Guided Response: Respond to two of your classmates’ posts. In your responses, compare the 21st-century skills and cross-cultural skills your peers identified with the ones you described. You are encouraged to ask questions about their posts. Questions might include requests for clarification on points made or for elaboration on an area of their post. Though two replies is the basic expectation for this discussion, for deeper engagement and learning, you are encouraged to provide responses to any comments or questions others have given to you. This will further the conversation and provide you with opportunities to demonstrate your content expertise, critical thinking, and real world experiences with this topic. 

You know it is amazing when human’s start to see the beauty around them and when you can find beauty in unfortunate circumstances. You create art and with love, pain, and sadness you can create and invent some miracles. That is exactly what these kids did and feeling inspired by their peers, they created a beautiful mess of love and creativity. Maestro and Mr. Gomez showed these kids how to take bad conditions and turn it into ammunition and drive to live with meaning or purpose. Maestro and Mr. Gomez knew this was their calling for these kids. More so, they allowed their souls to take them on an adventure of knowledge, stimulation, and innovation. 

4Cs

With guidance and help from Maestro and Mr. Gomez these children were able to learn the 4c’s of communication by communicating with each other, communication through music and expressing the feelings through music. They learned collaboration by working together and playing together. Working together by building their instruments. Learning the structure of music how to read music, and how to blend to be in harmony together. Almost like they built a family of music by creating these instruments out of trash. By brainstorming they were able to build these instruments together to keep them off the streets and away from the street life. So, they gained the benefit of critical thinking and problem solving by learning how to build cellos and Violins from trash. That experience they were able to reach many levels of creativity. Music is a worm hole into your imagination and these poor kids who were inspired and come from nothing, but turned a little bit of themselves into something and manifested everything their hearts desired. I mean Maestro and Mr. Gomez each played a huge part in saving these kids life’s and reminding them how special they truly are. They reminded them they deserved knowledge and education rather than material and cell phones just like any other young kid

Cultural competencies

The children were born and lived on a landfill Mr. Gomez was able to initiate the benefits of using this material and inspiring the children to create music out of the garbage that they were surrounded by. Therefore, this drew up critical thought of their perception to see deeper into their reality and view the beauty and art of their conditions of darkness in order to be the light in their world. 

Social factors and Attitudes

Like I had previous worded in the first paragraph these children created a whole-ness to themselves by the bond of the teachers and each other to manifest a family of music. The attitudes were very positive in the aspect that music is what they needed in their life because before they had no direction or little hope to accomplish anything. Culturally this project was nothing but relevant due to the fact these kids found what was worthy to them in their world and created beautiful music out of unfortunate circumstances of their living conditions. Like the little lady said, that she could express her emotions with her music and all the world was witnessing from these children was their souls smiling in the darkness and that turned on a little light on for the world to see and connect with.

Thank you

The Learning and Innovation 4Cs I perceived the students learned and applied as a result of participating in the Landfill Harmonic project are Critical thinking and Problem Solving and Creativity and Innovation. Critical thinking and problem solving play a huge role in the kids developing the orchestra to what it is today. Partners for 21st Century Learning (2017) define one aspect of critical thinking as being able to “Solve different kinds of non-familiar problems in both conventional and innovative ways”.  Maria states, “There were five violins but only fifty of us”(3:09). With the help of a man that picked garbage, they were able to surpass this difficulty and provide instruments for all of the students. Solving the problem of supply was just the tip of the iceberg for the students. They learned and applied creativity and innovation while crafting the garbage into instruments. Based on an interview with Fazio Moran, “they refine them to a level in which these instruments constantly sound good (6:45). It is clear they have used their creativity and ingenuity to develop a particular craftsman ship that in turn also activated their problem-solving skills to achieve such a task. Those skills demonstrate being able to, “Act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur” (p21.org).

The students also applied and learned Life and Career skills as well. Fazio Moran said, “These people struggle everyday” (3:54). Faced with those struggles the students were able to find new meaning in life through the music. These students were able to “Set and meet goals, even in the face of obstacles and competing pressure” (p21.org).  We can see this when we hear the students talk about how learning to play their instruments as changed how they view life. Juan (Liqui) said, “Now I feel the need to work.”(7:58). Another student expressed her thoughts on the new love she had for her instrument by saying,” I found the meaning of life” (7:20). Despite the challenges they faced outside of their music, they used the music as a tool to persever.

The competencies I perceived were demonstrated by the students in the Landfill Harmonic project are having a positive attitude and open-mindedness toward cultural differences and the ability to work successfully with others from different cultures. I believe the kids needed to understand some aspects of the meaning of the music they were playing in order to have the emotional and psychological effect if had on the students. The students saw the music as a positive way to view life and thus this compelled them to want to continue to play. 

To start and sustain a program like this the people who needed it the most would have to have support from the wealthy, government, and community. Socially, the students would have to show why programs like the orchestra are helpful for community development and improvement.  the relationship between the government and the poor would have to garner trust. One of the initial problems with gaining help for the orchestra was trust amongst the people of the community it was target towards.  I also believe moving beyond personal cultural context and looking beyond social class based on material things well help bring in more supporters. Communication and collaboration will definitely be important in fostering help.

References:

Framework for 21st century learning. (2007). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework 

Landfill Harmonic. (2012, December 29). Landfill harmonic amazing and inspirational. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0