• Offer entry points to music classes for all students at all levels. • Ameliorate the effects of SES by considering: trans- portation (to concerts, before and aſter school events, etc.), cost of instruments, cost of uniforms, etc. How many of these things are so essential to music education that they should hold someone out of participation? • Interrogate gender practices in your school/class- room. Can you avoid the use of gender in classroom management (e.g., pairing or choosing based on boys” or “girls”)? What can you do when you see gender-re- lated teasing or bullying? Tink through the names of classes/ensembles. Could you have a “treble choir” instead of a “women’s choir”? Consider your uniforms and uniform policy. How can you make sure that all students are comfortable on stage? • Consider adding to (or breaking out of) our current focus on band, orchestra, choir and sometimes jazz, by foregrounding high-status creative projects. How can you create experiences that focus on individual musi- cianship, individual creative voice, and/or musics that our students (and their families) enjoy? Are there music classes available that focus on collaborative and creative musicianship? Can students study instruments that are more common outside of Western Classical music, such as guitars, keyboards, drums, and voices?
What does this mean for our MEA? MEAs have reputations as “old boys clubs.” In interacting with state and national leadership, I have observed that we do have some of those characteristics… and also that our “old boys” love music, and love students. Further, many want to create more inclusive and equitable school music programs and MEAs, even if they do not always know what to do or where to start. Michigan’s MEA is different because the music education structures in our state include the Michigan chap- ter of the American String Teachers’ Association (MASTA), Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association (MSBOA) and Michigan School Vocal Music Association (MSVMA), so some of the following suggestions are more applicable to MSBOA and MSVMA than to MMEA or MASTA: • Examine required lists for festival. Purge racist mate- rial such as minstrel songs. Add new pieces so that the composers and styles reflect more of the diversity in our country (and the world). • Showcase music programs for reasons other than their achievement of a particular set of performance practic- es on a narrow selection of music. How could we recog- nize programs for exemplary (a) Student creativity? (b) Quality of inclusion for students with exceptionalities? (c) Fusion of school music with community musics? What else? • Offer professional development that helps practicing teachers learn about inclusion, equity, and justice in practical and applicable ways, perhaps reflecting the list above.
• Find out what students and teachers who are under- represented in your current programming want and need, and commit to creating it. • Create participatory music making (Turino, 2008) opportunities as a part of state and regional MEA activ- ities. • Partner with teacher education programs—they (we) are also interested in increasing the diversity of the mu- sic teacher workforce, and working toward inclusion, equity, and justice in music education. • Recruit students from a variety of backgrounds to become music teachers, and recruit teachers from a variety of backgrounds (and who teach in a variety of places) to be on your MEA’s board(s) and committees.
Closing Many teachers find the above arguments for inclusion, equity and justice in music education convincing, but nevertheless do not make changes in their practices. Te reasons I hear essentially amount to: this is outside of my comfort zone. Teachers say: • I am teaching the things I know, in the best ways that I know how to teach. • I am terrified that I will do or say the wrong thing, and someone will be upset. • I am afraid of poor scores at festival or on my teacher evaluations if I change my practices, especially when I am on a learning curve toward something I have never tried.
Each of these are understandable, but not sufficient reasons to continue our erasure of “other” musics and “other people’s children” (see Delpit, 2006). We must acknowledge and value human differences, if not because it matches our country’s ideals about liberty and justice, then because research and experience indicate that social identities affect the education- al experiences of our students. Teaching—especially teaching music--is an act of vulnerability. Music is personal; it is a part of who we are, and it is a part of who our students are. We teach in an subject area that is integrated into the human psyche, a subject area that is a rich and vibrant reflection of our humanness (Lind & McCoy, 2016, p. 131).
Terefore, as you head back to your classroom, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Remember that inclusion, equity, and justice are processes. Just as our students make incremental progress toward their music learning goals, we can make progress toward being more responsive to student needs. We are only truly stuck if we never begin.
Selected Resources Teaching Tolerance
www.tolerance.org Tis website (and free magazine) has resources, materials, and information for creating inclusive learning environ- ments and teaching students about difference, focusing on
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