Resources
Ashe Gordon has brought African-American children’s songs and games to children throughout Boston through her concert and educational series, Castle of Our Skins. In the fall of 2018, Castle of Our Skins delivered a program that led children through the process of creating their own spirituals. Children studied that cultural and historical context around African- American spirituals and then used their findings coupled with their creativity to compose their own spirituals. In this session, Gordon will share her work and work with teachers to think about how they might incorporate these ideas in their own classrooms.
Sing Us Your Songs!: Culturally Relevant Music Teaching at the Curricular Level
In early 2018, Anthony Beatrice and Jason Holmes embarked on an adventure to enhance the Boston Public Schools PK-6 general music education curriculum by researching the cultures represented among BPS students and families and collecting children’s songs/games from those cultures. They will share what it looks like to do the work of culturally and linguistically relevant and responsive music teaching and learning in district-wide curriculum planning and how to share that with classroom music teachers in a useful and meaningful way.