Music Education for Students from Migrant Families: Ten Years Later


Introduction John A. Lychner


Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about immigration and migration in the United States. Regardless of one’s point of view, the facts are that immigration is an important part of our history that has significantly shaped who we are as a nation today and that migrant pop- ulations have played a major role in agriculture in the United States. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term immigrant indicates “a person who comes to live permanently in a for- eign country” whereas the term migrant refers to “a person who moves from one place to an- other, especially in order to find work or better living conditions.”1


In addition, I have observed


that migrant families in the United States oſten maintain their citizenship in another country and certainly maintain a strong connection to loved ones in their home country while tradi- tionally moving from one part of the United States to another and back over the course of a year, following the planting and harvest sea- sons. However, there appears to be a change occurring in both the definition and experience of migrant people. In news stories, immigrant and migrant are oſten used interchangeably when the traditional definitions indicate that they are not interchangeable. So, common usage of these terms is somewhat problematic. In addition, there are strong indications that there is less movement by migrant people than in the past, thus changing the definition and also changing patterns of school attendance for children of migrant families. It is import- ant for educators to note and understand this and related trends in order to best serve their students.


Previous Work


In the Spring of 2005, while I was a member of the faculty at Western Michigan University, I was granted a sabbatical with the primary goal to assist music educators in understanding the life experiences of the Hispanic students in their classes, particularly students from migrant families, in order to provide those students


with ways to successfully participate in per- formance-based music classes. WMU Music Education graduates and other music educators in western Michigan were telling me about how they were working in schools where the stu- dents from migrant families would leave their schools in Michigan in late October attend schools in Southern states (most oſten Texas) during the winter, and return to their schools in Michigan in April. As a result of this untimely changing of schools and a lack of coordina- tion between schools from different parts of the country, it was oſten very difficult for the students to maintain consistent growth in skill and knowledge. In addition, their teachers had to manage the uncertainty of their progress (and presence) as compared to those who were consistently at the school throughout the year. Tis made participation in performance-based music classes like band, orchestra, and choir, a challenge for both students and teachers. I wanted to assist these teachers and students because I believe that social justice includes the right of all students to experience the arts, especially music, as part of their education, so we must facilitate that in our work as teachers and administrators.


In preparation for my sabbatical semester, I studied demographic data for the United States from the Pew Research Center, among others, compiled a list of schools based on that data along with information that I compiled from contacts in western Michigan, Texas and California where there were a large number of migrant families, and sent out a survey to music supervisors and music teachers in those areas that asked for specific demographic informa- tion as well as information on how the coming and going of students from migrant families was impacting their programs and how they dealt with the situation. I distributed forty surveys, sixteen were returned, performed descriptive and comparative analyses, and followed up with telephone interviews and site visits during my sabbatical semester to acquire more in-depth information. In addition to my initial observations in Michigan, I traveled to


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