Teaching Music In The Urban Classroom Defining Ourselves As Other Envisioning Transformative Possibilities

Culturally relevant music can drive reform in urban education. Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom, Volume 1: A Guide to Survival, Success, and Reform opens a national-level conversation aimed at making that goal a reality. This first of two volumes addresses cultural responsivity, teaching strategies, and alternative teaching models. Contributors, who include classroom music teachers, inner city arts administrators, well-known academics, and policy-makers from across the United States and Canada, offer a full range of political, philosophical, and practical approaches to reaching kids in urban schools. These authors, whose voices are distinct and yet united, guide music educators at every level, motivating them to challenge tired assumptions, reconsider the issues, and transform their classrooms and their students. See also: Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom, Volume 2 ORDER BOTH VOLUMES 1 & 2 NOW AND SAVE 1-57886-545-X $65.00 paper set / 1-57886-544-1 $130.00 cloth set

In Complicating, Considering, and Connecting Music Education, Lauren Kapalka Richerme proposes a poststructuralist-inspired philosophy of music education. Complicating current conceptions of self, other, and place, Richerme emphasizes the embodied, emotional, and social aspects of humanity. She also examines intersections between local and global music making. Next, Richerme explores the ethical implications of considering multiple viewpoints and imagining who music makers might become. Ultimately, she offers that music education is good for facilitating differing connections with one's self and multiple environments. Throughout the text, she also integrates the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with narrative philosophy and personal narratives. By highlighting the processes of complicating, considering, and connecting, Richerme challenges the standardization and career-centric rationales that ground contemporary music education policy and practice to better welcome diversity.

This timely book explores teaching music in the urban setting along with interviews and journal accounts from urban music teachers in a variety of specializations. Written for pre-service music education students and music teachers new to urban teaching, this is a must-read for those considering teaching in the urban schools. Selected topics include culturally responsive teaching; White teachers working with students of color; nurturing pedagogy for at-risk youths; working with ESL students and immigrant families; creating a democratic and socially just music classroom; and developing habits of teaching that promote resilience and confidence in the emotional, social, and academic well-being of young musicians. A valuable resource for music teaching, this book features an accessible blend of theory and practice with authentic stories from the field.

This volume offers chapters written by some of the most respected narrative and qualitative inquiry writers in the field of music education. The authorship and scope are international, and the chapters advance the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological bases of narrative inquiry in music education and the arts. The book contains two sections, each with a specific aim. The first is to continue and expand upon dialogue regarding narrative inquiry in music education, emphasizing how narrative involves the art of listening to and hearing others whose voices are often unheard. The chapters invite music teachers and scholars to experience and confront music education stories from multiple perspectives and worldviews, inviting an international readership to engage in critical dialogue with and about marginalized voices in music. The second section focuses on ways in which narrative might be represented beyond the printed page, such as with music, film, photography, and performative pieces. This section includes philosophical discussions about arts-based and aesthetic inquiry, as well as examples of such work.

Written for prospective and practicing visual arts, music, drama, and dance educators, Teaching the Arts to Engage English Language Learners offers guidance for engaging ELLs, alongside all learners, through artistic thinking. By paying equal attention to visual art, music, drama, and dance education, this book articulates how arts classrooms can create rich and supportive contexts for ELLs to grow socially, academically, and personally. The making and relating, perceiving and responding, and connecting and understanding processes of artistic thinking, create the terrain for rich curricular experiences. These processes also create the much-needed spaces for ELLs to gain communicative practice, skill, and confidence. Special features include generative texts such as films, poems, and performances that function as springboards for arts educators to adapt according to the needs of their classroom; teaching tips, formative assessment practices, and related instructional tables and resources; an annotated list of internet sites, reader-friendly research articles, and instructional materials; and a glossary for readers’ reference.

In a delightfully self-conscious philosophical "mash-up," Randall Everett Allsup provides alternatives for the traditional master-apprentice teaching model that has characterized music education. By providing examples across the arts and humanities, Allsup promotes a vision of education that is open, changing, and adventurous at heart. He contends that the imperative of growth at the core of all teaching and learning relationships is made richer, though less certain, when it is fused with a student's self-initiated quest. In this way, the formal study of music turns from an education in teacher-directed craft and moves into much larger and more complicated fields of exploration. Through vivid stories and evocative prose, Randall Everett Allsup advocates for an open, quest-driven teaching model that has repercussions for music education and the humanities more generally.

Explore the creative ways music educators across the country are approaching emerging practices in music teaching and learning. Outlined in twenty-five unique case studies, each program offers a new perspective on music teaching and learning, often falling outside the standard music education curriculum. Find innovative ideas and models of successful practice to incorporate into your teaching, whether in school, university, or community settings. Close the gap between music inside and outside the music classroom and spark student interest. The diversity of these real-world case studies will inspire questioning and curiosity, stimulate lively discussion and innovation, and provide much food for thought. Designed for music teachers, preservice music education students, and music education faculty, this project was supported by Society for Music Teacher Education's (SMTE) Areas of Strategic Planning and Action on Critical Examination of the Curriculum, which will receive a portion of the proceeds.

The change needed in urban music education not only relates to the idea that music should be at the center of the curriculum; rather, it is that culturally relevant music should be a creative force at the center of reform in urban education. The Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom Set is the start of a national-level conversation aimed at making that goal a reality. In both volumes, classroom music teachers, inner city arts administrators, well-known academics, and policy-makers from across the United States and Canada join together to offer a full range of political, philosophical, and practical approaches to reaching kids in urban schools. These authors, whose voices are distinct and yet united, guide music educators at every level, motivating them to challenge tired assumptions, reconsider the issues, and transform their classrooms and their students. The set includes: Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom, Volume 1: A Guide to Survival, Success, and Reform Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom, Volume 2: A Guide to Leadership, Teacher Education, and Reform

In this book author Cathy Benedict challenges and reframes traditional ways of addressing many of the topics we have come to think of as social justice. Offering practical suggestions for helping both teachers and students think philosophically (and thus critically) about the world around them, each chapter engages with important themes through music making and learning as it presents scenarios, examples of dialogue with students, unit ideas and lesson plans geared toward elementary students (ages 6-14). Taken-for-granted subjects often considered beyond the understanding of elementary students such as friendship, racism, poverty, religion, and class are addressed and interrogated in such a way that honours the voice and critical thinking of the elementary student. Suggestions are given that help both teachers and students to pause, reflect and redirect dialogue with questions that uncover bias, misinformation and misunderstandings that too often stand in the way of coming to know and embracing difference. Guiding questions, which anchor many curricular mandates, are used throughout in order to scaffold critical and reflective thinking beginning in the earliest grades of elementary music education. Where does social justice reside? Whose voice is being heard and whose is being silenced? How do we come to think of and construct poverty? How is it that musics become used the way they are used? What happens to songs initially intended for socially driven purposes when their significance is undermined? These questions and more are explored encouraging music teachers to embrace a path toward socially just engagements at the elementary and middle school levels.