Harmonizing Education: Louka Parry on the Future of Learning and Music (Part 2) | 161

Welcome back to the podcast! Today we continue our powerful conversation with Louka Parry, education futurist, learning strategist, and CEO of The Learning Future.

In Part 1, Louka shared how music education connects to education transformation and helps students build essential human capabilities. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, be sure to go back—it sets the stage beautifully.

In this Part 2, we go even deeper. We explore how music education strengthens social-emotional learning (SEL), why future-ready skills matter more than ever, and how innovative learning environments can empower both teachers and students. Louka also shares global perspectives on cultural understanding, practical strategies for music educators, and inspiring advice on how to advocate for the importance of the arts in education reform.

If you’re an educator looking for ways to innovate, or someone curious about how music and education transformation intersect, this episode will challenge your thinking and spark new ideas.

Let’s dive into Part 2 with Louka Parry.

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

 Books & Authors

• “Lifelong Kindergarten” – Mitchel Resnick (MIT Media Lab)
• “Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” – Robert Fulghum
• “The Disengaged Teen” – Jenny Anderson & Rebecca Winthrop
• “Emotional Intelligence” – Daniel Goleman (1995)
• John Dewey – quote: “We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.”
• Abraham Maslow – Hierarchy of Needs; late-life addition of self-transcendence

 Organisations, Programs & Initiatives

• The Learning Future – Louka Parry’s organisation
• Karanga: The Global Alliance for Social Emotional Learning and Life Skills – co-led by Louka
• CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) – Chicago-based SEL organisation
• Harvard EASEL Lab – Ecological Approaches to SEL
• Yale’s RULER Program – emotional regulation framework, Prof. Marc Brackett
• OECD – reference to “non-cognitive skills”
• UNICEF – reference to “transversal skills”

Where to find me: 

Crescendo Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crescendocommunity
Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrescendoMusicEd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crescendomusic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-o-shea-62a3741b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CrescendoDeb

Introduction 

Gday, I’m Debbie O’Shea and this is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 161.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

Debbie O’Shea  

Welcome back. It’s Debbie O’Shea with part two of my conversation with Louka Parry. If you caught the first episode you’ll know what an engaging and thought provoking guest he is. If you’re jumping in here, definitely go back and catch part one when you can, because it’s well worth it. In this part of our chat, Louka really digs into the big ideas, what the future of learning could look like, how we can better prepare our students for a changing world and the importance of curiosity and adaptability. What I loved here was how practical his vision feels. It’s inspiring, but it also feels doable. I think you’ll finish this episode feeling energised and ready to think differently about our own teaching and advocacy. 

Teaching in Challenging Classrooms

Debbie O’Shea  

For those of us who might find ourselves in a difficult school situation, we’re talking about different levels of control being one of the variables, one of the things that we can take on board. Because there are certainly looking back at my history as a teacher, I certainly think I have leaned more towards the be in control and get this done. It’s partly because we do have to do assessment and we do have to do reporting, and we’ve only got X amount of time to get it all done. So there’s all of those pressures as well, but it’s even more difficult when you’re in a difficult school where you’re trying to engage students that are refusing to engage so there’s a whole added complexity around that, what are your thoughts Louka?

Louka Parry  

That’s a really tricky one. I don’t have a simple answer for you. 

Debbie O’Shea  

I wish you did. 

Louka Parry  

I’m sure everyone wishes we did. Here’s what I might reflect just to that. Number one is just for a moment, just stay in the energy of you’re doing enough. I think your question that we skipped over, gratitude. When you wake up in the morning. I kind of joke about it Debbie like, wow, I made it through the night. I mean, I’ve got another day. That’s a joke, but it’s also kind of deeply my life philosophy, is if you can live from that place, you’re probably going to have a better go of it. Because all of a sudden, you’re in a creative energy, you’re grateful and when you experience in gratitude, somatically, not that no other negative emotions can really be in the body at that point in time. This Is why gratitude interventions are one of the best positive psychology interventions you can deploy, right? Just really effective. So number one is, okay, well, I’m doing enough. I’m doing the best I can with what I have. Yeah, don’t be too hard on yourself, dear educator friends. You’re one human being. My mum’s been an educator for 40 years, going into a fifth decade. She’s still teaching as well Debbie and she is phenomenally embodied to dance, drama, science background, just an amazing educator, amazing pedagogue. Like, she’s so hard on herself, because we all are, we’re like, Oh, I could have done that better. I need to control the classroom. A really interesting question on this is, what is my role right now? What is my role in this moment? And I think Debbie, this is where we get down into deep reflection on mental models. My kind of view as a futurist, is that we’re seeing the role of the educator shift significantly for a whole range of reasons and I think in some ways that that’s good, away from even the idea of an instructor I’m going to instruct you, versus I’m going to activate and facilitate this learning experience. Moving away from an instructor, a knower, a chalky, I’m going to write in chalk on the board and off you go. Have you heard that language, it’s a bit dated. But towards this idea that I’m actually going to be a facilitator of this learning experience and I’m actually a learning architect, which is a completely different frame, as opposed to my role is to instruct you. And when you’re in the instruct mode Debbie, it is about control. It’s about I need to control your attention, because if you’re not listening to my instructions, you’re not going to be set up for the next part of the part of activity, part of this lesson. But when you start to change into, okay, well actually, my role is a learning architect and a facilitator of learning and as part of that I instruct, we can allow ourselves a bit more permission and spaciousness to not be constantly critiquing ourselves when the classroom is not in full control. Because I don’t know about you Debbie, you’re a practicing educator now, for me, frankly, I was hardly ever in control. It’s just all a fallacy. It’s as if I pretend that I can be in control. I don’t think we control really anything outside of our own emotional world and how we choose to respond. That’s my spiritual kind of philosophical point on this. So the rest of it’s just fake control. Okay, cool. There are still things you want to make sure, they are not too rowdy, you want there to be attention. So I’m very pro on rituals and routines. So when learners enter a room, I do this, of course, with my work in workshops and school strategy work and whatever. You know, for me, it’s musics playing, particular setup, particularly thing on the screen. You know, I’m creating an environment. For classroom teachers it can be the same, same ritual, same routine. Why, as the educator, I don’t need to be raising my voice or trying to get people’s attention, the rituals, the routines, the values of the classroom, they hold the space. And then you were talking about classroom culture. And you know, when you get classroom culture right, your behaviour management, which again I think is an old framing, but the behaviours that actually can disrupt learning are potentially lessened. I would say they’re definitely lessened if you’ve got a good climate in your classroom. Because people are more motivated, they’re more open, their nervous system might be more regulated. You might have done some breathing parasympathetic nervous system activation to bring people down, regulate them, as they just come out of running around kicking the soccer ball, kicking the football. So all these kind of practices, I think this is the stuff that, if we can get that right, it can take a little bit of that stress off us Debbie, from having to think that it’s all up to me, it’s not all up to you, it’s up to us. And yeah, I think that piece on self permission, but also some self kindness. One piece of kind of research I’ve been running Debbie, is I ask all people I work with in some of our workshops. We call them the Thrive 10, they’re principles that underpin how well you’ll be or you are. It’s vitality factors, sleep, nutrition, movement, it’s some positive psychology or well being science stuff, positive emotions, relationships etc. The last question is, how often do you forgive yourself? 

Debbie O’Shea  

Oh, that one is a bit pointy.

Louka Parry  

Juicy, but it’s like that real honestly, if we’re talking about self concept and self knowledge, which I think is a prerequisite for good leaders and good educators. Often we’re so hard on ourselves and so the idea of just allowing yourself, to let go, to forgive yourself, then you can experience and I honestly, I don’t get this right at all. Debbie, I’m actually very self critical, funnily enough, probably why I’m talking about this. But can I forgive myself? I didn’t do that speech as well as I would have liked to, that relationship professionally didn’t go very well. But can I forgive myself every night and then awaken in the morning and recommit to my purpose? If you can do that, I think, I mean, I would posit actually, I’d be a bit more than just I think, you’re actually going to live a better life. You’re going to feel more engaged. You’re going to have higher life satisfaction. That work is some deep emotional work there I think Debbie, for all of us in teaching.

Power of Gratitude

Debbie O’Shea  

Louka, that’s amazing and that’s wonderful advice. I 100% think that if we all did that, it would certainly make us better teachers, too. I love that learning architect and the gratitude in the morning and self forgiveness, oh my goodness. All right, now I’m going to have a quick look back through all of these amazing questions that we didn’t look at but however, that’s so valuable. Let’s have a look. We were going to talk about gratitude, you’ve actually just done that beautifully. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Louka Parry  

I would just say gratitude is free. It is one of the best things that we can do. We don’t need to go to a spa, we don’t need to talk to a therapist. We don’t need to go out to a bar. Gratitude, you’re always one thought away from transformation. You are always one thought away from happiness. Debbie, it’s just such a powerful reflection, right? So gratitude helps you get there. So I do my best, because I’ve been following this work now for quite some time, I’d say about a decade, in terms of well being science. I do three gratitudes every single night with my partner. I’ve done that now for the last year and a half. I think we missed one night. Every single night, three things I’m grateful for. In the morning, similarly, can you awaken and be like, wow. I think this kind of takes a little bit of time to get there. I’m almost there, maybe, wow, I’m alive. Yeah, if you can just be grateful to exist, I think that unlocks something for all of us. It’s certainly in my own lived experience, just unlocked something. So even when you’re going through a tough day, I think if you can find the gratitude in that moment, you’re more likely to arc towards laughter than tears perhaps. Because with gratitude, it’s the absurdity of it all. I’ve had these moments in a classroom where it hasn’t gone very well, a young person has had a real moment and they’ve kicked the bin across the room was one example. I’ve had many of these Debbie, and you just go like, Oh, God, I’m a failure. I’m just not a good teacher. I’m blah, blah, blah. Or you can just go like, gosh isn’t being alive funny, yes, and you just kind of laugh about it. Kids are the best because kids are so hilarious. I mean things they say, the things they do. It can be a lot when you’re working with them every single day, as you all know. But yeah, there’s something about just feeling grateful for the little things, even just taking a breath, being grateful for your lungs, that they function, that your heart beats and has beat your entire life, even before you were born, hopefully, for many of us, hasn’t stopped yet. Do you know what I mean? So there’s just all these small little things that return you into the present moment. And it’s only when we’re fully present in that moment and fully present that I think we can as the kind of joke goes, we experience the gift. It’s a present, the gift of being here, being alive, doing this kind of work, trying to discover our purpose, trying to shape the learning of a young person or of a colleague. I think that’s what it’s all for.

Social-Emotional Learning

Debbie O’Shea  

That’s magic. Thank you. See, I’m just feeling a little emotional, but you’re just exactly right. You are exactly right and I think that leads you to the life that you want to lead and help others too. Louka, that’s amazing. We talked a bit about intersecting between the essential human capabilities. We were going to talk about how we can advocate in educational systems to make them more human centered. But we also talked about that a little, because we talked about getting clear on our own philosophical stance and working out where the research is, and then making sure we’ve got those principles of the agency and belonging and that underpinning what we’re doing, so we have touched on that. Was anything else super important? We’re going to talk about SEL. It seems my American colleagues quote SEL a lot, like I connect with lots of music educators and they tend to talk about SEL a lot. Seems to be a bit of a big push in American schools. You don’t hear so much in our school systems, of it referred to as SEL, social emotional learning. But I do think that music educators are very aware of what SEL is.

Louka Parry  

Absolutely and I’ll just make maybe just some reflections on that, why that might be the case Debbie. Because social and emotional learning is just one kind of container for a field of research and a field of practice, and it has come out of America. It’s actually come out of Chicago in particular and what’s called the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, aka CASEL, right, which is the acronym. So CASEL is about 30 years old now and on their board are people like Daniel Goleman, who, of course, wrote the book Emotional Intelligence in 1995 and popularised the EQ movement. Kind of up to that point, we’re very much in the IQ space, right? And so we now have 30 years of evidence of the impact of SEL including longitudinal studies that show if you experience a high quality Social and Emotional Learning Program, even in kindergarten, you can tell more than 18 years later, because of the impact that it’s had on your life arc. We’re talking lower recidivism, less anti social behaviour. I of course, have many SEL connections globally in my space Debbie. And I was always a bit like, oh, how have I never heard about this, in Australia this really is personal and social capability, or it’s what we might call pastoral care in many of the schools. In the public sector it might be welfare/well being. The point is, social and emotional skills must be explicitly taught and can be learnt. They almost inoculate our young people against a whole range of other things. They also increase academic outcomes if they’re high quality. And so the connection here I think, music education naturally aligns with social and emotional learning, because you have to be practicing those skills as part of it. So and the Big Five, I’ll see if I can remember these. But it’s things like self awareness, self regulation, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. That’s the CASEL model, the SEL model, which is five big constructs. And there’s a whole suite. I mean, there’s a whole great field of research. I know the team at Harvard that does this work at the EASEL lab, ecological approaches to social emotional learning, they have basically deconstructed and mapped all the social emotional learning programs and had a look at which ones are kind of the most efficacious, which ones are the most holistic, which one’s focus on development of different elements . In the rest of the world we call it life skills Debbie. SEL outside of the US is kind of life skills. So that’s probably language a bit more familiar to us. But they also call them non cognitive skills at the OECD. They call them transversal skills at UNICEF. So the point is it gets so convoluted. You’re like, well, what are we talking about? We’re really kind of talking about the same constructs. They just sound different depending on where you are because of the cultural nuances. So all that to say, music education develops social emotional skills because you are in an experience where you need to regulate, you need to pay attention, you have to work as a team, especially if performing in a group setting. But even you know the frustration that comes from making mistakes in music. How you deal with failure.

Practical SEL Strategies

Debbie O’Shea  

Yeah, that’s actually huge. And taking risks and being vulnerable just even having your turn at singing in the game, you’re really opening yourself up. So I guess I think, and all my listeners think, yeah, we all do this. How could we be more, not only intentional in incorporating, because I sort of think we do. I think it’s more about being clearer about what we’re doing. How can we communicate in our own planning, and maybe beyond that, so we can get out there, tell our administrators, communicate to our classroom teachers. Look at all this stuff we’re doing. I have my own little lists and things that I aim for in early childhood particularly, turn taking and we’re not going to necessarily have a little tantrum if you don’t get a turn today, and I’ve got different strategies of helping to teach them that concept. It’s that sort of thing that we do. How could we intentionally incorporate these we’ll just call them SEL for now because it’s easy to say, these SEL things. If we go to a project like Together Sing that I coordinate where we all sing for well being. We sing together to belong. Let’s make that more intentional and more transparent, clearer for everybody. I know. Is there a question in there? I’m not sure.

Louka Parry  

I’m sure there is, I think you’re getting onto something when you’re looking at, kind of, what are the list of practices that you deploy Debbie, and I think that the general answer I would give is, I think teachers are pretty tapped in, right? We do this intrinsically, implicitly, but we don’t kind of often know why we might be doing it in a certain way, because we’re very practice led, which is great. Hence the need for the evidence, right? And so the evidence might be, well actually for example, if all the kids come in and they’re really dysregulated, something’s happened. Like using a practice there to prime them. So usually that’s down regulation. So it might be a breathing technique, it might be a little mindfulness technique, right? These things can really help, because what you’re changing is you’re changing the state of the brain so that young people are more able to pay attention and be present. So I think immediately anyone listening to this podcast, you could probably just go on to your favourite large language model, frankly, or onto Google, go old school, but then be like I want to add evidence based social and emotional learning practices into my music lessons. What are some suggestions? Can you make a checklist? So I think those kinds of things are fantastic. I mean, there’s a few different programs that I really like in all of my work. And you remember, I would have started the keynote Debbie with the mood meter, which is from Yale’s emotional program called RULER which is an emotional regulation program that was developed by Professor Marc Brackett and his colleagues. So that’s even just naming, name entertainment. How are you feeling?

Debbie O’Shea  

I love that, you know, we could do it. You could do it the other way around too and you could plug in, here are some of the practices that I do that I believe help with well being in my classroom, for my students and my SEL, Can you tell me how this links to known SEL practices and research? So you could do it the other way around. Couldn’t you?

Louka Parry  

100% even just some other quick practices, just to speak to 60 second check in circle, what’s your energy from one to five? One word why? Close with an exit slip, how are you feeling? What’s a win from your message? Mistake of the week to look at productive struggle and make that intentional and explicit. What was the mistake of the week? There’s so much you could do. If you’re doing songwriting that’s really about self knowledge, like write a song about who you are. One thing I’ve done Debbie, just as a musician myself actually, kind of a New Year’s camping experience we did was that we had an audience with about 100 people or something at this thing, and I just got the keys, and I said, Okay, what I’d like to do is just play the emotions that people are experiencing. So I got the crowd to call out a specific emotion and on my 88 key keyboard, I tried to play what that emotion felt like to me. Even that it’s just beautiful and I’d never done it before, and I felt a bit, I had to go through a bit of my own anxiety about, oh gosh, I’m not sure if it’s really good. I’m not really a professional musician, blah, blah, blah, but that that kind of, just that experience. It just lends itself so strongly, even inclusion and belonging. And in your assessments. When you’re assessing, I’m sure there are the personal social capabilities already there. Turn taking, as you said, right? Did you persevere? Even enabling the metacognitive view to come into force, especially as we teach older students. But metacognition is just thinking about thinking, It’s like, how did you go in that experience? I felt like this. How would you reflect on that experience? Okay, great. Why did you think you thought that way about yourself? Those are starting to enter the realms of metacognition and the evidence is super clear. The more metacognition that our learners experience, the more they develop that, the better they will be in pretty well every other aspect of their lives, right? It’s very high quality evidence backing metacognition. And I think one of the challenges is to do that well it takes kind of time and trust and all the rest of it, because you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience. Said the good old John Dewey. It’s one of my favourite quote.

Debbie O’Shea  

It’s so true. It just stands the test of time.

Louka Parry  

It definitely does. 

Identity, Character, and Purpose

Debbie O’Shea  

Louka, there’s two more things that I really want to finish with, but first, I am getting over my own feelings of inadequacy here listening to you speak so well and so eloquently about all of these important things. I’m just in awe of your background and experience and just appreciate you sharing with us.

Louka Parry  

Debbie, thank you so much. Can I just make one point on this that I’ve had to grapple with and still do? I think the real question is, how do we all individuate as much as possible so that we can be of the most service to the collective? And so to put that in simple language, how do we all become the most ourselves in order to create the most value for other people? So the more that I think about this Debbie, because it’s easy to be, I’m going to compare myself against you. How colourful and extravagant and flamboyant you are, I wish I was. But I think the real question is, am I being the most myself? Because when you are, there is no comparison. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. You are answering the question, this is mine to do today? And I know that’s quite philosophical, but I think that can be incredibly practical. And one of the activities I do with educators and principals and people I work with is I just get them to do an I am list. I am dot, dot, dot. I am an educator, a passionate educator. I am a music teacher. I am a pianist, a drummer. I am. People kind of, they get to about 10 and then they struggle and that’s so interesting, because we are not one thing. We are multi dimensional beings. So the push here is like, how many identity markers can you really claim? Because that sheet of paper that represents you? I should be able to pick it up and go like, Oh, this is Debbie. And yet, what we kind of do is we live other people’s stories. We kind of absorb and internalise other mental models. This is all just part of being human. The expectations of others actually have a significant impact on us. We know this from the interesting research. So, yeah, I just feel like it’s ah, am I doing what’s mine to do today? Am I growing? Do I feel like I can be the most myself? And that journey is the journey of self actualisation and as Maslow put really beautifully at the end of his life, sadly, didn’t enter to the mainstream consciousness, the highest level on the hierarchy of needs, which, if you recall, has basic needs, physiological needs, social needs. Underneath it, it underpins self actualisation is becoming who I am supposed to be. The highest level is actually self transcendence, which is, well, once you’ve become who you are, the point is then your ego should dissolve and you should just become part of something bigger than yourself. And I think one of the things we’ve done, sadly in our modern world, is we’ve got a bit hyper individualistic and even the fact that Maslow’s hierarchy doesn’t include that final step, because he was just publishing it when he died, I think also speaks to this a little. It’s like, am I creating unique value in the world? And I would say for anyone listening as a music educator, honestly, the young, I think back to my music educators with incredible fondness and for who I became through the experiences that they created for me. That’s the real work. It’s just something I reflect on most days. Am I operating from a place of uniqueness? I love the word uniqueness because it’s not about competition. Of course, we need competition in particular parts of healthy ecosystems, right? That’s how nature works. But yeah, there’s just something I think beautiful about that framing.

Debbie O’Shea  

I love that so much. That is amazing. It actually also has implications for the way we work with our children too, to help them find their uniqueness. Yeah. I mean, I know they’re very young.

Louka Parry  

A lot of exploration ahead. Yeah, a lot.

Debbie O’Shea  

But they still need to feel a sense of who they are.

Louka Parry  

Yeah, I think that piece on identity. One of my favourite sayings is it’s not what you know, and it’s not even what you do with what you know. It’s who you are as you do things with what you know. So that’s just getting down to that level of identity, because otherwise if it’s just what you know, hey, pull out your book, we’re going to do a pre test, there’s no relational element there, which we know isn’t going to be used. It’s transactional. It’s transactional teaching. What we want is relational teaching, because the relationships are the whole point of being alive I think Debbie. I’m still figuring this stuff out myself, still making my mistakes, but there’s, yeah, I think there is something really beautiful about I see you and the person you are becoming, what a beautiful thing to be able to do every day, to work in a human system like a school.

Debbie O’Shea  

Louka that is something, I actually think that we should finish on this. But I want you to repeat that saying and that will be your last word. Oh, goodness, it’s just been a complete delight Louka.

Louka Parry  

Oh, likewise Debbie.

Debbie O’Shea  

Thank you so much for joining us, but I do want to hear that quote again. It was so good..

Louka Parry  

Sure, I’ll say it once more and again it’s so easy to say these things out loud, but of course, to embody them and try to live from that place is, I think, the real journey for every one of us. But I would say it’s not what you know, and it’s not what you do with what you know. It’s who you are, or even who you are becoming as you do things with what you know. And that takes us well beyond knowledge. It even takes us beyond skills, takes us deep into character formation. And if we need anything at this point of our human trajectory, it’s probably character. Who am I? What is my ethical and moral duty to this moment, to the young people around me, to my local ecology? Yeah, I think it really matters. Thanks for what you do, Debbie, it’s been a delight.

Debbie O’Shea  

Thank you, and we will keep in touch. Goodbye to all my fabulous listeners and thank you Louka.

Louka Parry  

My pleasure. Thank you.

Sign-off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget that you’ll find the show notes on crescendo.com.au/episode161. Also, you can find the transcripts there, so you’ve got all of the details that you need. If you found this podcast useful, I’d really love it if you share the link with a colleague. Remember, all I can be is the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. We’ll meet again. I hope we will, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know laughter relieves stress. Don’t lose sight of the funny side of life. Where do most superheroes live? In Cape Town, of course.