If you are a public school educator or have children in public schools, you may have been hearing a lot about Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Forty-five states along with the District of Columbia, four territories and the Department of Defense have adopted the Common Core State Standards. The State Department school where my sister lives in Delhi, India is incorporating them into their curriculum this year. The standards specifically address language arts and math, but are also affecting science, history, the arts and other curriculum ares as schools look at the knowledge and skills need to succeed in whatever profession they choose. My sister happens to be a math teacher, so this is a big deal. Their school is also embracing technology in a big way in how they manage their lessons and classroom management, so the new school year has been both exciting and exhausting for her.
Whether you support the CCSS or not, this is the trend right now in education and there are some opportunities here for PTG and piano technicians. A local young music teacher, who also has a private piano studio, came into the PTG Home Office a month or so to pick up some membership information. He has been studying to become a piano technician and started doing some tuning for his students. As we walked through the museum, we also talked about the Piano Learning Center and how PTG reaches out to piano teachers. He told me that he thought we might have some resources that would fit right in with the new standards. I had to do some research (it's been a while since I studied general education), but I started to see what he meant. There is a lot of math and science involved in the design and care of the piano. David Stanwood told me once about a science lesson on balance he presented at a local school using pencils. What a great tie-in to toughweight! Piano history can be connected to other significant events throughout the ages. I saw a really interesting poster presentation at an MTNA convention that compared musical innovations with world events.
In the
Piano Learning Center at www.ptg.org you can download a set of piano science experiments, several lessons and an online game about piano parts, a history fact sheet and puzzle, a writing activity, and links to things like how a tuning fork works and videos of moving piano actions. I bet with the combined talents and skills of PTG members we can come up with some terrific ideas that will fit in well with the new Common Core State Standards.