Back To Where It All Began

As I pull up to the gates of my placement I’m met with a familiar sight, an almost welcoming aura. It’s hard to believe it’s been 3 years since my time as a student at Dundalk Grammar School, and now I’ve returned, once again, to carry out my placement. I was extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to work in the music department, during my time in school I was often helping with odd bits here and there but now I could actually contribute to the school society. It’s a bizarre feeling, shaking the hands of the men and women who taught you for six years, who shaped your education and paved the path that led you to where you are, knowing that for the remainder of the year, they will be not my teachers but colleagues. 

In recent years Dundalk Grammar has made great strides to incorporate and facilitate the education of music technology to their students and has recently installed a recording studio on the school grounds to allow students to experience both production aspects as well as have their work recorded in high quality. I have been granted the opportunity to be one of the first producers from outside the school to come in and work in the studio and help record and educate students. In addition to this, I have been assisting the music department in a number of other means such as helping with the school musical.

Kolb’s Cycle of Reflective Practice

To reflect on my experiences I’ve chosen to use ‘Kolb’s Cycle of Reflective Practice’, as I believe this model best allows me to react, reflect and concisely learn from my experiences without being oversimplified. This cycle allows for reflection in 4 steps: Having your experience, thinking about the experience, reflecting on what you’ve learned, and applying what you learned going forward.

“Kolb’s system enables individuals to analyse their most efficient learning styles and identify where they can make improvements in their learning process.” (Muscat & Mollicone, 2012)

Concrete experience: My first major role during my time at Dundalk Grammar was assisting the production company hired to provide lighting and sound for the annual school musical, with 2022 being a production of ‘Legally Blonde: The Musical’. This entailed setting up lighting and sound rigs, setting up wireless microphones for the cast and pit microphones for the orchestra, assisting the cast in putting on their microphones and front-of-house sound. The school put on 5 shows across 1 week.

Reflective Observation: This was my first experience doing live sound outside of the university and I was initially sceptical of my ability to assist the team. Thankfully the engineer I was shadowing was extremely helpful and catered to every question I threw at him. I learned a lot during my time here, many of the tasks I was asked to carry out were explained to be beforehand and then I was free to work away without much guidance thanks to how well everything was explained I rarely had to go back and ask questions regarding what I was supposed to be doing.

Abstract Conceptualism: I found that by being left on my own during the set-up and rigging section, I was forced to think critically and use my prior experience. This was especially prominent when I was tasked with setting up the pit mics for the band and orchestra, when microphone choices, positioning and routing were all decisions that I had to make and use my best judgement on. I found that being allowed to work independently on tasks made me both more engaged and also gain a better knowledge of the process rather than having someone over my shoulder telling me what to do.

Active Experimentation: Being fortunate enough to have 5 shows to work on this gave me the opportunity to learn from the previous night’s mistakes or shortcomings and improve with each subsequent show, whether it be mic levels being incorrect, pit mics in the wrong positions or lighting not being changed quick enough between scenes this was something that could be built upon night after night. I actively tried where I could to avoid asking for help and instead tried to figure out how to navigate my situation as this allowed me to think deeper about the work I was doing and forced me to use my own intuition. Going forward I will be more likely to use my own initiative when working as part of a larger team rather than depending on the assistance of others.

Conclusion

My initial experience at Dundalk Grammar has been positive, from the support staff to the unique experiences and challenges it presents to me. I look forward to seeing where this placement takes me from here. Following the musical’s success, I decided to pitch a cast album of the musical to the music department which has been met with enormous support. I’ve now taken on the lead producer and engineering roles for this album and I can’t wait to get some in-depth production experience.

I found using Kolb’s learning cycle helped me gain a deeper insight into my experiences and is something I will continue to use outside of these blog posts as a means of reflection. The knowledge I gained from this contemplation will lead to my next experience as Melanie Jasper says “The cyclical nature of reflective practice is the key to moving forward as practitioners, in that we rarely stop at just the one cycle” (Jasper, 2013)

Bibliography

Jasper, M. (2013) Beginning reflective practice. Andover: Cengage Learning.

Muscat, M. and Mollicone, P. (2012) “Using Kolb’s learning cycle to enhance the teaching and learning of Mechanics of Materials,” International Journal of Mechanical Engineering Education, 40(1), pp. 66–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7227/ijmee.40.1.10.