Historically general and instrumental music education in the United States has been influenced most by Western and European cultural traditions and art. This in-person two-part workshop will be a dynamic experience designed to help teachers, administrators, and music and instrumental instructors enhance music instruction from a student-centered, diverse, and culturally responsive lens.

Educators will:

• Experience the musical excellence of Carl Brister.
• Learn music terminology including…..
  • Oral traditions
  • Improvisation
  • Tone
  • Language
  • Clave
• Engage with students in a more dynamic, learning environment that values and includes the cultures, identity, and voices of each student within the learning
• Discover how music can be learned utilizing the experiences that students bring into the learning space and how the learning can be applied to their communities.
• Consider how Culturally Responsive Music Teaching nurtures insight into the themes of musicality, societal, cultural, historically contextual, critical, imaginative, and global thinking
• Engage with Turn/Talk, Self-Reflection
• Share Out strategies to assess participant learning
• Establish criteria that allows educators to apply session skills and understanding to their teaching and learning practice.

YA Connections:

NJSLS-VPA:

• Creating: Participants will generate and conceptualize ideas as they engage with the selected elements of music education.
• Performing: Participants will perform vocal exercises and community songwriting activities
• Responding: Participants will use art form specific vocabulary and lived experience to analyze and interpret musical expressions.
• Connecting: Participants will make connections to history and personal lived experience.

Professional Standards for Education

• Respect: Teachers should respect and honor each student’s efforts and offer encouragement.
• Learning styles: Teachers should recognize and accommodate learning styles and abilities.
• Learning Environment: Teachers should strive to create environments that support individual and collaborative learning, and that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation

Culturally Responsive Practice

• Engage with music & instrumental practices grounded in the Black & African Diaspora.
• Teachers will engage with ways to assign agency to students.

Social-Emotional Learning

Self Awareness & Create: Participants will organize and develop creative ideas while recognizing the impact of one’s personal strengths.

When you pair this program with Carl Brister’s workshop or assembly performance, he provides teachers with the in-classroom support implementing creative teaching practices, what they have learned into practice.