Going against the grain

I love this Regelski article! First of all it is so refreshing to read through an article that is clear and easy to read after the curriculum article the other day. Regelski would probably say that a social ideology and institutional paradigm of the expert writing an article for we "amateurs" to read is problematic and I would agree. In any case this article really has me thinking about times in the classroom where a student might have asked why what we were learning was important or something that I probably had to brush under the rug for the sake of time or because i might have thought the student was trying to cause a stir, but now I think that this may have been a red flag I should have reflected on. It is possible that I was teaching in a way that I had thought was important at one point but that I had taken for granted and lost vision of its purpose. Maybe it is true that as music teachers we lose touch of what it is like to be a "non-musician" experiencing music.
I also think about when I began teaching and the music department had a "plus/ minus" system in place in chorus where if you said something "good" or "smart" or were "behaving" you would get a plus and if you were "bad" "misbehaving" or whatever you would get a minus. I remember telling my AP how intrinsically wrong this was. I gave her Alfie Cohen's "Punished by Rewards" to read which she did. But I also had to convince the students of its problematics. When a student was being distracting they would plead to me to give that person a minus. Or they would say- the old teacher would have given them a minus for that. And vice versa with the plusses. I engaged with the students many times about why I found the plus and minus system wrong and that I would rather the music students be intrinsically motivated to participate in chorus. It just goes to show you how very difficult it can be to follow Regelski's suggestions and go against the grain to change institutional paradigms that have been set in place.