Music: A Creative Force at the Center of Urban School Reform

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Music A Creative Force at the Center of Urban
School Reform

• Music The Heart in EducationMENCs 60th
  National Biennial Inservice ConferenceSalt Lake
  City, UtahApril 19, 2006

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Thanks to the following people

• From MENC
• David Circle, National MENC President
• Margaret Jamborsky, Dir. of Meetings and
  Conventions
• NASPAAM
• Frank Suggs, president Elizabeth Eccles,
  president elect
• Urban Music Leadership Conference
• Sally Ann Ryan, national president
• Logistical help
• Elizabeth McAnally

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Social epidemics

• Begin in areas of high need and social stress,
  and eventually move from those borders into the
  society at large.
• The professions lack of an appropriate response
  to students and music teachers in urban schools
  is a symptom of a social epidemic.
• James Garbarino, Lost Boys, 1999

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Tipping Point

• Social epidemics good ones like urban renewal
  and bad ones like random violence spread just
  like viruses do.
• Change is tipped by incremental changes in the
  status quo.
• It is possible to tip change deliberately by
  understanding how it works.
• Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell, 2000).

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Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom

• VI A Guide to Survival, Success and Reform
  released at this conference!
• VII A Guide to Leadership, Teacher Education,
  and Reform. Released in June.
• Book signing Friday at 1 pm at MENC MALL.

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

• 5 Essential Elements
• Cultural Diversity Knowledge Base
• Culturally Relevant Curricula
• Cultural Caring within a Learning Community
• Cross-Cultural Communications
• Cultural Congruity in Classroom Instruction
• Geneva Gay, 2000 2002

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Cultural Diversity Knowledge Base

• . . . Note reading is a wonderful thing and
  people have been able to save music with it. But
  there is this whole other way that is probably
  the most basicmore important than reading.
  Youve got to keep that in mind. . . . We want to
  educate, but at the same time we dont want to
  slight those. . . . Youve got to be really
  careful about that. Some of the greatest
  musicians did not note read.

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Arts Education at the Center of School Reform A
Story

• Putting the arts at the center of school reform
  changed reputation from
• undemanding, dangerous place for
  non-university-bound students
• To successful inner city school with high
  retention, high safety, and high level of
  graduates who went on to post-secondary
  education.

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The Change Needed is that Culturally Relevant
Music Education

• Must become the Creative Force at the Center of
  Urban School Reform

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Moving toward the Tipping Point

• What underlies successful epidemics, in the end,
  is a bedrock belief that people can radically
  transform their behavior or beliefs in the face
  of the right kind of impetus.
• Gladwell, The Tipping Point (conclusion)