Burton Hable

Bummed I’ll miss Afterdark! I don’t fly in until late Thursday night. I have a poster Friday morning with Paul Miller of Duquesne on learning music theory in makerspaces. Hope I see you at the conference!

A Comparison of Three Approaches to Teaching Expressiveness | Bulletproof Musician A 2006 study compares three different approaches to teaching expressiveness, and identifies some pros and cons of each.

Aural modeling, concrete musical instruction, and mental imagery are each effective ways of teaching expressiveness, depending on the context.
bulletproofmusician.com/a-comparison...

How Do Effective Practicers Make the Most of Their Practice Time? | Bulletproof Musician A 2021 study of pianists highlights some key differences between effective and less-effective practicers.

Spoiler Alert: by setting goals!
bulletproofmusician.com/how-do-effec...

“What to me is universal about those is that art forms in general require a range of tools that allow you to engage in representing an idea, and that getting smart in those art forms not only requires that you learn how to use the tools, but that you understand what tools are good for what things.”

Erica Halverson & Alek Lev discussing arts knowledge. The clip is 4m15s, but the gist is at about 0:31. She goes on to further unpack in the clip.
overcast.fm/+AA7mu0m5044...

Zen Browser Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.

I have been dipping in and out of Zen, which built similar functionality on Mozilla’s engine. It is still buggy and does not sync tabs across devices. I am curious what else you find. zen-browser.app

More saved reading…

Pernille Ripp writes about a lesson plan she uses for discussing with students why they don't read. She begins with the question, “Do you read outside of school?" and helps students navigate their responses.

pernillesripp.com/2025/04/18/w...

The Teen-Disengagement Crisis By middle school, many kids’ interest in learning falls off a cliff. The ripple effects could last for years.

Peter writes about Anderson and Winthrop's article and book “The Teen-Disengagement Crisis,” specifically, that teenagers are making cost-benefit decisions, but they are not always great at performing the analysis.

www.theatlantic.com/family/archi...

Yes, Middle Schoolers Are Hard To Teach, and Nobody Is Really Lazy The slightly-cranky voice navigating the world of educational "reform" while trying to still pursue the mission of providing quality education.

Catching up on some saved reading...

From Peter Greene: “Yes, Middle Schoolers Are Hard To Teach, and Nobody Is Really Lazy”
curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2025/04/yes-...

Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture | A Social Psychological Synt The goal of Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture is to lay the basis of a theory with which to better understand the difficulties and complexities of

Côté and Levine, 2002: Identity, Formation, Agency, and Culture: A Social Psychological Synthesis
www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

"And that a viable social identity looks at how those ways of thinking about self intersect and interact. And this process of casting a portrait seems literally like the creation of a viable social identity.”

"So both what's happening inside, but also what's happening outside. And they operationalize it or they make it real by saying identity is about how I see myself, how other people see me, and how I fit into the communities to which I claim membership and who claim me as members.”

"We could mean anything from the physical manifestation of my body to some psychological sense of who I am in the world. And the way of describing identity that I really like is these Canadian researchers who developed a kind of social and psychological perspective on identity."

“So we all talk a lot about how arts practices facilitate identity. As a researcher, I've spent a lot of time asking the question, when we say identity, like what do we mean by that, right?”

"much as Steve has spent his career doing with Vet Art, much as Reggie is now doing with the emerging artists that he works with, much as all of the artists and mentors that we talk to across art forms do.”

“So if you all take one thing from our conversation today, it's asking yourself, how can I scaffold risk taking for the emerging artists in my space…”

"You have to set up the opportunity for people to feel like they can take risks because no one can learn anything new unless they're willing to take that risk and they're not going to take that risk unless you put the supports around them to be able to do so.”

“My number one message as an arts educator is our work is to scaffold support risk taking in a learning environment. That's what we need to do. And risk taking is not something people will just do. You can't just say, hey, go jump off that ledge, right?”

Erica Halverson discussing Côté & Levine's (2002) three domains of identity formation: ego, social, and personal.
overcast.fm/+AA7mu3-piCc...

A Chicago Pope implies the existence of an MLA Pope and APA Pope

Erica Halverson describing how, as arts educators, we need to scaffold risk-taking for the artists in our classrooms.

overcast.fm/+AA7mu3-piCc...