CMEC E-Newsletter - June 2007
| Message from the Executive Editor |
|
Welcome to our first edition of E-News! We hope you will find each issue useful and informative. Let us know how you like it and what we can do to improve it. As always we welcome your contributions.
Thank you to everyone who participated this year in Music Monday and helped to make the first Monday in May a very special day for music education. Visit our website for reflections, news clippings and photos from the day. Mark your calendars for the 4th annual event on Monday, May 5th, 2008. For me the spirit of Music Monday was captured in the following email from a teacher in northern Saskatchewan. It's amazing to me what can be done with even limited resources and clearly this tiny town of Cole Bay is fortunate to have this teacher there. Our hope will be that one day their school can have further resources so than they can do even more to enrich the lives of children through music. In the meantime, Ms. Folkes and her students were part of something very important on Music Monday and helped to create a very special day for music education across the country. "Dear Sir/Madam: I am not certain whether or not I am contacting the right person; but here goes. I am a Grade 3 - 6 classroom teacher here in Cole Bay, SK in a small community school - Lakeview School. Our school does not have a music program; but since coming here, I have dusted off the Roland, got an electrical cord to plug it in; and have gotten my students interested in music and singing. Although I am not a musician, not a music teacher, not a piano player (at all) I have managed to teach the children to sing and some of them to play the piano. When I heard about Music Monday, I was very excited and our school was registered. My class took an instant "liking" to "Our song" - the song for Music Monday. They learned to sing it; I learned to play it on the piano (with just the right hand!) In the end, the children like the music I downloaded from the site; and were able to sing along with it. Today, exactly at 11:00 A.M., my class stood outside our school and we sang "Our Song". The students from the other two classes (Grades 1 & 2, 7 & 8) were our audience. The children did a great job singing. It was so wonderful knowing that despite our lack of resources, we were able to join other students all across our country and sing. I am sending pictures taken outside our school today. Cole Bay is tiny - population around 140. The school has just over 40 students. This is not a Reserve community; but the children are Metis Cree. And like most children who are given an opportunity, they love to sing. Thank you for all you do. Lorraine Folkes" Watch our home page on our website over the summer as we launch an important advocacy initiative inviting signatories to "The National Effort" in support of music education. Your voice is important as we show Canada the depth and breadth of support for quality music programs in our schools. If your organization is interested in becoming a signatory please send us an email at: info@coalitionformusiced.ca. Together, we can make music matter. Sincerely, Ingrid Whyte |
| News Bulletins |
|
» New Jazz Education Resources JAZZ.FM91: Free Music Education Programmes and Resources - COMING THIS FALL Canadian Jazz Archives Online 30 years of streaming jazz concerts, plus photos, biographies, and chronologies of Canadian jazz. Listen, Explore, Learn. Special feature: use curriculum-relevant teaching tools for your classroom, customized for grades 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12. Toronto Youth Jazz Ensemble Recommend your most promising music student for an audition! Students from across the city will come together at JAZZ.FM91 to rehearse with a renowned jazz educator, and perform throughout the year. Uniforms and instruments provided. Contact community@jazz.fm or 1-888-595-0404 for information. » MusiCan Invites Schools Across Canada To Apply for $10,000 Musical Instrument Grants On May 1, 2007 public, elementary, secondary and separate schools across Canada will be eligible to apply for 2007/2008 Band Aid Grants of$10,000 each towards the purchase of new musical instruments. All applications must be received by August 1, 2007 to be considered. Band Aid Grants are a component of MusiCan, the music education program of the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS), now celebrating its 10th anniversary. Selection criteria and downloadable application forms are available online at MusiCan’s website, www.musican.ca. » Music Monday’s, Dala, will Visit Schools Next Year. Would you like Dala, composers of Music Monday’s, “Our Song”, to visit your school next year? Shelia and Amanda (Dala) met in high school band class and having been making beautiful music together ever since. They are bright and sincere spokespeople for the importance of music education. Dala is available primarily in the GTA but may be available in other areas across the country as they tour next year to promote their third CD, to be released in August by Universal Music Canada. To inquire about school visits, please contact Mike Roth at bigboldsun@hotmail.com. |
| Strategies / Tips |
|
Building Your School Parent and Staff Community by Mitch Howard Are you interested in boosting the profile of your school's music program? Here are some ideas I've tried in our school district. 1. Invite your staff to a drumming circle during lunch or after school. Include interested parents, students, and teachers. 2. Teach simple Samba rhythms with either authentic or improvised instruments in the first twenty minutes of a staff meeting. The results will be magic! 3.Get out into your community on MUSIC MONDAY. Do anything - but try to keep it less of a "performance" and more of a celebration. I got our local grocery store to donate a juice box and a cookie for all the students involved. For some, it's all they remember, but they sure think they had fun! 4. Most schools feature a "Pizza Lunch" or Hot Dog Day. Set up your jazz band, choir, or the "garage band" in the cafeteria or student centre. It's a sure hit! 5. Show up at your school's next PAC meeting with a bunch of djembes. Teach a couple of simple rhythms. Soon they'll be buying some for the school. 6. Offer a "drumming circle" for non-music students. 7. In about February, assemble a "Mom and Dad Beginner Band". Their kids come along for help and support, and the parents get a chance to play in the End-of-Year Concert. 8. Become really friendly with the local community band and community choir. Encourage your students to join either, or both. 9. Our local grocery store offers a "Student Youth Pass" for concerts held at our local Arts Centre. The students pay $2.00 for the concert, the store pays the balance to the theatre. 10. Instead of simply appealing for money at band or choir concerts, I use a "Music Patron" system. I ask for a donation of between $50.00 - $100.00. (the average price of a score). The Patron's name is acknowledged on all subsequent programs, on a plaque, and a bookplate affixed to the score itself. It works like a charm! I'm not a big fan of justifying my program to anyone, but in our current educational climate, it sure helps to just celebrate the fact that we're here, and we love doing what we do. Mitch Howard teaches elementary, choral, and band music to students Kindergarten to Grade 8 on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Active in several community music initiatives, Mitch is also the current President of the BC Music Educator's Association. |
| Book Review |
|
THE A.B.C'S OF EDUCATION, A PRIMER FOR SCHOOLS TO COME Doug Goodkin, (2006) San Francisco CA: Pentatonic Press. by Lois Fleming Doug Goodkin is a master teacher. To see him involve a group of students in making music happen is to see magic happen. It does not matter which age group he works with - pre-school, primary, junior, secondary or adults he involves them all in a voyage of discovery and delight in learning. The A, B, C's of Education outlines his philosophy of education in a clear, organized, easy-to-read fashion. In 26 chapters he covers all the elements that must be present in good education ( A is for Art, B is for Beauty, C is for Character, (D is for Discovery and so on). "The move to restore academics to its original purpose [Plato's ideals] - to develop the whole person through the vehicles of art and science - begins by refusing to reduce arts and academics to definitions that exclude and compete. When every school subject is experienced imaginatively, intuitively, intellectually - as well as kinesthetically and emotionally - we will have come closer to nourishing the immense hunger of children to know and love their world." Doug Goodkin, The A,B,C's of Education, p. 6 Contrast this vision with the reality in many classrooms: the incessant demands for record keeping, yet more and more testing, and the reality of having to "teach to the test" which results in endless drills and rote learning. These approaches result in the death- knell of creative, exciting, curiosity-provoking teaching, leaving no time to foster the different interests and talents of individual students. It is easy to understand why many students are falling by the wayside and leaving school as soon as possible. Why do we try to keep them physically in the classroom when mentally they left months before? In years gone by (long before budget cuts) many students stayed until graduation only because they could play in the jazz band, sing in the choir or make sculptures in art period. Having them do endless repetitive questions in math is not a good substitute, nor is it good learning. Far better to nourish the brain and soul by learning to play a guitar or trumpet. I re-read The A, B, C's of Education before I started this review and was once again over-whelmed by its timely message. This book should be required reading for anyone who has anything to do with the education of children - parents, college students, teachers, principals (and above all) administrators and ministers of education. It should be in every school library. The A, B, C's of Education points the way to enlightened, creative teaching that will engage each and every student in the learning process.
Note: Doug Goodkin will be the keynote speaker at the OMEA (Ontario Music Educator's Association) convention in November 2007.
Lois Fleming is a member of the board of Directors for the Coalition for Music Education in Canada and former head of the Orff programme for the Toronto Board of Education. |
|
| ||||||||||||
|
as the sighted child, picking up the songs by rote, participating in movement activities easily, (especially if paired with a sighted child) and playing Orff-like instruments with no trouble.
Older students who are in bands and choirs can have their parts taped for them and can take these home to learn apart from the group. Traditional music notation can be learned tactilely by having the notation presented in sandpaper notes, raised letters, Plasticine, etc. There are just a million ways that music learning can be imparted successfully to the blind and partially sighted person. The teacher only has to be careful to not change the furniture around without telling the children, and she/he has to remember to talk about everything he/she and others are doing. Re. learning by rote: It is a well-known fact that there are far more people who have "perfect pitch" in the blind population than in the regular populace. The Brantford School for the Blind in Brantford Ontario has an excellent music program for all ages, Kindergarten to graduation. Several of my books have sections giving many specific suggestions for working with these students (along with special sections on teaching the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Learning Disabled, Movement Impaired, Mentally Challenged and so on. These are: Music For Fun, Music For Learning, 4th ed. (2006) Lois Birkenshaw, Barcelona Publishers, Gilsum NH www.barcelonapublishers.com Come On Everybody, Let's Sing (with CD) (2000) Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming, Alfred Publishing, Van Nuys CA, www.alfred.com Music For All, 2nd ed. (2007) Lois Birkenshaw-Fleming, Alfred Publishing, Van Nuys CA, www.alfred.com From John Balsillie... "Contact both the National Library of Congress - National Library Services and the C.N.I.B. www.cnib.ca. For software, simply google Braille Music Translation - various items exist from $500 - $1000, and you can also purchase a Braille embosser for about $2500 U.S. They could print their own music. If anyone is interested, one of the trumpet players (Dan Geminder) in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra does translations for a fee and creates music for the CNIB on a regular basis." |
|||||||||||||
In March we received an email from Gemma Fernandez-Sanchez who works for the National Organization of Blind People (ONCE) in Barcelona, Spain inquiring about resources for teaching music to children as very little information is available in Spain.
|
||||
|
||||
| Something Stimulating |
 Here's a link to a provocative video presentation about a future we cannot begin to comprehend: www.glumbert.com/media/shift. Watch it and ask yourselves whether we are preparing our children to thrive in what will certainly be a creative, innovative, nimble and adventurous environment. 
|
|
Coalition for Music Education in Canada
P.O. Box 556
Agincourt, Ontario
M1S 3C5 phone: 416.298.2871, fax: 416.298.5730, www.weallneedmusic.ca, www.coalitionformusiced.ca CMEC office - Lyla Ricciardelli: info@coalitionformusiced.ca Ingrid Whyte, Executive Director: ingrid@coalitionformusiced.ca |