CONTINUING THE CONVERSATIONS…

This space represents as an expanded blog space. An opportunity to reflect on notes, images, and moments that I curated in field notes while traveling.

Nan Long Junion High School (Mainong District - Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan)

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 (Teacher Round Table)

AI use in Fine & Performing Arts…

After touring various schools and observing numerous classrooms, I had in my time in Taiwan not experienced music or arts education in the classroom. I was excited for this teacher Round Table as an opportunity to investigate further about my Guiding Question directly from educators themselves. Numerous teachers were present including numerous of the specials teachers - PE, art, music, English, American culture, etc.. I asked about what music classes looked like, how frequently they were held, what opportunities to be creative were afforded to the students?  I was informed that students had music class for a half an hour every other week. With such limited time, I was intrigued to find out about what curriculum was taught with such limited resources and contact hours.

I was informed that students were, rather than learning how to perform music (either by rote or by learning music theory), students were being taught how to create the appropriate prompts to have AI produce the music they wanted. This viewed as composition and improvisation. The teacher argued that, given the limited resources, AI afforded students the opportunity to create advanced and mature music. 

Discovering this gave me pause. I understood the teacher’s reasoning: with only thirty minutes of music instruction every other week, AI gave students an immediate way to experiment with musical ideas without first developing performance or composition skills. In a program with such limited time and resources, I could see the appeal.

However, I questioned whether prompting AI to create music should be considered composition at all. Music education is not simply about producing a finished piece. Its value lies in learning the craft: developing an ear, making musical choices, practicing skills, experimenting, revising, and learning through mistakes. AI may provide another tool for exploring music, but when it replaces those experiences, students lose much of the learning that makes artistic creation meaningful.

This also raised an important question of equity for me. If limited access to arts education means students are taught to prompt AI rather than given the time and resources to learn how to make music themselves, have we expanded access to music education or simply found a technological substitute for it? I believe AI can have a place in the music classroom, but it should support human creativity and musical learning, not replace them.

I also realize that different cultures place different value on arts education. That is probably a larger contributor to this conversation than merely AI use.

PRACTICAL CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

My exploration of AI in the arts has challenged me to reconsider the educational value of productive struggle and the cognitive disequilibrium that often accompanies meaningful learning. In the creative process, moments of uncertainty, experimentation, revision, and even failure require students to wrestle with what they already understand, encounter what they do not, and construct new understanding through discovery. As I consider the role of AI in my classroom, I want to ask not only what a tool can help students accomplish, but whether its efficiency might bypass the productive struggle necessary for them to develop artistic judgment, creative voice, and genuine ownership of their learning. It’s in the struggle that true artistic learning and skill acquisition happen.

Meinong Hakka Cultural Museum (Mainong District - Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan)

Saturday, April 18, 2026 (Lecture and Exploration of Hakka Culture)

Food for thought…

We had the opportunity to sit in on a lecture by professor Shiun-Wey Huang as he spoke about his work researching the text The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from Around the World. This was an especially challenging and uncomfortable travel experience for me as English translations weren’t readily available for all of his work, and he moved effortless between Mandarin and Hakka. As I became more comfortable with digital translating tools and listening between a one of our hosts helping to translate at the table, I began to see an incredible picture of how food creates links between culture, place, and time.

The global spread of Hakka cuisine provides a powerful example of how culture travels, adapts, and remains connected to its roots. As Hakka communities migrated to places such as Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Peru, the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States, their food traditions adapted to new ingredients and cultural influences while maintaining elements of a shared Hakka identity. Studying this culinary journey allows us to explore migration/immigration, cultural exchange, adaptation, and identity. It shows how something as familiar as food can become a meaningful pathway to developing global understanding.

Shiun-Wey Huang’s discussion of Hakka food traditions and their spread throughout the world provided a powerful connection to what I experienced in the Meinong Valley. It is a place where food, agriculture, culture, and identity are deeply connected. Exploring local agriculture and the foods it yielded such as rice, white jade radish, banana and water snowflake (wild lotus) offered more than an introduction to Hakka cuisine. It provided a pathway for understanding migration, geography, cultural identity, sustainability, and adaptation.

Agriculture and food serves as an accessible entry point for global education because every dish carries a story about the people who make it, the land that supports it, and the ways traditions change as communities move around the world.

PRACTICAL CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

My experience in Meinong reminded me that culture can be read as an interdisciplinary text, with even something as familiar as food providing evidence of history, geography, migration, economics, agriculture, and identity. Rather than simply introducing students to cultural traditions, I want to encourage them to investigate why those traditions developed by asking what ordinary objects and practices can reveal about the people who created and sustained them. By learning to “read” food, music, clothing, architecture, celebrations, and other elements of daily life as cultural evidence, students can move beyond observing difference and begin investigating the complex stories that give those differences meaning.

Liberty Square & Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (Taipei, Taiwan)

Friday, April 17, 2026 (a morning run)

Crosswalks and Straw Brooms

One of the cultural differences I noticed throughout my time in Taiwan was the emphasis placed on self-regulation and responsibility to the larger community. In schools, I watched students take responsibility for cleaning their own classrooms and shared spaces. Students with large straw brooms swept sidewalks and common areas. Students assigned to lunch detail went to the kitchen and hauled back carts of food for their peers. Students often followed established routines with limited adult supervision, including unsupervised nap time, and respected the expectations of teachers and other authority figures, whether in the classroom or simply passing them in the hallway. These behaviors seemed less about simply following rules and more about understanding that individual choices affect the larger community.

I experienced this myself during an early morning run through Taipei. It was around 5:00 a.m., and there was not yet the normal bustle of cars or whirring of scooters that marked the morning commute. The streets were dead. I began to cross against a pedestrian signal when an elderly woman immediately stopped me by extending her arm. She waited there beside me, arm extended, until the signal changed.

That small interaction stayed with me. The rule mattered even when no one was watching, and following it seemed to be understood as part of participating responsibly in a shared society. Throughout my experiences in Taiwan, self-awareness and self-regulation appeared to be highly valued traits. It made me consider how schools help shape not only what students know, but also how they understand their responsibilities to the people and communities around them.

PRACTICAL CLASSROOM APPLICATION:

My observations in Taiwan have challenged me to think about how communities develop a shared sense of responsibility for the spaces, traditions, and people that belong to everyone. In my ensembles, I want to foster that same sense of stewardship by helping students recognize that the continued success of our program depends not only on individual achievement, but on the small, often unseen choices each member makes in service to the whole. Rather than simply asking students to take ownership of their ensemble, I want them to understand themselves as its caretakers. They are each responsible for strengthening its culture, supporting one another, honoring what was built before them, and leaving something meaningful for those who will come next.