The ghosts of music in the classroom
In just six weeks, Pfannenstiel's music school produced a film and a lesson to present its offer to compulsory schools. This tight deadline was made possible by a motivated team and an agile working method. The innovative idea was awarded 2nd prize in the best practice competition at the Music Education Forum 2023.
How can we reach students at school? This was the question the team at Pfannenstiel in Meilen (ZH) asked themselves in the spring of the second year of the pandemic. "It was clear to us that we needed something new," explains school director Kerstin Wiehe. Very quickly, it was decided to produce a film in the style of a video game, offering a kind of journey through the music school in a virtual world. Given the tight deadline, several project teams were formed. One developed the film, another worked in parallel on the lesson to complement it, and a third made contact with the compulsory school and organized school visits, etc. In just a few weeks, the result was a ready-made double lesson including film, instrument presentation and a practical sequence with singing and body percussion. For Kerstin Wiehe, this agile, parallel working method was the key to success: "It generated interaction, the different groups were able to immediately undertake the necessary adaptations and benefit from each other. It was a lot of fun."
In the first year of implementation, the resulting "MUSiK! - Musik im Klassenzimmer" project reached 75 classes and 1700 children through the film "MUSIKGEISTER" ("Ghosts of Music"). The following school year, enrolment at the music school increased by around seven percent, while it continued to decline at other music schools in the region. According to Kerstin Wiehe, this increase is clearly attributable to the project. In addition to the lesson and film itself, parallel media contacts and the recognizability of the music ghosts also contributed to this success. Teachers reported that, a year later, children were still able to sing the motif used, taken from Georges Bizet's "Farandole".
The Pfannenstiel music school will continue to work on this project. In addition, a member of the teaching staff has designed a music theory video game based on the history of the "Musikgeister", which will be published shortly. "We can certainly imagine developing further teaching aids," says Kerstin Wiehe. All the more so since, as the team has discovered, the ghosts of music are appealing not only for their content, but also for their visual appeal, and they stay in the memory - a good basis for other digital and analog tools.
Find out more: Musikschule Pfannenstiel
