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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
The Lord gave us something special when he gave us music because it it enlightens the the eyes. I think it it triggers our our emotion, our heart, our mental acuity. It has multiple ways of, of surfacing.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Ryan:Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles chat with Dr. Deforia Lane.
Ryan:Dr. Deforia Lane serves as a trustee at Cedarville University and earned her PhD in music education and music therapy from Case Western Reserve University. Thanks for joining us.
Jared:We are in the presence of someone who is
Rob:in the presence of greatness.
Jared:In the great in greatness. Yes. Absolutely.
Rob:I mean, let me say thank you for coming. Doctor Lane serves as a trustee here at Cedarville University.
Jared:Mhmm.
Rob:And the time that we're recording is she's got all these other things going on, and she was gracious enough to say yes to us. And so I am super excited. One, because you have such a background in using music as medicine. How might the principles of music therapy translate into the classroom from your perspective?
Deforia Lane:Well, thank you, first of all, for inviting me. Secondly, I think there are numerous ways that music can become a part of any classroom, any kitchen, any family room, any hospital room. And by understanding some of the basics about music and what it can do and how it affects us, I think then gives us the creative ability to transform it from its beauty, the way that we all listen or hear it, but with intention into a specific situation. So when you ask how it can be incorporated in a classroom, I think one of the most important things is how music affects our brain. Literally, it can become the means by which we activate our brain.
Deforia Lane:And the more we activate it, the better it is for us. And music activates so much of our brain. It's one of the few things that can happen that lights up multiple areas of the brain at the same time. So if I want you to learn something, I'm going to use as much as possible of the means to activate your brain so that you're taking in as much as possible. So that's a foundation, a beginning, just to say, you want your brain as active as possible to learn anything.
Deforia Lane:And if I know with intention I can use music to do that, then so be it. For example, athletes, you see them often using having earphones as they're going on the the field, or wrestlers, they have them before they begin to wrestle. What they're listening to can pump them, can give them a sense not only of inspiration, but depending on what they're listening to and its tempo, its dynamics, its harmonic value, its melody, its repetition, all of those things are preparing that athlete in a way that just walking out on a field with nothing can do.
Jared:So when I'm putting together my workout playlist, I have to be cognizant of those certain things. I know that Spotify not to go on a tangent here, but Spotify has playlists built around beats per minute
Deforia Lane:Mhmm.
Jared:Where you can have something like a 150 beats per minute. Mean, intense workout. Is that what you're what you're talking about?
Deforia Lane:Exactly. Yeah. If if I want if I'm working with an athlete who is experiencing depression or low self esteem or just doesn't seem to be able to address his sport with the enthusiasm and the excellence with which a coach might want, then I'm not going to use music that's 60 or 80 beats per minute. That's very quieting and calming. Maybe if I use it though with a way to bring the anxiety down, that's one thing.
Deforia Lane:If I want to build his courage or his the way to address his sport with a little more self confidence, then I'm going to use music that has a dynamic and perhaps even the words to really give him that extra bit, but using it with intention. Example, rap music. Now to me, it makes me gag, But I I know that it has its merits for some people who can identify with it and who who like that that grit that that it gives. So, you know, I've worked with enough teenagers and young young adults in the hospital that love that kind of music. And some of its words and some of its focus is the least of which I think is positive and good for anybody's health.
Deforia Lane:So learning how to say, okay, I wanna see how this appeals to you. And do you listen to its words? Or let me see how it affects your blood pressure, your heart rate. And they'll say, well, doesn't. I you know?
Deforia Lane:And when you put that on, I I did a little study that put a blood pressure cuff on Sunday school students one at a time, and I had them listen to, and this will tell you how long ago it was, MC Hammer's I Can't Touch This.
Jared:Oh, yeah. I was in
Rob:third grade.
Deforia Lane:Third grade. Oh, yeah. It's been a long time. So I I would take their blood pressure before and their their pulse and after. What do you think?
Jared:Oh, elevated.
Deforia Lane:Definitely. No doubt about it.
Rob:Oh, I was gonna say just completely mellow. Get out. Get out.
Deforia Lane:And and my my college roommate, Kathleen Battle, has a very celestial voice. And I would put on sixty seconds of her singing. I took it after that. Everybody, regardless,
Rob:straight down.
Deforia Lane:So I proved a point in the sense that music was having an effect on them of which they weren't even aware
Jared:and
Deforia Lane:how it might help them to pass this next test. Let's see if you go in with a more relaxed you know, your mind picks up on things that it would not if you're in this altered state that
Jared:Elevated? Mhmm. Yeah. So it makes me think, like, immediately for my classroom, if I'm going to give an exam, prepping them for it by playing lower BPM music. But if I want them to be energized, maybe I'll add something a little bit higher, not to a point where their blood pressure rises, but something that's a little bit more elevated.
Rob:I think the other thing that really makes me think is words like you were saying. But now I'm starting to think, okay, I'm in a classroom. We we we talk about where we sit. We talk about The lighting. The lighting.
Rob:We've had those conversations before. We said yesterday. Important. Right? Lighting is important.
Rob:What you see aesthetics are important. How you feel what you're sitting in, that's important. But I don't think I've ever thought about actually genuinely designing a soundscape. Mhmm. But is that what you're talking about?
Deforia Lane:That's one element of of music therapy in terms of its intention of setting the environment, the sonicscape. I think that's beautiful. There are many CDs that have been written and produced just for that, just to set the environment, to create a brainwave state that is very absorbent to to a person who wants to take in and learn and and grow. So there is a brainwave state that you want to go for. And you can measure, you know.
Deforia Lane:So tapes have been CDs have been made with that state, that brainwave state, that hopefully if yours is going, and I know I can't be seen, but if your brainwave state is going 50 miles an hour and you want it to slow down to 20 or 10, then what you do is you take music that is at that particular tempo, and what happens is something called entrainment. It'll go from your 50 and and it hovers around the the lesser brainwave state, and they begin to entrain and in sync. So that's one way to try to to make that happen. That's very that's not something I think in a classroom that you're going to to try to do. Let let me give an example.
Deforia Lane:Renee Fleming, the quintessential opera singer, gave herself as a guinea pig to go with NIH and to lay under a an MRI so that as she was singing, they would measure or look at what parts of her brain were lighting up. They asked her to sing. They asked her to imagine herself singing, and they asked her to speak. And those three things, they noticed which parts of her brain lit up. The hardest thing of the singing, the speaking, or the imagining yourself, singing, I'm going to ask both of you, which do you think lit up more of the brain?
Deforia Lane:Which one activated her brain much more?
Jared:I'm going to say singing. Final answer. I think imagining. Imagining. Okay.
Rob:I think imagining.
Deforia Lane:Could I ask you why?
Rob:Because you have to use your mind's eye and you have to hear what you're going to sing in your head and imagine what that sounds like, which causes a whole lot more focus, I would think. Remember the four legged octopus?
Jared:Yep. Mhmm.
Rob:So I'm thinking your frontal lobe has got to be you're focused. And I know when you're focused, you're you're just staying in on that thing and it starts sinking. So that's that's what I'm thinking.
Deforia Lane:You're absolutely right.
Rob:Yeah. I got a point. You got zero. That's okay.
Deforia Lane:Alright. No. No. No. No.
Deforia Lane:No.
Jared:Give me an easy one,
Rob:doctor May. No.
Deforia Lane:But but she chose a song that she thought she could sing because they estimate this you're gonna have to do this 13 times. Oh my. She was in there two hours. Can you imagine?
Rob:That's rough on a voice.
Deforia Lane:Yes.
Jared:And an MRI machine. Laying down.
Rob:Well, listen to that thing going Yeah. That's gonna mess
Rob:head. Yeah.
Deforia Lane:But but her her criteria for choosing the song, because she had it in mind before this happened, was something that was meaningful to her, emotionally anchoring to her, and something she really loved. And when you bring all of that into the song, and then you have to imagine it, she said that very thing that you did, it takes much more intention. It takes a more focused thought. And to bring in all of the elements that it triggers for her, it was just harder to do that. So she had to work harder at it.
Deforia Lane:And as a result, the frontal lobe, the occipital lobe, I mean, because she was picturing herself as well. I mean, it's amazing how the brain responds to even thinking about music, imagining it. So it gave us more information as to how we can use music, but also what areas. When I'm working with somebody who's has had stroke and is aphasic, they know what they want to say, but they can't quite articulate it. One of the ways I will try to evoke that is, it's something called melodic intonation therapy.
Deforia Lane:That's one way. I take them by the hand, and I use my hand to tap in time to the music. And I also use music that they know and love that is a favorite of theirs, something that they're familiar with. The literature says the music we respond to best is the music we know and love most. So I'm going to use something if with the intention to get you to speak or to use your articulators, that kind of music.
Deforia Lane:If I'm going to use something so that you can study, I don't want that because it's going to distract you. And and the whole notion of a gentleman who could not speak everything you knew he wanted to, and you knew he you could watch his eyes and see he knew what he was saying, but no one else could. So I said, do me a favor. I gave him a halt hand. I said, do me a favor, give me your hand and tell me if you know this.
Deforia Lane:This little light of mine and I kept distinctive, I'm gonna let it shine. And the first thing I saw was what you're doing now. His head started moving in time to the music, so he was syncing with me already, rhythmically, motorically, that motor part of the brain, and then I watched his lips. And when I get to, I finally did this little light o, I stopped. And yes, he did say, my.
Jared:Oh my.
Deforia Lane:Shine, let it and then both of us together,
Rob:shine. Wow.
Deforia Lane:Was just a simple song, but with which he identified and that was familiar enough to rhythmically anticipate when to talk, when to sing Mhmm. And what the words were. So the Lord gave us something special when he gave us the eyes. I think it it triggers our our emotion, our heart, our mental acuity. It has multiple ways of of surfacing.
Jared:So one of our big probably our biggest focus of this podcast is the aspect of servant teaching. The aspect of knowing your students, kinda like servant leadership. Knowing your students, knowing their weaknesses, knowing their strengths. And I think this fits right in with that idea of knowing your students and figuring out what music to play with them. What are some other practical things that maybe those that aren't music savvy that who want to incorporate into their classroom?
Jared:What can they do? What do you recommend?
Deforia Lane:Well, first of all, knowing the elements of music, I start with this. I say rhythm. What can it do? Just think about it. It can create predictability.
Deforia Lane:This little light up, you know, or You know what's happening next. Boom. Boom. Right. Exactly.
Deforia Lane:So melodically, it programs us. We know if there's a descending, you know, something coming or if there's a cadence coming. It enhances your recall.
Deforia Lane:songs for academic access, I remember in physics or in calculus, I would literally have to sing the formula that I was to memorize. And once I got that, I'm I'm cool. I'm off and running. Improvisation is another music element, and it encourages creativity. Some of it is cropped up here, you know, more this morning today.
Deforia Lane:And listening, it deepens our reflection. I have asked patients, I've asked students, tell me what you would say if you wanted to write a song for your teacher or and the things that it can bring out. How do you feel about this concept of of meditation or and or identifying with somebody? And the things they come up with and you can set to to music can be very enlightening, beautiful. So for teachers who want to use rhythm to create a predictable focus or who want to enhance recall about academic, they can have their students to create something using music.
Deforia Lane:As far as listening, finding a song that matches what you're talking about or that goes takes it even further or gives the antithesis of what what you're trying to get across. I've often found that teachers are afraid to use music in their classrooms because they feel they aren't musical. So one idea is to use music to teach their fractions or sequences. One plus one. And how that can assist.
Jared:You could even do it with, like, four four and two four and six eight and three four as well.
Deforia Lane:Yes.
Jared:That just blew my mind right there, doctor Lane. That's so cool. Oh, man. I gotta go teach a math class now.
Deforia Lane:You hate math.
Jared:I do and I hate math. Using
Deforia Lane:using literature, for example, to analyze song lyrics. Lyrics like that are in poetry, write songs from a character's perspective. Come in tomorrow, tell me how Abraham Lincoln would have responded to this. Write it in his voice or how your mother would respond to this question as opposed to what you just learned in the book. Give me different perspectives, and it causes your student to think outside of the box in a different way.
Jared:Sure.
Deforia Lane:Historically, bring up protest songs. Tell me what was happening and how that song reflected that. Culturally, what's different from Indian music that I might bring in versus a historical soundtrack from you know, have them be creative in that way. So I I think there are multiple ways. And don't think of it as performance, rather as as learning, as expanding what they
Jared:Yeah. It's it's funny how, like, memorization feels like it's the through music is so incredibly popular. Like, remember, like, when I taught, high schoolers, and I had a preposition quiz, they would put the prepositions to music about, above, around, across, you know, they would do it themselves. And then my daughters were taught the presidents by song. So it's it's something that's ingrained that we, you know, and also the ABC song when you were a kid, Trinkle Trick a Little Star, a b c d e f g, you know?
Jared:So it's something that we're doing, but it feels like maybe it's because it's not it feels juvenile that we don't do it in higher ed or high school, but it still has its place, like you said, learning calculus, something like that. So yeah. That's great.
Rob:Alright. So one of the things we've been working with here at Cedarville and CTL is generative AI. I'm assuming you're familiar with it. Well, most people know of the chat models. Right?
Rob:And it spits something back out at you. But one of the things that we've found, or at least I've found, and I enjoy playing with it, is the music model. So you can generate music
Rob:Lyrics, vocals, instruments. You can then start doing all sorts of editing, and there this is just crazy. We, you know, we could go into it for for a while. But I I took one of your quotes that the guys pulled, had it make some lyrics, and then I asked you what your favorite and I I told the style, synthesize opera and gospel. So we're gonna see together what this comes up with, and I just wanna get she has never heard this.
Jared:No. Neither have I.
Rob:Neither have I. No. So this could be really terrible. Don't know.
Jared:If it
Jared:is, we apologize.
Rob:We apologize ahead of time. But I do wanna get I wanna kinda get your reaction, but I also wanna just yeah. See what you have to say. Here we go. Yeah.
Rob:So that was one version. It usually spits out two versions. But what what did you think?
Deforia Lane:I liked it. I I did. I longed for a little more Punch? Yes. In some of it.
Deforia Lane:Exactly. But the styling was fine.
Rob:Okay. So I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and I'll play one for you that that I actually designed the lyrics for And then had it put it to music. And I'm curious as to whether or not you'll be able to catch what I designed them off of and what you think about it.
Deforia Lane:Okay.
Rob:Ready? Mhmm. I won't play the whole thing. I'll just play the first verse in the chorus. Is that
Jared:good? Mhmm. Alright.
Suno:Blessed be God, the father of all, who when his son has answered our call, chosen in love before time began, holy and blameless, shaped by his plan. Praise the father who calls us. Praise the son who redeems us.
Deforia Lane:Yes. Yes, yes, yes. It reminds me of Doctor. Kimble this morning talking about how grateful he was for his salvation. And this just, the graciousness of God to give us music that can do so much.
Deforia Lane:But I'm not sure. Where did you take it from? What what what Ephesians. Ephesians.
Rob:So one of the things I've been working on is at church, I've been teaching through the book of Ephesians. It teaches so much. And so I was trying to figure out a way to help people remember it. And music is what came to mind. We were preparing for this with you, and so I was like, I'm gonna try this and see see what I can come up with.
Rob:And then it just got my wife and I talking about how we might be able to do something. Instead of just using AI. Actually, the two of us sitting down, I work on the lyrics. But thank you for allowing me that, Jared. I appreciate it.
Rob:Yeah. Sure. I feel like we have to have you back at some point.
Deforia Lane:I'd I'd love to.
Rob:And and maybe we should just have, like, you know, let her sing a little bit more. Yeah. That was
Jared:wonderful. I
Rob:I enjoyed that.
Jared:Yeah. So thank you so much for your time. We're very appreciative of it. Yeah. Absolutely.
Jared:Thanks for coming in. Thank you.
Ryan:Thanks for listening to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our conversation with Doctor. Lane, feel free to reach out to us at CTLPodcastcederville dot edu. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn, and don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.