Brett Taylor: Non-Traditional Ways of Learning by Brett

Brett Taylor: Non-Traditional Ways of Learning by Brett - September 2024 Scholarship Essay

When I’m in class, the traditional way of learning, or a teacher giving a lecture and then assigning homework, is always boring. It felt like the teachers were just talking, and it all started to blend, never asking the students their thoughts or asking us questions. This eventually made me not like the classroom; this was until I got to high school. Once I’d arrived, the teacher had done something called a flipped classroom. A flipped classroom is when the students go home and research topics themselves, so the teacher and the students are on the same page when they come to class the next day. This method let me figure out the work on my own time without pressure from the classroom environment, have actual conversations with my teachers on equal footing, and teach me how to talk to people intellectually. This flipped classroom flipped my perspective on learning and what learning can be versus what the majority of my school teaching prior was like. I did discover that this method worked better for my English, history, art, and music classes versus my math and science courses. For math and science courses, my favorite non-traditional way to learn is collaborative learning. Collaborative learning, to me, is where the teacher teaches for about half of the class and then assigns problems for a group of students to solve. This method allowed me to build deeper connections with my classmates and get active practice on work before I had to do my homework, and if I didn't understand a problem, my group and I could help each other figure it out rather than struggling by myself. Once my teacher started incorporating this into my learning, I immediately struggled less with these subjects and started having more fun learning in class.
Outside of school, I’ve been learning how to play jazz on my saxophone. I’ve been playing saxophone for almost 9 years now, and the first time I’d ever heard jazz being played was almost a year ago. Ever since I heard jazz, I’d fallen in love with the style and dedicated myself to learning how to play it. This was significantly more challenging than I thought; the more I thought I knew, the less I actually knew; it was just this rabbit hole of endless information. Now I’m still currently learning the language of jazz saxophone, but I’m improving day by day. I’ve learned how to play various jazz standards, started learning music theory, and started listening to countless saxophone players. I’ve even joined two jazz bands outside of school in hopes of furthering my knowledge of jazz.