Blog Post #4

Interactive Timeline

 I designed this interactive timeline to compliment my lesson on Folk Music during the Civil Rights Movement. My lesson is intended for high school levels 10^th or 11^th in the urban setting. This lesson would be something I would implement in a Music History class, although if my school offered an American Folk and Pop History class this lesson would work even better. I would most likely use this type of learning source towards the end of the folk music unit. At this point students should be able to recognize, with the help of the timeline, political influences on folk music. My timeline outlines the major events of the civil rights movement as well as release dates for well-known folk songs and dates in which performing groups that became central to the movement formed.

The process of creating this interactive timeline is to encourage students to make connections between folk music and the political events, which were happening at the time of composition. For example: students may see that Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin,’” was written after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and not even a year before the singing of the Civil Rights Act. I designed the photos within my timeline to read like a story. Each picture was chosen because it said something that the others did not.

For example, within the stack of photos under the debut of Pete Seeger’s, “We Shall Overcome,” which became something like the anthem of the civil rights movement, I selected 8 photos. A set of photos that I found the most interesting consisted of one photo, in which Pete Seeger is singing, “We Shall Overcome,” while holding hands in a crisscross fashion with a group of African Americans. The second photo is of Martin Luther King Jr. holding hands with other African Americans in the same manner. Both of these photos are included to show how the gesture became symbolic of the united front that “We Shall Overcome” has also been symbolic of.

I chose to start my timeline with the ratification of the 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th Amendments. The abolition of slavery allowed for the formation of the first group of performers that is under discussion, The Fisk Jubilee Singers. Although this group sings songs that are mot representative of spirituals, as opposed to folk music, I include them in my lesson because they were the first African American singing group to travel and show the country what they were capable of. The timeline ends with the signing of the Civil Rights Act, but if I were to continue this lesson I would connect folk music and it’s message/purpose to current events such as the “Black Lives Matter” Movement. Students could also find popular songs that reflect those events or equality in general as there are many songs today that advocate gender equality as well as equal rights for the LGBTQ community.  

Blog Post #3

I recently decided to change my blog topic to a focus on comprehension of music history texts. My target group would be high school students in an urban setting. The time of history that I chose to focus on is folk music. Folk music in America has a rich history in the civil rights movement so my text set centers on the lyrics of Bob Dylan, the role that folk music played in this time in history, the civil rights movement, as well as the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

1. "Bob Dylan speech at the Bill of Rights dinner, 1963" (multimedia, culturally relevant). Youtube. 2005. Web. Oct. 27, 2016. 
2. "Bob Dylan Biography" (Multimedia) Biography.com Editors. A&E Television Networks. Oct. 13, 2016. Web. Oct. 27, 2016. 
3.  "Bob Dylan - The Times they are a-changin' Civil Rights Music Video" (multimedia, culturally relevant). Youtube. December 16, 2015. Web. Oct. 27, 2016. 
4. "Separate is not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education" (multimedia, culturally relevant). Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Web. Oct. 27, 2016. 
5. Roy, William G.. Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology : Reds, Whites, and Blues : Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States. (Print, multicultural). Princeton, US: Princeton University Press, 2010. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 27 October 2016.
6. The Story of the Fisk Jubilee Singers; with their songs. J.B.T. Marsh, 1839-1887; in The Story of the Jubilee Singers, With Their Songs (Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1881), 16-24 
7. "Fisk Jubilee Singers in Nashville, TN. 

"Bob Dylan - The Times they are a-changin' Civil Rights Music Video"

Summary: This video is a slideshow of photos taken during the civil rights movement with Bob Dylan's "The Time's they are a-changin'" playing. Bob Dylan is an iconic folk singer who brought to light the struggles of the African American community at this time in history. 

Text Complexity: This text was difficult to analyze because I had to convert song lyrics to full sentences, which made the sentences a little wonky. StoryToolz put this text at an average of grade 6-7. Bob Dylan's lyrics are pretty simple in terms of language. The average syllable per word is about one. What makes this text more difficult in my opinion is the metaphors Bob Dylan uses to describe the Civil Rights Movement. For example Bob Dylan sings, "for he who gets hurt will be he who has stalled" which refers to those people who are standing in the way of the progress that is being made. Another example is when he sings, "the slow one now will later be fast as the present now will later be past" which I believe refers to the oppressed rising up and how one day all this struggle will be just a distant memory. The difficulties of this text, and something that I would take time to talk through with my students, lie in the ability to interpret the lyrics and how they relate to the civil rights movement. 

"The Promise of Freedom" 

Summary: This is a great website that gives short and concise information about the civil rights movement and the amendments which were passed (13th, 14th, and 15th amendments) as a result of this movement. 

Text Complexity: StoryToolz rates this text as an average 14 grade level. This text is a great source for information that allows students to get the gist of what was happening without having to read through a lengthy article. If I were to use this in my classroom, I would want to talk about the three amendments that came out of the civil rights movement. I believe that it's important not only for them to see their struggles but to also see the end product of all that suffering. Although I would not expect them to believe that everything was perfect after these amendments were passed, I would like them to see what hard work and determination can do. 

"The Story of the Jubilee Singers; with their songs"

Summary: This text gives a history of the most iconic African American singers in history: the Fisk Jubilee Singers. This group was formed in one of the first higher education institutions for African Americans and inspired a world that was riddled in racial conflict.

Text Complexity: StoryToolz placed this text at a grade level of 13. It has some tricky passages which compare the Jubilee Singers to "the Agronauts who sailed with Jason on that famous voyage after the Golden Fleece," as "fire-breathing bulls," and the "warrior that sprang from the land sown with dragons' teeth." This is a great text for showing the adversity that these singers had to face as a result from blatant racism and how they thrived because they had their music. 

Where I am, and where I want to go!

Hey friends!

The amount of diversity we will be encountering during our careers as teachers will be outstanding. We will get the chance to work with a plethora of young people who all have unique backgrounds and cultures. This type of diversity also means that we will be working with students who speak English as a second language (ESL). I find myself wondering what are we doing as teachers to ensure that these students are actively engaged and able to cultivate knowledge from lessons that are not in their native tongue. I also asked myself how I can draw from their knowledge and experience and incorporate it into daily lessons that will allow them to share their culture with their peers and myself.  

What I believe I will find with further research is that teachers will supplement verbal communication with kinesthetic gestures and visual cues. Kinesthetic strategies could be used to feel time signatures (4/4 vs. 3/4), clap rhythms, demonstrate phrase shape, learn scale degrees (solfeg), etc.  

Visual images included into daily lessons should help with students ability to connect musical notation and ideas to something visual. Visuals can also be used to help with lyrics to songs and lessons about music from other cultures. 

ESL Through Music

ESL Music Games

Using Music in the ESL Classroom

Mus. Ed. in growth of cultural openness

These links do not all discuss ESL learners in the music classroom specifically but rather they address how music is used in an ESL classroom to help facilitate learning. These resources will help me identify strategies that I may use in my own teaching to help engage those students who do not speak English as their first language. The classroom is becoming more and more diverse in the variety of ethnic backgrounds it's students come from. This reason alone means that there is a constantly increasing need for teachers to have strategies for teaching to those students who may have the ability to learn via verbal communication. 

Welcome to My Blog

Hey everyone!
My name is Allison. I am currently in my fifth (and hopefully last!) year in the choral and general music education program at UW-Milwaukee and will be student teaching in the spring. I grew up in Racine, WI and had a ton of great experiences with music, so much so that I knew in middle school that I wanted to teach music.
When I first started my college career I thought for sure I was going to come out teaching high school choir simply because my best experiences with music were during those years. I sang in multiple choirs, including show choir (this link is to a video of my fav performance my show choir did, just for fun if you're interested). I got to travel and have fun with my closest friends.
About mid-way through college, after doing observations at some of the local elementary schools, I decided that elementary school is where it's at. The scariest thing about this career change is knowing that, more so than I could say for high school, I am going to be responsible for some of the earliest experiences that these children will have with music, at least in a classroom setting. My hopes are that I can make the most out of these experiences to foster a lifetime love for music and the arts.