PK-12 General Music RI Newsletter
Rhode Island Music Education Association
January 2021
Music and Cultural Competence by Nicolette Mingels
“I understand that I will never understand. Therefore, I stand.” These words were shared around the world in June of 2020, in response to the Movement for Black Lives. Like many people, I wasn’t sure exactly what I could do to help. But I felt strongly compelled to do something. I thought of my students, young adults from a wide range of socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. I knew that I wanted to do more than state my support of this movement for racial equity. I wanted to adapt my high school general music curriculum to address inequality directly, and teach my students how to begin practicing cultural competence.
I’m Nicolette, a high school chorus, keyboard and general music teacher. For the past 3 years I have been teaching at Blackstone Valley Prep High School. BVP is a charter school serving students from four towns: Cumberland, Lincoln, Pawtucket, and Central Falls. Those who know Rhode Island well will probably notice right away that those four towns are made up of very diverse populations! This is actually intentional on BVP’s part- the goal being that every student is constantly interacting with many others who have completely different perspectives.
Outside of music, some of my biggest interests are geography, languages and culture. I thought that since I would likely be teaching from home in the fall and my typical general music projects wouldn’t really be possible, I could try to create a curriculum around cultural competence. I hoped that I would be able to share my passion for these topics with my students, and perhaps inspire them to make cultural awareness part of their daily lives.
As the summer quarantine continued, I spent my days indoors developing a semester-long course in which the students would spend the first couple of weeks learning the basics of cultural competence, and would eventually ‘travel’ from continent to continent zooming in on the cultures and musical traditions of different countries. I created a set of Core Values, the tenets by which we would operate and communicate with one another during class. And most importantly, I began compiling a list of colleagues and friends who might be interested in speaking to my students about their cultural backgrounds.
August arrived and it became clear that BVP High School would be fully virtual, at least for the time being. At this point my plan was fully in motion! In the first few weeks of the new class, we covered topics such as accountability, emotional labor, injustice, racism, and privilege. The central question at this stage was, “What is cultural competence, and why should I care about practicing it?” The beginning of the semester was also loaded with whole-group and small-group discussion, with the secret goal/added benefit of us all getting to know one another better by sharing opinions on topics that affect us all in different ways. I was pleased to find that these students, who otherwise might have been tempted to stay on mute with their cameras off for the entire period, were deeply engaged with the content. This showed me that they are tuned in to current events and they are excited when their teachers choose to engage with them on these topics.
Once I felt confident that the students understood the basic vocabulary around cultural competence itself, we began our journey around the world. Our first unit took us to the Middle East and North Africa, where I shared some of the things I learned when my social justice choir traveled to Israel and Palestine in 2017. I found that my students really connected with these lessons even though they self-identified as uninformed about the Middle East. They enjoyed that someone was sharing their personal experiences in a way that felt real and relevant to them. Our guest speaker for this unit was a fellow BVP teacher who spoke to us about Morocco. When surveyed shortly after, many students cited the Morocco assignment as their “favorite activity so far”! My main takeaways at that moment was, “It was worth it to spend so much time reaching out to colleagues. First-person accounts are effective and definitely the most authentic.”
At this point in the semester (mid-October, about a month into the school year), I realized that I had been very ambitious when I first began developing the class. It became clear that we were only going to be able to cover about 4 regions, and definitely not every corner of the world as I initially hoped.
So I shifted gears, reducing the course load to involve only regions of the world where I had a confirmed guest speaker. We headed to the Caribbean, where a close friend of mine created a fantastic presentation on his family’s home country of Haiti. The students loved it! To accompany the Caribbean unit, I assigned a project called Artists of the Caribbean. For this project, each student selected a Caribbean country and a music artist from that country whom they wanted to feature. I created a 10-slide template for them to follow, which covered everything from the indigenous peoples of their country, all the way to their artist’s early years and the influence of their culture on their music. The students generally did an excellent job on the project, and I believe it was because they were invested in the content.
We aren’t quite at the end of the semester yet, and there is still a lot for me (and the kids of course!) to learn. But so far, the most important thing I’ve learned from teaching music and cultural competence is that we don’t need to be perfect in order to get the conversation started in our schools. I certainly am not perfect by any means, but it feels like a lot of progress has been made in the last few months. I think of this class as a first step toward creating a school culture of compassion, where every student feels valued and respected. There is a lot more to be done and it won’t all fall on my shoulders, but I feel like this is the hard work that really matters. And having the opportunity to do that through music is something that I feel extremely grateful for.
Image: VOICES21C, the social justice choir of which I am a member in Jerusalem, August 2017
Important dates...
RIMEA Professional Development: Cultivating Engaging Music Lessons ANYWHERE
3-hour Professional Learning Units certificate will be offered.
Saturday, Mar 6, 2021, 09:00 AM
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Cultivating Engaging Music Lessons ANYWHERE
The teaching world has changed. Educators are called upon to work in learning environments that have been unprecedented in previous decades, but one thing remains the same: students deserve a rich musicking experience. This interactive workshop will examine strategies for developing and adapting engaging musical lessons for teachers whether they are in face-to-face, hybrid, or distance learning environments. Topics will include balancing virtual and “IRL” (in real life) activities, methods for assessment, developing narratives and characters, utilizing technology and online resources, and methods for flow and maximum musicking. Participants will leave with ideas for how to adapt their current lessons, teaching style, and method for ANY learning environment.
Nick Holland-Garcia has taught elementary general music in Seattle, San Antonio, and currently teaches PK-4th grade music for The St. Paul's Schools in Baltimore. Nick is also an instructor for the Rio Grande Valley Kodály Teacher Training Program in McAllen, TX, where he teaches pedagogy and musicianship. Nick has presented workshops on topics of classroom and vocal pedagogy, cultural competency, and technology at regional, state, and national music educator conferences. His work in integrating Kodály pedagogy with the interactive white board led to his contribution of a chapter in the second edition of Kodály Today: A Cognitive Approach to to Music Education by Houlahan and Tacka. Nick earned a Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance from Pacific Lutheran University and a Master of Music in Voice Performance with Teacher Certification from the University of Michigan.
RIMEA Winter All-Member Meeting
Wednesday, Feb 24, 2021, 07:00 PM
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General Music Coffee Hours...
Topics hosted by our Model Classroom teachers Bridget Baird & Raffi Rachdouni; and boomwhackers with Steve Johnson.
1-hour Professional Learning Units certificate will be offered.
Local offering...
Educator Spotlight....
Kristin St. George, Community School, Cumberland
This marks my second year teaching for the Cumberland School District, where I teach K-5 General Music at Garvin Elementary and Community School. I also teach private voice lessons. Being a first year teacher during the start Covid-19 pandemic certainly presented its challenges. While many of our traditional activities like folk dance and instrument playing have been put on pause, the experience has been valuable. It has challenged both myself and students to rethink how we approach music learning in our socially distanced world. My primary goal is to facilitate life long love and appreciation of music. Students explore music in varied ways, including singing, listening, and movement. Music literacy has become a primary focus during this year's hybrid music classes. Even my youngest students are analyzing, creating, and performing melodic and rhythmic patterns confidently and independently. I am deeply proud to serve the community of Cumberland and to provide students with a much needed creative outlet during these unprecedented times.
Upcoming area workshops...
New England Orff Chapter: The Moving Classroom with Kris Olson
Saturday, Feb 6, 2021, 10:00 AM
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PK-12 General Music RI
General Music Council Mission: The establishment and mission of the RIMEA General Music Council is to strengthen general music education in Rhode Island by…
Advocating for the value of building a strong foundation in students in pre-K through 12th grades.
Connecting general music teachers to resources and each other, fostering a network of support.
Promoting cultural diversity, inclusion, and engagement in music and our general music community.
Celebrating general music teachers and raising the quality of music instruction.
Email: cputka@rimea.org
Website: www.rimea.org/gm/
Location: 667 Waterman Avenue, East Providence, RI, USA
Phone: 401-248-7080
Twitter: @RIMEAorg