Module 5 - SES

The district where I currently teach is very poor.  It is a Title I school district with low socioeconomic factors.  While there are some wealthy families that feed into the district, there is an 87% free/reduced lunch rate and a 35% mobility rate.  The school district is a smaller K-8 district in the suburbs of Chicago that services about 130 kids per grade level.  Many students come from single parent households with minimal education.  There are also a number of apartment buildings and rental houses within the school district.  Students seem to be constantly moving which accounts for the 35% mobility rate.  There are also a number of foster kids within our district.  The vast majority of the students come rough neighborhoods in Chicago or other surrounding suburbs with higher violent crime rates.  The racial breakdown of the district is 80% black, 17% Hispanic, and 3% other.  Religion seems to play a big role in a lot of the students’ lives.  Christianity is the main religion represented but there is a growing number of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Keeping all of these factors in mind, programming music can be a challenge.  With students moving in and out of the district throughout the year, I am careful not to program music that is dependent on one person.  I am also very diligent about the racial make-up of the student population.  With a lot of African immigrants making up the black population, I try to program a Kwanzaa piece for the winter concert as well as some type of Latin-influenced piece.  I am careful about the balance of sacred and secular music that I program because of the Jehovah’s Witnesses that cannot perform it.  This becomes rather difficult at the winter concert, however, because they cannot perform anything religious, patriotic, or holiday-themed.  There does come a point where alternative assignments need to be given because the student cannot participate.

When teaching a new piece of music, I always include background information about the composer, the piece of music, and the time period in which it was written.  If applicable, I also discuss what holiday, celebration, or other historical information may prove pertinent to the students performing it in the correct manner.  It is important that the students know how to perform the piece in the correct context.  With that being said, YouTube has become a wonderful resource to access recordings of music.  If a piece of music is based on a folk song, I can easily find a recording of the original folk song and then the arrangement we are doing.  Students can compare and contrast different aspects of the piece and then include them in their own performance.  Public performances are done in the winter and spring with other in-school performances for the student-body.  The inclusion of in-school performances allows for students who do not participate in band to be exposed to a musical experience they would not otherwise be exposed to.