NAfME Western Division
Candidates for Western Division President-Elect Vol. 2
A reminder that we are looking forward to elections in January ~
Western Division: Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah, Nevada, and India
Elections will open on January 9, 2018. Division presidents preside at their board meetings and communicate their concerns to the National Executive Board. The elected division president-elect will take office one week prior to the National Assembly in June 2018, and assume the office of Division President in July, 2020.
Take the time to read the responses from our candidates. We are fortunate to have the time to get to know each of them through their responses, and to then make an informed decision.
Question: As your involvement with NAfME Leadership has evolved, and through communication with our constituency, what do you see as a pressing challenge or need unique to the Western Division? How will you address that challenge?
Renee Shane-Boyd
One of the major challenges facing music education is attracting and retaining highly qualified teachers to the profession. Just as there is a shortage of teachers in many content areas, I believe music is no exception. The pressure to enter a profession that will earn a higher rate of pay is a very real life decision for many young adults. Retention of teachers in the field is often difficult due to the long work hours and lifestyle choices that many music teaching positions require.
Closely associated with the issue of attracting and retaining music teachers is the challenge of training new teachers to be both highly qualified in their chosen area of musical focus but also competent in any area of music that they might be employed to teach. School scheduling, standardized testing, graduation requirements, and funding are just some of the elements that affect a music teacher’s course load. Music teachers are often asked to be a specialist in many areas of music instruction. Music course offerings designed to speak to a broad or particular cultural range often requirement specialty knowledge in order to provide in depth instruction that will truly engage students as opposed to providing a music survey type experience.
Communicating clearly to administrators the need for highly qualified teachers in music is often a challenge as well. With the pressure of achievement on standardized tests and similar school accountability in “academic” areas, music is often still seen as an “extra” or a “nice thing to have.” The challenge of communicating to administrators the direct relationship between a highly qualified music teacher and authentically engaged students is significant.
Maybe the most significant issue facing music education, however, is the challenge of cultivating enough individuals who can clearly communicate the importance of music education for all children to a variety of audiences on a regular basis. Seamlessly building advocacy into our work as music teachers is an important role that needs consistent attention.
Michael D. Stone
NAfME Western Division’s greatest strength lies in the diversity of its students, each of whom come from communities that reflect our rich, unique, American cultural heritage. Our students are united by their love of music. Over the next decade, music educators in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah have the opportunity to grow and expand music education in each state as we support both innovation with tradition in our school music curriculums.
The ethnic demographics in Western Division have changed over the past twenty years. Yet, our music curriculum in many cases has not.
I believe that our biggest challenge unique to the Western Division will be confronting the idea that tradition and innovation are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, music education should reflect the students we teach, and that includes our diverse culturally heritage that we all hold in common as Americans. We must celebrate opportunities to expand music curricular offerings in our schools to include those outside of the traditional idioms of band, choir, and orchestra, all the while continuing to grow and support traditional music education opportunities.
In my region of California, our student population is 88% Latino, and 88% of our students are identified as lower socio-economically status, defined as a household of four earning less than $20,000 per year. Our traditional band, choir, and orchestra student participation rates have expanded 121% at the junior high/middle school level over the past decade, bucking a national trend! I believe that our success lies in our work making our traditional music curriculum relevant to our student population and attracting students to a program that
expects excellence. All of our students want to be the best they can be. While our enrollment in traditional music classes has grown exponentially, so has our expansion of the District’s Mariachi Program. Where only one school participated in the program two years ago, now six schools participate!
My point is that schools can and must offer a variety of curriculums, and if there is excellence in the work of the music faculty, students can thrive in an environment where traditional and innovation are the norm. Our students deserve a first-class education in music with diverse and rich curriculum.