00:00 I'm Kate Miller-Heidke and I've journeyed to Canberra to meet a music teacher who is
00:05 at the cutting edge of music education.
00:08 Well done!
00:10 Jess Copeman has transformed the program at Ainslie School to bring the latest in music
00:15 teaching to all of her students.
00:18 One, two, three, four.
00:23 From collaborating with orchestras, universities, research bodies, as well as running music
00:28 workshops for other teachers, Jess is doing it all.
00:31 Hello, oh my god, that sounds amazing.
00:34 I'm so sorry to interrupt, my name's Kate and I've come here from Melbourne to tell
00:39 you Jess that you have been nominated for a Telstra ARIA Music Teacher Award, which
00:44 means she's one of the best music teachers in the whole country.
00:53 It's a huge honour to be nominated.
00:54 Well here you go.
00:55 So you guys, do you think she should win?
00:56 The music industry has played a major part in my development and upbringing, so to actually
01:08 be nominated at such a big level is just a phenomenal feeling.
01:15 Music before I came to Ainslie was a single music lesson once a week.
01:19 We also had a band program, but it was only for 23 students.
01:24 And so my main aim was to equalise the playing field for every student.
01:29 Let's do our piece and Kate gets to do it.
01:37 Every child learns a pitched instrument.
01:43 And then by the time they hit year 5/6, they're able to play in our wonderful orchestra, what
01:48 we call our imperfect orchestra because it's not traditional.
01:51 We have brass and strings, ukuleles which are not traditionally in an orchestra, and
01:57 we don't have any wind section and we do have a percussion section.
02:02 Most schools only have a specific band with maybe 16 people in it, where at our school
02:06 we have about, I think it's about 110 people playing band.
02:12 Jess has made sure every student gets the opportunity to play.
02:16 That was really good.
02:18 Well done.
02:19 I'm not very good at band, but I do enjoy doing it.
02:25 Music at Ainslie is not a standalone subject.
02:27 It's embedded in all subject areas.
02:30 We have worked with staff across the school, upskilling them, providing new knowledge on
02:36 how to actually implement music in everyday classrooms.
02:39 And we've got everybody joining in now.
02:42 Explain it to Kate.
02:44 This is the lesson in robotics and what is normally called science, technology, engineering
02:49 and mathematics.
02:50 However, at Ainslie, students code a robot to a song.
02:55 Look at you go.
02:58 Wow.
02:59 And then they make their own dance moves to move along with their robot.
03:03 We use music as a driver of school improvement and Jess has helped us to explore neurologically
03:11 what happens when we are using music and making music.
03:16 Through embedding music across the curriculum, we've had a major impact on student mental
03:21 health, student engagement.
03:24 We've seen significant growth through their literacy and numeracy, so reading and writing
03:29 and maths.
03:30 We've also connected in with research institutes in creating apps and informing research so
03:36 that other schools can do what we're doing.
03:39 It's making a better world for these little humans.
03:42 Jess has managed to infiltrate the whole culture of this school with music.
03:53 As soon as you walk in the entranceway, there's a massive grand piano and you walk into every
03:57 classroom and there's an instrument somewhere and I love that.
04:01 The reason why I even have the chance to play ukulele is because of Jess.
04:09 Jess is just a really nice teacher and is great at teaching music.
04:14 When I'm feeling sad, she helps me and she does a lot of awesome stuff for us.
04:20 Robot dancing.
04:22 Jess knows that music can be a shaper of people and communities and she has brought that into
04:29 our school.
04:33 Music education is at the foundation of what it means to be human.
04:37 Who wouldn't love coming to work every single day and working with these little people?
04:43 I have the best job in the whole wide world.
04:47 Watching these kids with Jess leaves me in no doubt that she's changing their lives.
04:54 You know, one kid said, "I can't say what I like about Jess because there's just too
04:59 much to say."
05:00 I mean, it's just, it's so heartwarming and it's gorgeous.
05:04 [Music]
05:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments