When choosing my research question, I was aware of the surface level strategies to diversity and inclusion in the classroom. I am sure that many of us are too, working at this graduate level in education. My research aims to discover new, innovative strategies that go beyond just inviting a guest speaker to our classroom, discussing a piece of media by a BIPOC artist, or being open-minded. While these ideas are valid and we should be incorporating them where possible, I do believe that these are all JGT (just good teaching) strategies.
Gloria Ladson-Billings states that culturally relevant pedagogy has 3 components:
(a) Students must experience academic success; (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence; and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order (Ladson-Billings, 1995).
So how do we get our students to this point?
Culturally relevant teachers utilize students' culture as a vehicle for learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995). This post is on collaborating with other educators to bring culturally responsive material to our classrooms and learning from one another. I wanted to discuss a lesson plan I created with a fellow educator, which is now available on the Ontario Music Educators’ Association website for members.
The lesson is intended for Grades 9-12 Music classes and is part of a larger composition unit. In this lesson students will learn about messages that can be encoded in musical pieces through a variety of examples. Students will then use an online Morse Code generator or musical cryptogram generator to encode a message that will be used as the rhythmic basis for an original composition in BeepBox or music notation software (Cameron & Toh, 2021).
When my colleague and I were constructing this lesson plan, we wanted to incorporate different types of musical examples into the lesson plan. After researching morse code music, we settled on four examples. Cryptograms can be found in Classical Western music such as Brahms, but we also included a contemporary rock music example, “YYZ” by Rush. Additionally, we discussed the batâ drums from the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and the intricate drum language of the Tabla (Cameron & Toh, 2021). “The idea is not to teach the music of these cultures ... but to teach something about them and for students to know they exist and are worthy of attention and respect. Emphatically, it is better to know a little than nothing.” (Cain et al., 2013).
The pandemic drastically changed countless things about the classroom, but in Arts classrooms specifically, I believe that educators began to realize just how focused we have become on performance and presentation. When these were no longer an option for us online, (e.g. we were unable to conduct an orchestra or put on a full theatre show in an online space without a lot of planning and video editing), we realized that theory, history teachings and learnings had been forgotten about. Our students have played the music, performed the plays, read the novels, and been inspired by the art from all these different forms of artists, but what do they really know about these individuals, their influences for their art form, and historical eras?
Cultural diversity in education stems from teacher attitudes and attributes (Walden, 2016). While educators may understand that there is great importance to broadening their programs and curriculums culturally, they continue to face barriers that prevent them from doing so. But many of those barriers begin with us. It is not about who knows more and making other educators feel smaller for knowing less. Instead of being in constant competition with our colleagues to create these culturally diverse spaces, we need to be collaborating with one another; putting our strengths and insights together to bring about the best learning experiences for our students. We are all trying to navigate this together.
References Cain, M., Lindblom , S., & Walden, J. (2013). Initiate, Create, Activate: practical solutions for making culturally diverse music education a reality. Australian Journal of Music Education, 79–97.
Cameron, S., & Toh, L. (2021, April). Coded Compositions. Ontario Music Educators’ Association. https://www.omea.on.ca/resource/coded-compositions-secondary-members-only/
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But That's Just Good Teaching! The Case for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849509543675
Walden, J. (2016). Culturally Diverse Music Education in North American K-12 Classrooms: The Role of Teacher Attitudes and Attributes in Facilitating Engaged Practices. Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2588
Toronto, June 2022
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