"Keep Your Hand on the Plow" (Class 1)

For the next set of classes, Mrs. Hamilton said she would love to explore the Civil War. After toying with some ideas, I decided to use a spiritual called "Keep Your Hand on the Plow" (also known as "Hold On" and "Gospel Plow") to teach about slavery in the United States as a precursor to the Civil War. My musical objective for the students was to be able to differentiate expressive qualities such as dynamics, tempo, and articulation between two performances of "Keep Your Hand on the Plow."

Here are the performances that we listened to:

Mahalia Jackson - Keep Your Hand on the Plow

Odetta at Carnegie Hall - Hold On (Gospel Plow)

I spent a long time putting this lesson together and was very excited to teach it. I mean, everyone loves spirituals, right? However, when I taught the lesson, it did not work out. It was obvious that I only had about a third of the class engaged at any given point.

Afterwards, Mrs. Hamilton and I talked for a while about the lesson. I could tell that Mrs. Hamilton wasn't feeling particularly optimistic, and I was also a little frustrated that the lesson hadn't gone as I imagined.

However, I was determined to fix the lesson so that it would work. I felt that I had lots of great content, but the sequence of activities had disengaged the class. We had spent too much time sitting and reviewing expressive qualities before we ever got to listen to the music. Furthermore, part of the reason we spent so long talking about expressive qualities was because I hadn't effectively scaffolded the review of expressive qualities. Instead of a review, it felt like I was teaching the students about these expressive qualities for the first time, even though they did know a lot already!

Just because a lesson doesn't go well doesn't mean that it should be thrown out. In the case of this lesson, I had lots of great ideas, but I just didn't present it in a sequence that worked for the students. By analyzing what went wrong, I was able to fix this lesson and try it again with a new class! Stay tuned for the improvements.