The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible

Booth, Eric.
The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator
New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Are you an educator searching for a means to revitalize the minds of your students, while providing them with the tools to be fully engaged, creative, reflective, and aware in their own lived lives? Are you a musician who craves a jump start in their career, or a teaching artist who seeks fresh ideas, and inspiration? Are you one who challenges the current state of the world and its potential to be otherwise?

Eric Booth’s carefully researched and widely captivating book offers insight to such issues, as well as practical advice on classroom techniques, activities, assessment, and all-around effective teaching habits. Specifically focused on music teaching artistry, “The Bible” is written from the viewpoint of one of the nation’s leading teaching artists. Booth’s narrative is passionate, personal, and consistently interwoven with delicious educational morsels. For example, did you know that the word art is derived from an Indo-European root meaning, “to put things together,” and that the root of the word educate is “to draw out?”

In addition to a continuous thread of new and empowering information on art and education, Booth also chronicles the history and development of the teaching artist in the 1980s, the problems of past programs, the implementation of national and state standards in the 90s, and the current growth, need, and mission of the 21st century teaching artist in partnership with classroom teachers. The author beautifully expresses the need to support learners in their own becoming of self, providing them with a safe, playful and reflective environment to make personal connections across curriculums, while using art and its process as the vehicle.

Later in the book, Eric Booth offers lesson plans and activity ideas for classroom teachers and teaching artists alike. All the activities have a primary focus on both the creative and reflective process of the teacher and student, with the emphasis on questioning, layered-learning, and continual ‘hooks’ throughout the lesson to engage or re-engage the learner. Booth approaches the act of teaching and learning as the only solution to awakening a seemingly dead society, uncovering the proven benefits of a methodically planned-partnership between teaching artists, and classroom teachers. I also found the chapters on assessment and self-assessment to be extremely useful in the classroom.

The information, though serious and intense in nature, is presented in a way that is animated, fascinating and often playful. As a result, I truly did have a hard time putting it down. I find it difficult to believe that anyone with respect for the power of education (more specifically, aesthetic education) could not be inspired by this work.

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