room. Instead, he was quiet. He sort of slumped in his chair and I remember that he seemed worn down. Marooned by his peers and most of his teachers.
So let me pause here. At the end of the book series, there’s this:
“Duncan was sad to learn of all the crayons he’d lost, forgotten, broken, or neglected over the years. So he ran around gathering them up. But Duncan’s crayons were all so damaged and differently shaped than they used to be that they no longer fit in the crayon box. So Duncan had an idea…He build a place where each crayon would always feel welcome.”11
Te illustration shows a gigantic monstrosity of a card- board structure that Duncan fashioned so that each crayon belonged and felt valued, seen, and wanted. Te brown cardboard was decorated with many colors – including WHITE, who was made visible against the tan cardboard. Tere were pink dinosaurs. Peach was given what it needed, a pair of underwear, and maroon was used to color some- thing OTHER than a scab, a beautiful horse.
So what does a crayon fort look like in terms of diversity, in- clusion, equity and access for our music classrooms? Let’s go back to white crayon and the English language learner who felt invisible. One of my former TCNJ students was recently teaching first grade general music in a predominantly white, affluent school district. He had one Spanish speaking stu- dent in class, who spoke almost no English. Te boy barely spoke at all and rarely smiled. My student was teaching a song about frogs and used a children’s book about frogs as a starting point for the lesson. Te only twist? Te book was in Spanish, which he read first, and then shared the English translation. My student told me that this boy’s face LIT UP as he began to read. At the end of the class, the boy approached my student and said that this was the first time he ever heard anything in Spanish in school. A part of the crayon fort constructed.
Pink crayon. How do students know that pink dinosaurs, monsters, and cowboys exist if they’ve never seen one? How do students know that composers of color exist if we don’t regularly program their work? How do girls know they can be high school band or college band directors, or all state conductors if they’ve never seen one? (A side note: 2018 marked the first time in the eighty year history of the New Jersey All State Band that a female conductor directed the All State Wind Ensemble.) How do boys know they can play the flute if they’ve never seen or heard a man play the in- strument? Representation in our curriculum and program- ming matters. Tat’s one way to build a fort for pink crayon.
Peach crayon. Duncan gave it what it needed: a pair of underwear. What do we do about the fact that the type of music students oſten love, and the way students oſten make music outside our classrooms is not valued or included in our largely traditional, Western, classical curriculum? How can we build a fort for those students? How can we change the secretive whisper of “I play in a rock band” into a proud statement? Can we find a place in our regular classroom practice to value rock bands, acoustic covers, and beat making with Garage Band? Does learning “by ear” make a student less of musician? Does teaching “by rote” or shall we say, by “aural tradition” make us less of a quality music teacher? Can we rethink the idea of what it means to be a “real musician”?
And finally, marooned crayon: the worst kid in the class. What must it be like to live day in and day out with that label? What must it be like to walk into a school, knowing that you aren’t wanted? Not wanted by your peers, not want- ed by your teachers. As humans, we want to be wanted. We need to be wanted. Te fort I built for Bobby (my maroon crayon) was that I threw out Hal Leonard Book One for Guitar. I found out what students were listening to, down- loaded tabs, and we learned chords to the songs that reso- nated with the lives of my students. As we did this, I noticed that Bobby was focused. He asked questions and he asked for help. He brought in tabs for a song that he found on his own. He even ended up asking for a guitar for Christmas. A few months later, my principal shared that she had a meet- ing with Bobby’s parents. He was still failing most of his courses and they were trying to figure out how to motivate him. His parents said something like, “Forget about those other classes! What’s happening in that music class? What is that teacher doing? All he can talk about is that class! How do we get whatever is happening in there to happen in all of his other classes?!?”
I spent ten years teaching music in New Jersey’s public schools. One phrase that colleagues would sometimes utter (and one that I confess I uttered myself in my early career) went something like this: “Yes, so and so quit band. Tey didn’t really care about it.” Or, “Oh, those kids in general music…they don’t really want to be there. Tey don’t care about music.” Te problem with these statements, I even- tually came to realize, is that they lay blame on the student for quitting music, for a lack of interest in the content. But here’s the thing. Tese statements blame the crayons, when really, the problem is with the box. Te power that we hold as educators, and the power that we hold as music educators in particular, to see, value, and find a place for each and every student we encounter, is profound. What diversity, eq- uity, access, and inclusion is really about is creative crayon fort building.
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