Bridget Brown

4/10/17

JMUke:

Explore More Museum Reflection

The JMUke event at the Explore More Museum was more overwhelming than I expected
it to be. There about 15- 30 children that cycled in and out of the room. I did not expect there to
be so many participants involved and running around! Making sure the participants were
engaged was difficult. The room itself was crowded, it was the theater section of the museum
and we had the facilitator spot on the mini stage with the song book projected on the wall behind
them. We brought extra instruments (boomwhackers and auxiliary percussion) for participants to
engage with if they were too small to manage a ukulele or did not feel comfortable but still
wanted to participate. There was a lot of percussive noise because of this, which wasnt too bad
sonically for JMUke people but in hind sight this might have prevented students with sensory
difficulties from participating because of the amount of sound happening. I was running around
a lot trying to facilitate by keeping the slides going, teaching, or leading a song or two. My
primary role became to keep the event running as smoothly as possible, which was not the type
of facilitating I had envisioned but I think it was the most necessary job for me.

I think that we adapted well to the event after the first 40 minutes. There was a huge flux
of participants and we learned early on that the participants reacted better to shorter jam
sessions mixed in with individualized teaching moments. The first few songs were very
successful in engaging the crowd, all the ukuleles were in the hands of a child or parent and
they were engaging in playing along. Things that contributed to this success was having Isabel
playing her piano and the engagement of all JMUke members. Having the MUED 273 students
facilitating and teaching individually was very helpful for the younger participants who needed
physical help to learn the fingerings. Isabel using the piano was a great facilitating and helping
the participants have a better pitch center for songs and just being able to hear something other
than 20 ukuleles playing was helpful.

I certainly wasnt expecting the crowd turn out that we got. The room was filled with
people and it added a layer of pressure to make things work and run smoothly which I wasnt
expecting going into the event. There wasnt much we could do about there being so many
people but as the event went on we clicked into a better groove of how to run things. There
were a few children that were very intent on taking the microphone away from us while we were
broken off into teaching groups. Because of this three of us had to hold the fort at the front
instead of teach. This stemmed from allowing one participant to sing a song at the front and
then others tried to sing inappropriate songs for the venue. They then proceeded to try and
sneak up or run around us to try to get to the microphones or the piano. Looking back on it we
should not have let the participants have any access to the microphones or piano. We had
turned off the sound to let them sing but they refused to let that be the case. It was very difficult
to work with these participants. Going forward I would like to learn positive ways to tell students
no and have them listen.

We exceeded our expectations of how many children and families would come. I think
the fact that many families come to the Explore More Discover Museum and have memberships
they were already likely to be there or to attend on a Friday night. The more difficult part of
reaching our target population was fully engaging them in the music once they were there. We
had a lot of parent participation in making music but a lot of the children would run in and out
and many of them did not have the coordination to play the ukulele yet. It was difficult to work on
ukulele skills with the group but I think the way we adapted went well; we realized that the event
wasnt for the participants to be experts on the ukulele by the end, it was for them to have a
meaningful music making experience. I think many participants found some value and
enjoyment from the event which was the goal.

Advice for the future facilitators of this event would be to expect for your plans to be
completely thrown off and go in ready to be flexible. I usually see myself as a pretty flexible
person but even this event threw me for a momentary loop. Its easy to forget the goals and
purpose of the event when you are stressing over the outcomes matching your plans but the
special moments happened when we let the participants take control of what they wanted to do.
Responding to the group was hugely important as well. We had over anticipated the attention
span of the children we were working with so that meant changing it up. One great moment we
had was when one boy asked if we could all sing the ABCs and we didnt plan for it but we
improved the chords on the spot and all the children in the room were very excited about it.
Another thing I wish we had thought to do was to send out a poll for parents to fill in to let us
know what songs their children knew how to sing. Some of our songs didnt connect to the
group because it just wasnt something they knew by heart. I think that wouldve made it an
even better event for the children who were too small to play the ukuleles but were old enough
to sing songs from memory.

Future Applications/ What I learned:

- Timing of events is important for keeping small childrens attention

- Parents are very eager to be the one who teachers their children, let them
- Meaningful music making doesnt mean being an expert by the end of a lesson or event
- Letting the students lead the charge makes for a better and more meaningful learning
experience
- I have the tendency to try to take charge in situations that can be delegated (if the team
is willing/able)
- Worrying about an event or situation will only lead to self-doubt which will never end in
positive results
- Children are very forgiving when it comes to singing in tune, so theres no need to be
worried about being perfect, especially at an event like this one
- Remembering that small children can make music is important, they are capable and
often willing
- Loud noises can be a lot for children or adults to handle so managing noise levels can
be tricky but its important
- Always talk less and do more playing
- Preparing for events isnt easy
- Reaching out for help is not a weakness and its necessary to stay sane while working
on large projects/events like this one
- Having an effective administration of events and people is important to make the group
feel confident about planning and executing an event
- Facilitation is about being flexible to a groups needs and being able to evaluate then
immediately respond is very important to keeping the flow
- Advertising for events is more important that I thought and I want to learn more
techniques that will be effective in bringing people to more events
 On a scale of 1-5 I would give myself a 4 in terms of contribution to this project. I think that I
did a lot of planning at the beginning and helping with the songbook and curriculum planning
was where I did my best work at the beginning. I could have done more for my facilitating part of
the project; I wish I had prepared for other people to rely on me so heavily. I think that I did a
great job of running the things behind the scenes at the event but I choked a bit when it came to
leading songs because I did not prepare to facilitate in that way.