Picture this: A principal peers through the band room window. The band director is not at the podium conducting but silently writing in a chair in the corner. The students talk to each other for several minutes. Finally, someone counts off, and they play a section of a jazz tune. The director takes a sip from her coffee mug and watches. When the tune gets shaky, the students stop playing and start talking at once. The principal wonders: What is happening here? Is this what we are paying teachers to do, sit around and sip coffee?
When the 15-minute self-rehearsal ends, the director comes to the front of the class. “OK, let’s analyze what happened during your self-guided rehearsal. What worked well? What can we do better and how?”
Don’t fear student agency
If the principal at the school where I directed band ever walked by my room while my students were in “full agency mode,” I often worried it would seem chaotic. Though I knew my approach would ultimately prove its value, I feared she might question the effectiveness of stepping back and letting students run the show.
I wouldn’t have blamed her. As a prospective music teacher, I was taught to take a top-down approach when rehearsing ensembles: “You play; I critique.” But this all-powerful baton-wielding “mighty giver of feedback” characterization doesn’t leave much room for student agency. Is teacher training so entrenched in this approach that it becomes harder to break out of it? You’ve established yourself as the expert in the room … and now you’re standing by letting kids lead?
Based on my personal experience and conversations with other educators, many teachers’ fear of student agency stems from their perceived loss of control, discomfort with vulnerability, or concerns about appearing ignorant or experiencing failure.
On the flip side, we encourage our students to embrace vulnerability daily: To learn openly, they must be willing to attempt new things and accept failure as part of the learning process. I make a point not to demand anything from students that I don’t demand from myself, which requires me to keep my ego (i.e., my fears) in check.
If we teachers think of ourselves as indispensable, we are ultimately doing a disservice to our students (and ourselves). Student agency creates independent thinkers and doers, preparing students for their future lives and careers. Instead of passively receiving knowledge, it enables them to own their learning experience and become active agents of their education. It also drastically amplifies collaborative ideation, the creative process, and performance outcomes. Your classroom becomes a hive mind—the more students get used to having agency, the more they tend to bring their ideas to the table. Also, as agency increases, so can self-efficacy—a philosophy of “the more you do, the more you can do.”
The value of student agency
All these student gains lead to another powerful benefit for teachers: reduced workload. Though it may seem counterintuitive, spending the upfront time implementing student agency gave me time back over the long term. My students could pitch in to help with problem-solving, run their own rehearsals, and more, which helped to take several tasks off my plate. Building in small agency exercises from day one of each new school year led to huge student-agency growth within a few months.
Just like the opening vignette, I regularly had students rehearse themselves as a full band. When I was absent and the class had a substitute, I would email students the rehearsal plan for the day. Not only would they follow it and rehearse independently, they would also leave the whiteboard covered in their notes and email me a rehearsal report.
One great example of student agency coming into play is this: Two days before our school’s annual Arts Week performance, I heard that neither of our bassists could perform. My guitarists (who also played bass) communicated with each other and made a plan to ensure that all the guitar and bass parts would be covered. They had it handled before I could even start to problem-solve!
How to bring student agency into your classroom
Agency can be scary for students, too. If they are conditioned to expect a less collaborative environment, then too much agency too fast can overwhelm them. I find that students actually crave agency, although they may not know how to ask for it.
Teachers in all classes can do the same. Look at your daily class routine and your curriculum schedule and pick out places where students can make decisions. Can you find ways to incorporate student leadership roles? Can they propose their own topics and format for a project (e.g., presentation, podcast, interview, visual art, etc.)?
Here are a few ways to begin incorporating student agency into your classroom.
Group work. Students can work in groups to make their own music or work on their classwork, while the teacher floats around the room to facilitate. An assignment I used in the band room is One Song, Three Styles: Pick any song from the entire musical lexicon, perform it in the original genre, then choose two more genres to play it in. Students can perform for each other.
In another classroom, this might look like students working together to create a playlist of music that portrays the themes of a novel they are reading as a class.
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Show and tell. Put together a showcase in which students have the option to sign up and share a musical talent or to just be a supportive audience member. In my K-5 classes, one girl shared a song from Girl Scout camp, and a boy played “Ode to Joy” on the piano.
In other classes, students could share their knowledge and talents based on the subjects they are learning (e.g., read aloud their favorite poem, present a science experiment they learned at home, or share a photography book on a historical subject).
- Music. Use music to facilitate student agency. Give students the option of writing a song as a final project. Have students analyze literary devices in the song lyrics of their choice.
When my students learn a new piece of music together, it always begins as a mess of wrong notes and rhythms, missed entrances, and lots of stopping. After a few weeks, something more melodious starts to surface. We must brave the discord to shape the music into art.
Student agency in the classroom is like sight reading a piece—though initially messy, it ultimately orchestrates beautiful moments of learning and growth.
