A few thoughts before the EEP morning seminar.
Longy School of Music‘s Experiential Education Program is the picture of collaboration. We had a condensed 90-minute session, but it did not take long for this group to begin sharing. Kudos to Dr. Judith Hill Bose and this class for bringing their energy and intelligence to earnestly consider how EEP will play a role in their lives going forward.
As I wrote in my blog post from February titled “Longy’s Experiential Education Program”:
Many students choose to tie in a service aspect to their projects. This is a great way to generate an audience and seems like a very natural transition to post-graduate life, where many musicians go on to serve the community professionally and semi-professionally.
I was blown away by the creativity and drive behind the projects: one singer worked with an elementary school group and was already contracted to return to this same school after EEP, a collaborative pianist created an avant-garde vocal recital to be performed in bars and restaurants, a young conductor built off of his previous work with vocal ensembles in working in the community. Service, execution and creativity. This class should be a model for other schools around the county.
Our discussion focused around four questions supported by discussion, small break-out groups, slides and workbook exercises:
1) What new experiences did EEP bring you?
- List three new business skills / experiences
- List three new performance / presentational experiences
2) What did you learn?
- Entrepreneurship strengths / weaknesses, indicating which you discovered through EEP
- Professional Values checklist, indicating which you discovered through EEP
- List three key take-aways / lessons learned
3) How would you like this make you different?
- 5-year plan, broken into six sections (performance, teaching, artistic development, collaboration, financial, life/family)
4) What are you going to do differently?
- Priorities, indicating which you emphasized during EEP
- Goals for the next year
- Action items for the next month
I tried out our new Values checklist for the first time and found that it really fostered an interesting conversation. Most, if not all, arrived at unique lists of their top five values. There were some favorites such as “Improvement” and “Learning,” yet even in these cases, each student derived different connotation and meaning from these words. For example, for one student valued “Improvement” in the context of their instrument performance whereas another saw “Improvement” as a value to pass on to others through teaching.
- Creativity abounds in Cambridge, even on the transit signs. Creativity is a "treasure," to be sure.
This was also my first full seminar with instrumentalists and I was delighted to have Dr. Hill’s support in putting together a meaningful session, and appreciative that these students were able to jump into such deep, structured thinking. Bravo Longy EEP!
Our new E-Workbook may have also shaped this dialogue to be just a bit more focused that normal. Students downloaded and began tinkering with the workbook before the session. In addition to saving time, perhaps this pre-install helps prepare the participants, giving the session some context.
It was a nice time to reunite with some singer-friends from 
In the seminar, Angela encouraged us to define a vision of where we would like to be in about five years. We were challenged to think of both life / family / location as well as our professional careers. As some folks shared around the room, Angela encouraged us to dig deeper, to “unpack” the vision from being either too vague or too unrealistic.
I was very encouraged that she worked from this wider perspective (vision, goals) toward helping each of us define a specific and concrete to do list. I call these “Action Items” in my seminars, but the idea is the exact same — in order to make strides, you have to create a list of things that are tangible and specific enough, such that you can cross them off the list when they are complete.
I am delighted that Boston Conservatory was able to find the perfect fit for our seminar as part of our fall east coast swing! The fall can be a busy time of the year with auditions and operas to learn, but the students truly benefit from the receiving the right information at the right time.
The seminar was comprised of a wide range of singers from undergraduate freshman to master’s students with professional performing experience. This was clear from the moment that singers began sharing their scores from our first exercise: the 
It was the visualization exercise that seemed to resonate profoundly with undergraduates and master’s students alike. Stephen Covey’s foundational book 
– Dr. Judith Hill Bose, Director of Education Studies at Longy School of Music.