Building #STEAM in Band

I know we've all heard of STEM.  Depending on where you are and what you teach, you may have heard of it ad nauseum.   What I am against though is the focus on those subject areas to the detriment of all others.  My other concern is that these subjects are being taught as though they're in their own separate worlds and have nothing to do with each other.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In the "real world" everyone seems so concerned with (by the way, does that imply a fake one in school?  what does that say about schooling then...) these are all intertwined.  As was stated in the idea inspiring book Invent to Learn: "School separates art, science, theory & practice...such divisions are artificial. The real world doesn’t work that way!"

The idea of STEAM (STEM + Arts) appeals to me as a musician. Without some very creative thinking, life as we know it would be rather dry. I'm always reminded of the Henry Ford line about having a car in any color...as long as it's black. Directly or indirectly, the arts are one of the things that bind the STEM subjects together.

I'd seen the Makey Makey kit while taking my graduate classes, but didn't have the chance to play with one until an EdCamp this fall. Boom. Instant addiction. I showed the video to my principal who had me order four kits on the spot. I brought up the idea of trying to create the piano stairs and she was very encouraging.

Here's where it got fun! I showed the Makey intro video, told my high school band we were going to make the piano stairs for our upcoming parent teacher conferences and let them go. The first thing they did was run to the cafeteria for bananas and find a site to play Pac-Man online. Once they got the hang of things though, they got down to work.  A favorite pastime became doing nothing but smiling at them when they asked for help. Then they'd figure out that I wanted them to look it up and try something and go back to working with the rest of the class. It was awesome seeing them work with each other and problem solve together. When they put the stairs together the day of conferences, they weren't pretty, but they worked, and the kids were excited to show them off. Our Christmas Concert was a few weeks later and a couple of students wrapped the stairs in red and green butcher paper to snazz them up. It was every person's BIG (as in the Tom Hanks movie) fantasy come true!

Fast forward to the spring. The students kept asking when we could use them again, but we had to make it through Festival season first. Our Fine Arts Festival is coming up this Saturday though, which provided a great reason to create some new projects. I put the Makey kits and our LittleBits Synth Kit out on a table and once again said "Go!" Students started looking some things up for ideas, separated themselves into their own groups, and got creating!

At our Fine Arts Festival this Saturday, there will be a Makey guitar, an Operation game with Patrick Starr as the patient, a graphite drum set using sounds from the set the band owns, and color coded songs written out for people to play with some awesome beats the Synth Kit!

My favorite part of all of this has been letting go of things and letting the students lead themselves. To be honest, I've had very little to do with the finished products of any of these projects, and I'm proud of that! That means the students have done their own learning, exploring, and collaborating.

A few months ago, I did a proposal for the school board on the creation of a STEAM class that was accepted. Even if we're lacking the students to make the class happen, I'm still hoping to create a STEAM or Maker club after school. It's going to be exciting to provide even more ways for students to explore how their personal creativity and STEM are a part of each other in the future!