… if you wanted to learn about something you had to try a lot harder than you do today. You needed to know someone who knew the things you wanted to know. There was no Google search at anyone’s fingertips. Connecting with other people needed to be done in person.
I mention this because of my interest in music. Learning about new types of music in the second half of the eighties was like a treasure hunt. When I was thirteen I started listening to metal bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica, and meeting other people who listened to the bands I did gave me an opportunity to ask them what else they were listening to. I then needed to borrow, copy, or purchase recordings from these newly-mentioned bands in order to increase both my mental and physical music collections. Doing this introduced me to punk rock, and punk rock eventually inspired me to create some music of my own.
I had played musical instruments for the school band, but music lessons at school were rather routine: tap your foot to keep time and then play back the music put in front of you. I became proficient at playing flute and trumpet, but nothing was ever mentioned about creating or performing my own music. The discovery of punk rock changed this. Suddenly some friends of mine wanted to start a band. They already had a guitar player, drummer, and singer, so seeing as the only open position was bass guitar I jumped right in and started learning to play bass. We practiced for a few months in my parents’ basement and then we decided we were ready to play a show.
This is where my story circles back to people connections. We had seen a few local bands play, so we started to network with other musicians by getting to know them and eventually setting up shows to play together. This process not only allowed us to expand our social circles, but also to befriend people we never would have met otherwise. It was more typical at the time to be friends with and spend time with people from your own school, so it was unusual that we not only knew but were friends with kids from six other schools that were within a half-hour radius of ours. Listening to other bands play inspired us to do more and be better musicians. We had helped create and were part of a community. This was definitely not something we had learned in school.
My realization after writing this is that collaboration and interaction helped shape who we were as people and musicians. I hope that studying connected learning with respect to teaching will help shape who I want to be as a teacher.
Thanks for reading!
-Eric L