Making Music: A community–school music partnership

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore a fledgling community–school music partnership, Making Music, and to examine the benefits and challenges of this partnership. The partnership was initially conceived to fill gaps in the music curriculum in an urban school district where few middle schools housed music programs and music at the elementary and high school levels were inconsistent. What made this partnership unusual was that any school participating in the program received free music instruction on a weekly basis, but only for three years. In the third year, if administrators felt the program was useful and effective, they had to commit to hiring at least a .3 full-time equivalent music teacher for the next school year, although this has been met with mixed results. Findings indicated that the strengths of this program exist in the flexibility of the teaching artists in meeting students where they are and in teaching in a variety of environments, providing students opportunities for active music-making, giving students space to build classroom community, and reaching out to the larger community. However, the program struggled with unanticipated issues like insufficient facilities, a lack professional development for teaching artists with little to no classroom teaching experience, and meeting their desired goal of social justice education.

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