Sydenham HS Students Lay Down Their Tracks

Dec 11, 2013

In a special project, students in Ms. Snider's grade nine Academic English class at Sydenham High School (SHS) were given the opportunity to experience recording their own original songs at Crooked Bush recording studio in Sydenham.

The project was part of an oral skills project that had the students choose from a number of themes related to current teen issues, which included technology addiction, violence, body image, romantic relationships, bullying, smoking, peer pressure, language, friendship, future choices, violence and racism and more. The students were required to create and present to their peers an oral presentation in the form of a monologue, skit, dialogue, narrative, story, advertisement, song or soundtrack, demonstrating their understanding of skilled speaking strategies.

The project was designed to allow students to explore the various media available to them and to encourage them to identify their skills, strengths and weaknesses by doing their own presentations and also by listening to and helping others in the class and in their group.

The group that I met with chose the theme of what others think of them. I met them at the home recording studio of Jason Silver in Sydenham. Silver himself is a graduate of SHS and in fact began recording music while a student at SHS. He is a self-employed computer programmer and records and teaches music in his off hours. Since moving back to Sydenham he has wanted to share with students some of his musical know-how and studio tools.

Prior to these sessions with the students Silver was invited by Ms. Snider to teach a song-writing class at the school and he offered students a chance to record their songs.

At his studio, Melanie Kennedy was in the process of recording her original song "Beauty" and was joined at the microphone by students in her group, Violet Skuce and Hanna Smail. The song tells of a girl who feels ugly because of what people and the media say to her and it tells of her overcoming those feelings after accepting herself for who she is and coming to her own personal understanding of beauty. The song is a mature reflection on the peer and media pressure regarding issues of beauty. In the song Melanie writes, “I had to change my appearance, I wore make up and changed my hair and changed my clothes; this was not fair. I've woken up from this nightmare that they made, I've woken up and here's a price that I paid for beauty. “ It continues, “Now who decides what's beautiful? ...Beauty is more than one thing. Don't be afraid by what they say; Stay confident and be yourself and do this every single day. That is what beauty should be."

Earlier in the day students Alec Asselstine, Troy Speek and Dakota Jost had a chance to record their rap song, which addressed the issue of an unknown future and the dangers of negative behaviors and habits while on the path to it.

I spoke with Ms. Snider at SHS and she said that the project goes a long way in focusing on student collaboration while also teaching skilled speaking, active listening and how to interpret media. The goal is for the students to choose the media that best suit their interests and learning styles in order to create their own original products. “What was really interesting to watch was the students helping each other through the creative process. They'd rally around each other and give lots of feedback, which made for a very rich learning process.”

She said the project allows students a chance to be “emerging creators of media and through the process they will better understand and interpret media messages.” She added that collaboration was also an important part of the project. “Collaboration is a learned skill. When students are engaged they learn how to collaborate. This kind of project allowed me to step back and let the students collaborate with one another to create the best solutions for their final products.”