(1)

I began teaching full time in 2015 and found myself as many new teachers do, trying to survive. I was not the ‘fresh-face’ right out of college but I was still the 20-something finding their way in a new career. Early mornings, late nights, and a constant cloud of stress over planning, classroom management, and instrument repairs quickly took over my life. What did I get myself into? Every task seemed monumental. Personal wins were quickly defused by upcoming deadlines. I often felt desperate to reach out for anything to reprieve myself from the stress. The school was firm on expecting and enforcing detailed lesson plans created weeks in advance. Additionally, a complete scope and sequence was required at the beginning of the year with the expectation that my effectiveness as an educator would be partially measured by my students ability to meet the goals I put forth.

The asks that were put on me, aside from the lack of flexibility, were certainly not out of the ordinary and I do credit this experience to now being able to efficiently lesson plan. Nonetheless, I needed a lifeline in the moment. For me, this lifeline came in part through the Core Art Standards. Offering the language and direction I needed, the standards helped me to form much of my practice in the first year of teaching. Unlike the pervious 1994 National Standards, the new standards offered more guidance to develop lessons. When lesson planning I would begin with the language from the standards and build out activities and assessments that were aligned with the age group. It was a highly formulaic and systematic approach to developing lesson plans in an efficient manner (this approach to lesson planning is problematic and would only become evident in my following years of teaching). However, in that moment the standards, in many ways, performed in way that they were intended.

Zaffini (2018) states that the 2014 Core Arts Standards were designed in response to a call for more authentic and specific standards: “In a time when we are striving to equip our students with skills that will help them succeed long after they leave our classrooms, the new standards focus on authentic teaching and learning for our students… There was a resounding call for more specifics within the standards, particularly a call to delineate what students should be doing and learning within their grade level” (p. 57). I would go further to suggest that teacher experience (or lack thereof) was also a factor in the call for change. According to a 2018 study by Ingersoll et al., “in 1987-88, the modal…public school teacher had 15 years of teacher experience…by 2015-16 the modal public school teacher was…in their first three years” (p. 11). While these statistics are tied in part to hiring trends, it remains a telling story of the needs of many teachers; as I struggled for guidance, many other teachers also struggled for guidance in their first years of teaching. While there are challenges to navigating the standards (accommodations, cultural relevancy, etc), they present an opportunity to begin somewhere, a step that is often the most daunting.

(2)

Chicago Public Schools launched the office of equity in 2018 to address opportunity gaps throughout the district. CPS recognized that “while student talent is distributed evenly across our schools, opportunity is not”, a claim that is problematic given CPS’s practice of school closures and the openings of selective enrollment schools (CPS, n.d.). Nonetheless, in alignment with CPS’s five-year vision (academic progress, financial stability, integrity), the office of equity implemented a curriculum initiative to provide “high-quality rigorous instruction” equitably across the district. In 2019, the CPS arts department called on teachers to work with curriculum consultants to design a comprehensive, standards aligned curriculum for Dance, Fine Arts, Music, and Theater. Eight fellow music teachers and I were selected to develop the first stage of the process: scope and sequence. This work included assigning/unpacking standards and writing unit descriptions. Over the span of six months, we selected six priority standards for each grade level (standards most applicable) and developed a unit plans (unit description, student learning objectives, and overview of unit assessment) aligned around the priority standards.

It should be noted that the arts curriculum project addresses two equity concerns: availability of high-quality resources and student mobility across the district. First, based on the input from CPS art teachers, teachers were spending a majority of their time researching and creating lesson/unit plans. Due to the lack of available resources, these instructional materials were often not high quality or standards-based. Second, with selective enrollment, charter, and neighborhood schools, there is no one single path for students from pre-k to high school and therefore student learning was rarely aligned. Additionally, high-mobility among students resulted in students transferring from school to school and in turn experiencing a vastly different quality and scope of instruction

For the curriculum-writing project, the standards were forefront in the decision-making. For years to come, the standards will be fixed in the teaching and learning practices of CPS arts teachers. While the unit plans and resources that are made available to teachers are of optional use, it is the hope that this project will encourage equitable practices across the district. Knowing that standards alone cannot determine best practices, having teachers across the district submit lesson plans, the standards will become more responsive to student backgrounds and cultures throughout the City of Chicago.

(3)

I began teaching at Tilden High School three months after learning my previous position would be cut due to budget constraints. This would be my third school in as many years. Going into the profession I was aware of the realities that might await me, especially those in high-need and under-resourced communities, however it did not lessen the sense of loss and frustration I felt. Looking back at these years of transition, I often turn to the things I learned as a way to cope and grow as an educator. For me, the largest take away was simple: learning is not standardized. Previous assumptions suggested that teaching high school students of similar backgrounds (culturally, economically, and geographically) would involve nearly identical materials and practices. I was wrong. Within my second year of teaching, I was rewriting unit and lesson plans often, as well as, developing new modifications and culturally relevant materials to best serve my current students.

My practice of incorporating standards within the curricula is now solely dependent on the interests of my students. While the Core Arts Standards intend to leave space for creativity on ‘how’ students are taught, I often find myself limited to ‘bland’ and ‘formulaic’ ideas that steer away from what is most important: the student. This was especially the case when working on the CPS curriculum project. As a team, we often struggled to keep unit plans general enough to allow future lessons to be as expansive and creative. How do you create a unit plan that can be easily adapted into any classroom? How do align a standardized system within an environment that shares multiple ways of knowing? These are philosophical questions that deserve a deeper look but are nonetheless important questions to recognize while in the planning space. Jorgensen (2003) writes that “a living thing cannot be standardized. . . National standards, state curriculum guidelines, codified instructional methods, and the like, no matter how well intentioned, cannot bring music education alive” (p. 125). I now often consider this when incorporating the standards into the curricula; while standards offer opportunities in writing and planning, they are not the source for creativity, enjoyment, and knowing in the classroom.

(4)

I teach with a sense of urgency because, in many cases, my students’ lives depend on it. There are stark realities for black and brown kids; weighed down by generations of systemic racism, they face a steep social and economic ladder to climb. Fighting against this means addressing the symptoms of oppression to help students overcome the barriers that await them. Childhood trauma, one of many barriers, is what shapes my practice as a teacher. As a trauma-responsive teacher, I look to empower student’s social and economic autonomy by addressing student’s social-emotional needs and by practicing anti-racist pedagogy.

While I recognize that standards are developed to reflect evidence-based ‘best practices’, the systems in which they are developed from are overtly bias. During my research I found that standards writers were predominately white and in some cases mostly men. This is unfortunately not surprising given the demographics of educators in the United States and the inequalities that occur in positions of ‘power’. Nonetheless, it is problematic that a predominately white demographic is placing a system that on a predominately black and brown demographic. Some might argue that systems such as these promote white supremacy, while others might point to the unintended harms caused. Regardless of how we look at it, the realities remain the same: students of color are subjected to an oppressive system. In response, it is my role, as an advocate for my students, to destruct these traditional power structures by reexamining and transforming these systems.

Perhaps the best way to begin transforming these systems is by putting students first; change the system to fit the child rather than change the child to fit the system. Hesch (1995) suggests that “instead of developing programs and curricula to change children so that they adjust to the school, anti-racist educators are concerned with changing institutions, through such measures as the politicization of the formal curriculum, attention to the “hidden” curriculum, changes in the ways children are streamed and assessed” (p. 106). Applied to standards, we might look to George Dei (2003) to consider a ‘multicentric’ music curriculum. In this system, standards would become more generalized to include multiple ways of ‘knowing’ and make way for the many orientations of music participation.

Many will claim that the current standards, by opening room for ‘non-traditional’ ensembles, have in turn supported multiple ways of knowing and participating. However, the implications of using terms such as ‘non-traditional’ and the idea of accommodating for ‘others’, suggests the standards that are still firmly rooted in a white euro-centric system. Hess (2015) suggests that “this destabilizing of Europe as the center is a significant impediment to white supremacy in music education. Supporting students in recognizing different ways of knowing the world is a powerful move toward dismantling systems of privilege as they currently stand” (p. 75-76). With this, recognizing the privileges that the standards give towards certain music and ways of knowing is the first step in destabilizing and reclaiming music education for students of color.

(5)

There are moments in music education in which we can now look back on and say with certainty that it had a major impact on our current practices. The publication of Lowell Mason’s Manuel of Instruction in 1834, the invention of the phonograph in 1877, the Tanglewood symposium in 1967, and the creation of National Standards in 1994 are just a few examples of significant turning points in music education. With the revision of the 1994 standards in 2014, some might suggest we are in another major moment of change. However, I contend that the 2014 standards do not go far enough to be considered the significant change of our time.

The social and political climate of the United States has been undergoing significant changes since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Major movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Occupy Wall Street, and LGBTQ rights have shifted American politics to put race, gender, and economic inequality issues at the forefront of change. This has been met with resistance by such events as the Tea Party Movement during the Obama administration, the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and the empowering of white nationalist groups during the subsequent Trump presidency. Today many would argue that not taking an active stance against sexism, racism, and economic inequality is to be complicit. We see adages now such as “silence is violence” to suggest that no action is equally harmful as opposition movements. In line with this, the 2014 standards does not do enough address racism, sexism, and economic inequalities that have long persisted in the United States as well as music education.

There are opportunities for the standards to address these issues in music education. Scholars have studied and written about these practices for many years yet they have only shown up intermittently in music education. Some leaders will point to the use of multiculturalism as a their response to the inequalities in music education but these initiatives are often just hollow buzz words that serve as a veneer over continuing acts of racism, sexism, and economic inequalities.

Eric Sheih and Randall Evertt (2016) suggest that fostering musical independence can help music education “move beyond closed forms of learning, drawing us toward more surprising engagements that recognize the musical, political, economic, and ethical concerns of 21st-century life” (p. 34). While the authors of the Core Arts Standards claim that musical independence is a stated goal, Sheih and Evertt suggest that it is not self-evident. Sheih and Evertt suggeest that “an appropriate standard for fostering musical independence might well be the exhortation that students make musical decisions that matter, an experiential process that is markedly different than conventional standards about what students should know and do” (p. 31).

Roscoe Mitchell and the AACM school of Music, as discussed by Sheih and Evertt, demonstrate a case study of musical independence put in action. The AACM challenged a one-size fits all system and aimed for developing the individual rather than forming an assembly line. More explicitly, in their work with Chicago youth, Sheih and Evertt suggest that “by challenging racist limitations on black self-determination and mobility, the AACM set about fostering independence in its very broadest sense. And this notion of independence included musical, political, economic, and ethical concerns” (p. 32)

There is certainly still time for music education leaders to respond and for change to occur. However, the urgency of now is greater than it has ever been. Will music education respond to this moment? It has is yet to been seen. Nonetheless, music educators like myself will continue advocating for my students until the policies and leaders alike reflect the realities of today and the future.

References

Chicago Public Schools. (n.d.). Office of Equity. Retrieved 2020, from https://www.cps.edu/about/departments/office-of-equity/

Dei, G. J. (2003). Anti-racism education: Theory and practice. Black Point, N.S.: Fernwood.

Hesch, Rick. (1995). Aboriginal Teachers as Organic Intellectuals. Anti-racism, feminism, and critical approaches to education, 99–128.

Hess, Juliet. (2015). Upping the “Anti-”: The Value of an Anti-Racist Theoretical Framework in Music Education. Action, criticism, and theory for music education 14(1): 66–92.

Ingersoll, Richard M.; Merrill, Elizabeth; Stuckey, Daniel; and Collins, Gregory. (2018). Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force – Updated October 2018. CPRE Research Reports.

Jorgensen, E. R. (2003). Transforming music education. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Shieh, E., & Allsup, R. E. (2016). Fostering Musical Independence. Music Educators Journal, 102(4), 30-35.

Zaffini, E. D. (2018). A Deeper Glimpse Into the National Core Arts Standards for General Music. General Music Today, 31(3), 57-60.