School of Music Faculty Reflections: Remote Teaching, Week 3

April 3, 2020

Week Three, Remote Online Teaching

In response to a Mini-Grant opportunity in the CFA School of Music, a group of faculty members is blogging each week on their experience teaching remotely online to their students at BU. What follows are the individual experiences of talented and dedicated faculty members as they adjust to new pedagogical modalities. Each demonstrates commitment to learning with and frequently from their students.

Note: the editor of these blog posts may very well not endorse any faculty preferences that devalue the powers and potency of caffeine!

Lynn Eustis Associate Professor of Music, Voice; Director of Graduate Studies

I visited my office this week to pick up some scores. Sadly, I did not run into a single one of you while I was there. I sauntered across Comm Ave (no traffic) while I admired the beautiful new exterior of the CFA. The scaffolding remains in place on the north wall. When I saw that my office window is still blocked by the tarp, I wryly thought that reflected my mood, on which the isolation seemed to weigh more heavily this week. Like so many others, I reached out to musician friends around the country looking for solace and community.

One friend reminded me that our voice students passionately look forward to their lessons with us, even more so now that much of their other coursework has moved to take-home and lecture formats. Initially some of my students worried about how they would continue to make progress with me within this limited delivery system. I have been heartened by their surprise (“I learned a lot today!”) and the smile on their face at the end of the lesson that wasn’t there at the beginning. And the truth is that despite the clunkiness of the Zoom format, I still cherish spending time with each of my students. I am grateful to have a teaching job that allows me to continue to interact with them. My sister, who is a middle school guidance counselor, desperately misses her students.

The highlight of this week for me was the virtual studio class led by my dear friend and colleague MaryJean Allen. “How to Get Out of Startle and Feel Better Now” covered ways to use Alexander Technique and body mapping principles to reduce physical stress and anxiety. Pro tip: breathing is important. We also read a comforting poem by Benjamin Garcia, “Bliss Point or What Can Best Achieved by Cheese” (www.poets.org) I am pleased to report that Mr. Garcia affirms my love for Cheetos.

Finally, I highly recommend this article from chronicle.com: “Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure.” Reading it just made me feel better, and it empowered me to pursue my professional activities on my own timetable while we all endure this crisis.

Bayla Keyes Associate Professor of Music, Violin

We—my students and I—are finding more and more ways to connect past the computer technology. I announced a lighthearted scale and technique competition, which all seemed to welcome, and got so much pleasure out of seeing the individual videos coming from studio apartments, homes, or in one case a quarantine hotel in Korea. The studio has started one group video project; one group is researching online streaming; and a third group is experimenting with different tracking methods—one student is doing an Instagram called “One Hundred Days of Quarantine Practicing” and already has quite a few followers. In studio class yesterday we had two Bach performances, and the students’ comments were just as insightful and helpful as ever. Everyone is finding their rhythm in this strange new life.

What I most love to teach is how to produce different sounds suitable for different composers and eras. This is now made much more difficult because a computer cannot possibly replicate the subtle colorations, I want my students to discover. I find I am often talking about the art, literature, and history of an era, trying to get the students to envision themselves living in a certain time, becoming the composer, evoking emotions brought from a different world. Of course, I have specific technical suggestions—hold the bow more delicately, with the fingertips; play closer to or farther from the bridge—but so much has to come from the students’ own imagination. Even the finest performances on YouTube, mechanically reproduced, will not convey the vast range of resonances of which the violin is capable. When I am finally able to hear my students live again, I will know if I have succeeded in inspiring them to search for possibilities beyond that one simply good sound.

Karin S. Hendricks Associate Professor of Music and Chair, Music Education

CHILL! In Week 1 I mentioned three steps to creativity: Fill, Chill, and Drill. Week 3 was intended to be “chill” week, and it now seems more fitting than I had initially imagined, after witnessing a huge increase in the level of student stress. It appears that this is getting “real” for a lot of students—and all of us. Various stages of stress and grief seem to be unfolding as our time in quarantine grows longer and the global death toll gets higher. It is a strange time, when the best thing we can do to help others is to stay home and take care of ourselves. So the topic of “chill” is strangely appropriate.

This spring I have been teaching an instrument repair class at BU. Thank heavens all the hands-on repairs happened earlier in the semester, and students are now working on their mock repair budget proposals, which they can easily do in quarantine. In our last class I shared with the students some tips for maintenance of their most important instrument: themselves. These tips are based on research in motivation and psychology, and are things that I am trying to practice in my own life as well as implementing into my research on music, education, and wellbeing. Here are the tips I shared:

Maintenance for the Most Important Instrument: YOU

Plan in advance, even if it seems like you don’t have time to do so.
Do your job, and only your job
Practice positive self-talk
Recognize what you can control, and what you can’t
Take on new challenges only when they bring you joy
Find a good listener to share your concerns with
Genuinely listen to others
Establish a routine that works for you
Vary from your routine when needed, but openly recognize that you are doing so
Work with your own biorhythm
Choose tasks that match your energy level
Break up tasks as your focus allows
Write tasks/ideas down immediately
Use just one system to organize your tasks, whatever works best for you.
Practice saying no without guilt (this takes practice)
Take a day/hour/minute to re-set when necessary
Go into nature
Move your body regularly
Practice power poses
Limit exposure to toxic people, and surround yourself with people who give you energy
Avoid getting sucked into other peoples’ (unnecessary) drama
Say thank you for little things as well as big things
Do random acts of kindness
Give hugs as appropriate (respect others’ space)
Make music just for fun
Feel your emotions fully (from laughing to crying)
Get appropriate help for issues on the trauma-Trauma spectrum
Remember that time is money (spend money to save time)
Healthy eating/sleep can buy you time
Choose water over caffeine
Take micro breaks: breathing, stretching, posture, centering
Take regular breaks from electronics (complete, as well as brief eye focus breaks)
Not sure where to start on a project? Look for “low hanging fruit”
Schedule and limit email time
Know that what works for you in any particular moment may not work for you or someone else in any other particular moment

Although I wrote this list for my students, it came from my own experiences and strivings to center, stay focused, and engage in self-care at this difficult time. I have referred to this list a lot whenever my blood pressure starts to rise or I start to panic when the emails come in faster than I can respond to them. I believe it is helping.

Coda: Wednesday night the music education faculty held a Zoom “happy hour” with our online graduate students who live throughout the world. Although these students are used to online platforms and we always work remotely with them, we thought it might be good to check in, just to make sure they were faring ok in this unprecedented time. It was heart-warming to just get together and chat with students from a variety of cohorts and a variety of locations. We heard from a student whose daughter is on the front lines as an ER resident in Brooklyn, and we also heard from a student in China who offered us hope that the curve would eventually go down. It was amazing listening to students express their joys, fears, hopes, possibilities. I love my job. I love how it connects me with so many amazing people who inspire me and teach me so much.

Lucia Lin Associate Professor of Music, Violin

When we were asked to blog about our experiences in creative ways to teach remotely, I was keen to learn and experiment with this platform. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to try out, was eager to hear what my colleagues had learned as well, and was all ramped up to make this new adjustment in learning as exciting and productive for our students as possible. And soon my days were filling up with a lot of things to do and projects to fulfill.

But then I became overwhelmed. Sure, I was connecting with students and hopefully inspiring them in different ways. But I was also spending hours in front of the screen teaching, and on my phone reading about worst case scenarios. There was an inordinate amount of time being frustrated with technology. I was fighting so hard for some sort of normalcy. I am a type A ‘do-er’ and I thought if I stayed productive, I was being successful in making the adjustment to our temporary reality.

But it isn’t our “temporary” reality, is it? We will forever have a new “normal” because of Covid-19. Which of our arts institutions will come out unscathed? Frankly all of them will suffer some ramifications. Individual artists are struggling to stay afloat. We are all connected in some way, so if one is affected, another will feel the repercussions. Only time will tell us what that looks like. Just like moving to a new town or embarking on a new relationship, we need to allow ourselves time to get to know our new reality. And that cannot be done staring at screens. It’s scary, because slowing down can engender reflection, and we can’t hide from our fears.

But we need to take the time to nurture our inner selves in order to care for those around us. The “doing” needs to be internal. Shut down those devices, don’t worry about productivity, take advantage of the fact that we can’t go anywhere, and get acquainted with ourselves in this new reality. That might be the biggest lesson we could share with our students during this time.

Kính T. Vu Assistant Professor of Music & Dissertation Progress Coordinator, Music Education

Who We Are[1], Kính T. Vũ

We are the ones

We are the many

We are the resilient

We are the creators

We are the innovators

We are the learners

We are the teachers

We are making a difference in the lives of our students,

our colleagues

our families with every every every breathe.

I’m considering how our learners are coping with the new normal. They are the ones, the many, who are resilient. They are the creators and innovators who are showing each other – and me – that it’s going to be okay even though everyone is on edge.

While it’s not what we had planned on, Who We Are is not wholly dependent on these circumstances.

Rather, Who We Are is about us and the trust we vest in each other during times of trial.

Who We Are is performing an improvised, aleatoric (a la Zoom), and perhaps irreverent Coronavirus song while standing at kitchen or bathroom sinks, scrubbing hands, clacking soap bottles, and singing heartily.[2]

Who We Are is getting up for aural skills at five o’clock in the morning and saying, “Sure, I’ve got this;” then telling the class that the TA for that same aural skills section is voluntarily offering an alternative, later meeting time for the West Coast music majors.

Who We Are is realizing our symbiotic relationship with the world. As one student in Introduction to Music Learning and Teaching wrote this week: “The current situation, the Covid-19 pandemic, has shifted my thinking on how and why I want to educate. It’s made so very clear that every being on this planet is so undeniably interconnected.”

Who We Are is knowing that we don’t have to be alone. I think Carole King sang it best:

Brita Heimarck Associate Professor of Music, Musicology & Ethnomusicology

Honestly, I enjoy seeing my students each class on zoom and catching up on how they are doing and staying in touch, as well as hearing their voices and perspectives over the hour or two we have together. They continue to amaze me by sending in their discussion points and essays and participating in class discussions, as well as nearly full attendance. I guess this blog is a tribute to our smart, friendly, diligent students!!

As far as my work goes, it took most of week 2 to get my VHS fieldwork videos transferred to DVD and then converted to MP4 files but now I have uploaded 1 Balinese gamelan compilation from my field recordings and 3 full Balinese shadow play performances I recorded in Calgary, Canada to the Blackboard site for my ensemble and we have begun to analyze them together. They can view the puppeteer’s choreographed movements and listen to his distinct voices in correlation with the musical accompaniment for different scenes and actions in the play. Today we will view many different musical ensembles in Bali to discuss the role of music in life rituals, processions, cremation ceremonies, and temple festivals. We will also discuss the history of this tradition and changes that have occurred over the past 75 years. Having deeply investigated and mastered the audio and video quality options on zoom, I can share the best audio and video quality with my students during class time and on the Blackboard site.

I have never been so organized or spent so many countless hours in multiple zoom gatherings but my home office is beginning to feel energized like a beloved old car that is creeping up to the 200,000 mile mark. With all this hard work and concentration in one place, I believe it will be a remarkably productive semester!

Michelle LaCourse Associate Professor of Music, Viola; Chair, Performance & Applied Studies; Chair, Strings

At least we have the internet—Zoom provides amazingly easy contact when we can’t be in the same room together, and – despite its problems with sound—I’m getting visions of remote lesson possibilities when I can’t make the trip across MA due to a snowstorm, if I’m under the weather and need to stay home, or if a student has the “walking sniffles” and I don’t want my whole studio to catch whatever they have. I can also meet with prospective students online (even though an in-person lesson is a gazillion times more effective and informative for all). At least we have the internet.

Despite the worrying message that occasionally appears on screen (mid-lesson) saying “Your internet connection is unstable” in addition to odd sorts of audio blips, and occasional briefly frozen video, it’s pretty amazing what can be done from my new “Living Room Teaching Studio.” Yup, At least we have the internet.

String Degree Recital recordings are starting to come in for approval, and the wonders of email and internet links make me wonder what we would have done if there weren’t so many ways to connect electronically. I’m starting to hear not only from friends I usually see in Boston, but also from more friends and former students who are located all over the world, and it’s been wonderful to have that online communication. Yes, we have the internet.

Wednesday late morning my internet connection degraded more and more, and eventually ceased to exist. The ONLY home internet provider available in Holyoke had a massive outage. I no longer had the internet. Computerized voices at Comcast’s number required multiple time-consuming steps that led nowhere useful and repeatedly instructed me to go ONLINE (really) to check the status of my “issue”. Finally, the maze of “press-a-number” choices gave me a text number I could send the word “OUTAGE” to. While automatically generated text responses confirmed the city-wide home internet outage, it also texted me suggestions to check ONLINE to learn more. I texted back “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” to the nameless bunch of electronics and automatically generated text responses. After rescheduling some lessons for later in the week, service was restored later that afternoon. Phew! At least we have the internet back! Thursday morning the signal was fine, but after a Zoom CFA Faculty Meeting, my internet connection died again. Texting “OUTAGE” immediately to the magic number started a brief argument via text with the electronic responses denying at first that there was any such outage. Today I progressed to texting “ARE YOU F-ING KIDDING ME???” to whatever machine was generating answers, and then received a text confirming that, yes, again, there was indeed a city-wide home internet service outage. Same approximate time as yesterday, and the same couple of hours to get it restored, while I phoned and texted students to set up new lesson times. I may need to set up a back-up plan for lessons that happen mid-day in case this keeps happening, and just get outdoors and enjoy the sun, letting my cat reclaim his favorite napping spots where the sun streams in through south windows, and viola lessons had recently evicted him from his usual mid-day domain. At least we have the internet – most of the time.

(With no internet, thus no Zoom Viola Lessons, Benjamin [lower left] reclaims the sunniest spots for mid-day napping…)

Gabriel Langfur Lecturer in Music, Bass Trombone

The theme of this third week in the time of the virus, in our little virtual corner of the BU School of Music, I realize, is priorities: paying attention to every twist and turn of the news is not helping anybody’s mental state, but finding music to practice that we truly love turns out to be the most effective way to feel like we are doing something worthwhile, and in the process we find ourselves making progress—finding the ways for our bodies to answer the call of our musical imaginations. Yes, we continue to practice scales and technical exercises, do our lip slurs and long tones, but in this strange isolation it’s harder to buckle down and do the work part of our work. More of our efforts need to be in the context of joy, or the rest is meaningless.

Emily Ranii Academic Program Head, BU Summer Theatre Institute, Lecturer, Opera Institute

I am reading James Gleick’s book Time Travel: A History—the philosophy, literature, and evolution in science and mathematics that make it all seem so probable in its impossibility. Zoom has catapulted us into an unimaginable future, less steampunk, fewer lightning bolts, but, even on the best of days, I can still only aspire to be Christopher Lloyd. I have watched streams of Met Operas and Theatre for Young Audiences (Trusty Sidekick Theatre Company has the market on the hippest, most avant-garde toddlers around and then there was Casper: The Friendly Musical). There’s something opposite in the time travel of these two ventures—technology meets classical music at The Met VS. technology meets the citizens of the future in Theatre for Young Audiences.

This week’s classes were all about finding our new rhythm. Monologue coachings alternated between “speaker view” while the performer was working and “gallery view” for full class discussion/feedback. Zoom seems to amplify class dynamics; the students who always chime in seem to chime in a little bit more often or a little bit louder while those who hold back are able to hide even more behind screens upon screens. After that initial period of exuberant Zooming in our first two weeks of classes, had we time traveled back to our in-person class dynamics of early March? Allison Voth and I resolved to call on students next week, regardless of whether their hands are raised or not, to ensure all have an equal opportunity to learn.

Still, I find hope in their persistence to meet together as a full class. When we first moved over to Zoom, Allison and I questioned Zoom attention spans and debated dividing the OT class into first and second years, or even dividing further into individual coachings. The students, however, have been consistent in their desire to stay together as a full class to learn from each other. That makes for 20 of us on Zoom together every Monday from 11:15 a.m – 2:00 p.m. And I would not have it any other way.

Justin D. Casinghino Lecturer in Music, Composition and Music Theory

I think the best way to start my week-three reflection on remote teaching is to share a success. Just a week behind our initial schedule, my students in Electronic Music I all turned in midterm projects that would normally be mixed and presented in our electronic music studio. The work that they created within their home spaces (pieces for stereo playback created from manipulated recordings of a single, found sound-object) demonstrated impressive academic and artistic growth. While work on these did begin in our studio before spring break, they were all finished at home and this week I was able to not only have them submitted, but to share them with the class. While we would normally listen to these together, the students will spend the coming week listening to and writing reflections on their classmates’ compositions. This all makes me feel positive that remote teaching is working. Likewise, students in Electronic Music II have made wonderful creative progress on individual projects, as have my doctoral research students, and graduate theory seems to have barely skipped a beat (pun reasonably intended).

Beyond this I have spent the week considering balance and expectations, both for my students and myself. Much of this consideration was focused on trying to strike a work/life balance in this new remote life. While Boston University is my primary school, as I’m sure many of my fellow adjuncts can appreciate, I am navigating several institutions’ methods for continuing in these times, teaching seven courses in total. As an educator and composer with a reasonable percentage of their artistic output in technology-based genres—I still don’t think I’ve spent so many hours, so many days in a row at this screen. Finding time away from it is important. In that, I have found it crucial to relay to my students not just what my changing expectations for their work are, but also when they can expect things form me, when I’m readily available, etc. Part of this has also been accepting what we can and can’t do. For instance, in those previously mentioned Electronic Music I and II classes—our final projects simply can’t be in 5.1 surround as they would typically be; we are not in our studio, and none of the students have a set up like this at home. I can cover the concept, but just need to adjust the final outcome. I think having open discussions with the students about these matters has been helpful for them and for me.

Finally, on a pure tech side of things: the Avid software company granted us far more temporary ProTools Ultimate licenses than we have full versions of in the studio, allowing students to continue their work in the best manner possible. I have also recently been given some tips on avoiding the new horrible practice of “Zoom-bombing” (someone hacking into your meeting and sharing harmful content; luckily this hadn’t happened to me yet). Starting meetings with everyone in the waiting room means you have to allow each person in, and only allowing screen sharing by the host means that no one can freely post content. This can easily be toggled on-and-off via the pop-up arrow next to “share”. I have also found students to be extremely appreciative of the videos I’ve been posting on Blackboard, as discussed in my week-two blog.

Gregory Melchor-Barz Director, School of Music; Professor of Music, Musicology/Ethnomusicology

I have juggled a variety of emotions this past week. I have attempted to limit my screen time related to social media (due to obvious Zoom-fatigue), but I find more and more that colleagues, students, and friends are turning to insta-picta-snappa-gram to reach out for counsel, help, and comradery. It’s not that we are needier right now. It’s not that we simply have more time. I think there is a basic underlying notion that we are going to get through COVID-19 better if we do so collectively rather than further retreat into our isolation zones. I really have no space in my life to judge the ways in which other people are going public with their anger, fears, and solutions. But I do have the personal resources to empathize and feel deeply the pain that many of the people with whom I am privileged to live and work are experiencing right now. It’s been a tough week. It’s tough being constantly resilient. It’s tough not being reactive. I am tough. We are tough, yes. And we are even stronger when we are open to the struggles of others.

[1] Boston University Athletics uses “Who We Are” to signify departmental goals and rally its student athletes around the human endeavor to succeed in academics, sports, community, and living. For more information on the guiding tenets of “Who We Are,” visit https://goterriers.com/documents/2016/7/1//WWA_GT.pdf?id=2476

[2] Rodney Lister would have loved this performance!

[3] King, C. (1971). You’ve got a friend [Recorded by C. King]. On Tapestry [LP]. Ode, A&M.

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