Memo to: Participants in the class project
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From: Malcolm Mitchell Re: Midyear status report on our class project -- June, 2004 Our class project has entered a new phase, with a new and expanded relationship with the Yale School of Music. This phase will carry through our 2007 reunion, and therefore I'd like to explain the development.BACKGROUND As indicated by the motto beneath the picture on our Project website -- www.musicinschools.org -- our goal is to get more music included in the education of young people. The class chose music as the topic of our Project because we believe that in our K-12 years students were exposed to more music than today's students are and that the long-term trend toward less music in schools has been a bad thing. The challenge we took on is to work toward reversing that trend. We gathered studies that seem to prove the benefits of music for all aspects of young people's lives. We looked both systematically and anecdotally at current music programs at various schools, and at "best practices" both for teaching music and for increasing the time students spend with music. We became aware of the importance of having a leader inside the school to champion the benefits of music, and we found instances of excellent music programs. We also discovered that one of the problems (some say the main problem) that school districts face when trying to expand music programs is a lack of trained teachers -- that is, trained musicians who are also trained as teachers. This lack traces to the sharp contraction in music (and therefore in demand for music teachers) in most schools in the 1970s. With demand for music teachers gone, most professional music schools dropped their teaching majors, and they have not yet restored the major. The lack of trained music teachers was also apparent in the program we introduced to the New Haven school district -- Education Through Music. ETM is unique not only for integrating music into the whole school curriculum, but also for putting the musicians they hire -- their "teaching artists" -- through a brief, intensive course in teaching practices, and then guiding them through their first years of teaching. ETM's "boot camp" would be unnecessary if music schools were graduating more teaching majors. THE YALE SCHOOL OF MUSIC Introducing the ETM program to the New Haven schools satisfied our goals of bringing expanded music education to schools and determining "best practices" for doing so. At the same time, it gave the Project the New Haven connection that we decided at the beginning was one of our Project objectives. We quickly discovered that in the context of Yale's overall relations with New Haven, our efforts there were best undertaken through the School of Music. Furthermore, the School has the expertise to oversee the ETM program and report to us on its degree of success. Our funding for the program continues to flow through the School. What we didn't fully realize in our first discussions with Dean Blocker and Paul Hawkshaw about the ETM program was their understanding of, indeed their passion about, the national need for more trained music teachers -- and their interest in having the Yale School of Music itself address that need. As our discussions progressed, it seemed more and more logical to focus our overall goal -- getting more music into K-12 -- on the matter of training music teachers. At the core of our discussions has been Dean Blocker's idea of a biennial national Symposium to honor fine music teachers from around the country. The Symposium would a) focus attention on the benefits of music in education, b) encourage musicians to see teaching as respected and beneficial work, and c) help those who champion music in school districts to convince their constituencies to expand music education. These goals fit precisely with our class's original goal of influencing school districts to expand their music offerings and incorporate them into the regular curriculum. What's more, in pursuing these goals, the School of Music is creating a new position for an experienced music educator. This person will not only develop the Symposium, but also oversee the Lincoln-Bassett program (which the class will continue to fund), and develop curriculum for teacher training within the School of Music. There will be news about this appointment within the next few months, and the project committee will notify the class. We'll also announce two exciting class events, based on our music project, that will be held in May and July of 2005. Comments on any of the above will be appreciated. Email me at malcolm@musicinschools.org Malcolm Mitchell |