Why should my content sit still?

As a British Trinidian, it makes sense that I would want to learn a lesson from the steel pan. This is not a lesson only for educators of music, but for all educators who wish to engage in decolonised and anti-racist practice. The lesson for today is: allow your curriculum to move.

Photo Cred: Dat Caribbean Archives Fella

Movement.

Its critical to understand that the most important lesson you can give your students is that they can bring themselves into their learning experiences. "Pan spread by starting little steel bands all over the world...it is this process of encouraging people to do." Dr Kim Johnson below provides some insight into the pedagogy of the steel pan, and its natural evolution combining doing, with teaching, with compassion, and inclusivity.

Video above is of a London Steelpan band in 2014 - Metronomes Steel Orchestra

Movement is a crucial part of the Caribbean experience. From my experiences living and working among conservative Christians to Carnival Masquaraders, Caribbean lives are filled with vibrance of music, colour, and movement. We all have some rhythm in our waist, wether it is gospel or soca. So is it reasonable then to assume that this should be the same with our education?

Work done by Dr. Paul Campbell (2021) found "that the lack of a sufficiently diverse curriculum and faculty meant it was often difficult for black students to be able to connect content and assessments directly to their own lived realities, meaning black students had to “work harder than their peers to connect with both assessment and curriculum content – a point remarked upon by both white and BAME students.” Read more of this report here.

Lesson:

The lesson for today is allow your curriculum to move.

• That could be from changes to your programme outcomes, down to the lesson objectives for one day.

• It could be from changing a 60 minute lecture, to a 60 minute debate.

• It could be from teaching students to engage in research that is about a structured set of topics, to allowing them to research their own cultural heritage or spaces that are of personal interest to them.

• Allow who you are teaching to dictate your pedagogy as much as what you want to teach them.

Dr. Kim Johson - PAN

Watch From 7:25-11.42...or watch the whole video! I've watched it more than a few times.

"Now the first thing is that [the steelpan] brings you into its home and it makes your believe that this thing, it real easy...in many countries Pan is the instrument of education in primary schools because if any of you have tried to learn other instrumemnts...they hurt your fingers, they require forms of manual dexterity that are difficult, boring, painful to master...but the pleasure of actually producing the music is what will inviggle you on. That is just one part....the steelband developed a sort of home made pedagogy...its like each one teach one...What it does, it it creates a kind of bonding between members of a band....when you are in a band...you are in a family. You could be from out of space, they will be your family."