Sharing Music Across Disciplines
Have you ever heard, “You just teach singing and songs. What do you know about real teaching?”
Lenna Harris teaches general, vocal, and instrumental music and elementary band at Knowlton Township Elementary School in Delaware, New Jersey, where she’s been for 25 of her 37 years teaching.
She said, “I knew that what I did was more than just teach songs.”
In addition to the elements of music, she taught performance skills, acoustics, posture, breathing, and her teaching supported math, language arts, and social studies.
When teachers merely delivered their children to music class and promptly left, rushing back to their cup of coffee, Harris decided, “I didn’t want to be the coffee break any more. I had to find a way to make music an integral part of the life of the school.”
Where to Begin?
Harris asked her administrator for the school’s social studies curriculum. He was receptive to her ideas and supportive of her plan.
She said, “I wanted to find songs that complemented the units that were being taught.”
Because second graders studied dinosaurs, she found a book with a narrative play that had a song about every type of dinosaur.
“The children were so excited about the songs that they invited their classroom teacher to come hear them. How could the classroom teacher say no?” Harris said. “She came and was amazed at the amount of facts the children were retaining through the songs.”
Becoming a School Resource
Harris supported fifth-grade American history study with:
* Songs from the revolutionary era and dances and instruments of Colonial times
* Folksongs, railroad songs, and cowboy songs to support study of the westward expansion
* Songs of African Americans during the antebellum period and spirituals with hidden meanings
* Songs of the North and the South to transcend the two sides of the Civil War
Harris said, “The classroom teacher would mention a fact or a place or a legend, and the children would burst into a song or dance a reel. ‘Where did you learn that?’ was always the question, and the children responded, ‘In music!’ I found songs and dances to complement every unit of American history.”
Thus, she built and nurtured a relationship with the upper grade teachers.
Harris also supports multicultural learning and geography. When students learn about the cultures of various countries, Harris teaches the music and finds the country on the world map in the music room.
Likewise, Harris uses the music and literacy connection to support the language arts curriculum.
“The teachers began to leave little notes in my mailbox to see if I had any songs or dances to help them as they planned classroom programs for all-school events,” said Harris. “I became known as the lady with songs for every subject.”
Through many years of hard work and research, Harris has become the school resource she always wanted to be.
Keeping Music Education at the Core
Harris emphasized, “Never once did I compromise teaching my music curriculum. I still teach all of the elements of music, and I use my music texts almost every class period. I adhere to the National Standards and the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards for Music Education. There has been a huge change in the way music education is viewed by the faculty. Music is no longer a stand-alone subject. It is integrated into the life of the school and every child and teacher in the school.”
Collaborative Projects
Harris has collaborated on several projects with other teachers:
* Lessons based on “Baba Yaga and the Hut on Chicken Legs” (Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) developed with the art teacher. The lessons earned a grant from the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
* A project exploring Native American art and music with another art teacher to win a grant to collaborate with fourth-grade classroom teachers. Students were totally immersed in the project for over six weeks.
* A Civil War Revue (including speeches, poetry, songs, and skits) for fifth graders with the social studies teacher.
Getting Started
Here are Harris’ tips to start collaborating at your school:
* Eat lunch in the faculty room and listen.
* Visit classrooms and study the bulletin boards.
* Ask for curriculums and review them to know what your students are learning.
* Look for resources at conventions, in bookstores, and in catalogs. Even on a limited budget, one or two new helpful books a year will make a difference.
* Use curricular connections found in many music texts as a starting point.
* Remember to collaborate with the physical education teacher on appropriate movement and dances—another educational element to educating the total child.
Benefits to the Music Program
The music program at Harris’ school is now very visible, “from a drum line at the annual Halloween parade to the themed open house every spring.” Harris’ students also gave a special presentation for their school board.
School board members can have a tremendous impact on music education programs—providing resources and funding—so having students perform for the school board advocates for and helps fully fund the music program.
Go for it! There are no pitfalls, only gains.
This information is courtesy of the National Association for Music Education, www.nafme.org.
