the major issues I see with the return to normal discourse is the pressing need that was felt throughout the country to keep going, ensure students were learning, get back in the classroom, and so on. I can certainly understand this need. And yet, there was never adequate time to stop and reflect, to really consider what we have learned and to make changes so that we kept those practices that were improved in the virtual space and only retained those practices that truly were better in person. For example, imagine a music teacher who previously only taught in a large ensemble setting but who tried chamber music during virtual teaching. Imagine that this music teacher found that student collaboration in the chamber music groups developed students’ leadership skills and increased student motivation and autonomy. When virtual teaching ended, this music teacher had two choices: (a) return to the large ensemble-only model used previously or (b) continue to incorporate chamber music into the curriculum. Ultimately, the choice is the teacher’s, and every teacher will likely make their own decision. Retaining successful and engaging practices may require more work, advocacy, or reflection, but if the practice was beneficial to the students why abandon it and go “back to normal”? For me, there were things that I did in my teaching during virtual instruction that were simply better than anything I could ever do in-person primarily due to the technological limitations in the classroom spaces at my school. Why should I go back to teaching that particular lesson in person when the virtual lesson I created was so much stronger? Yet sometimes, I feel administrators want me to simply revert to teaching circa 2019 rather than consider new possibilities. I do not think I am alone, and yet, we have not had the time to stop, reflect, reconsider, and remake ourselves as educators.

In a recent class during my doctoral seminar on music education curriculum, a student said something along the lines of: “What we really needed was a whole year where everything was cancelled so that we could heal, reflect, discuss together, and plan anew for learning.” I wholeheartedly agree. And I only wish it were possible. For while Maxine Greene encourages us to use our imagination so that “we are enabled to look at things, to think about things as if they were otherwise” (2001, p. 65), I do not think there is any way to prevent children from aging while all of the teachers in the country take a year to reexamine the curriculum and structures that govern schools. Indeed, most of my practicing-teacher doctoral students would agree that their students are already 2 years behind in their social-emotional development, so I do not think that a year’s time-out for grown-ups is possible. But I do imagine what it might be like and how music teachers (and really all teachers) might once again find what motivates them as educators.