Dr. Wendy Barden, Music Education Specialist, talks about the MusEd Conference in August, 2019. This one week conference brings together music educators from across the state for professional development and networking.

Music Education Resources for Teachers and Administrators

Curriculum Resources for K-12 Music

Here are many standards-based resources – developed with the 2018 music benchmarks in mind – that have been created especially for your K-12 music classrooms. These resources look like “worksheets” because that’s the easiest way to communicate ideas to you. For in-person, hybrid, or distance learning: feel free to use the resources “as is,” cut them apart, use sections, and/or put them in a new format that best fits your students and teaching situation.

Lesson experiences are grouped in seven categories. In each category, a table of contents introduces the lessons with suggested grade levels, “I can…” statements, whether internet is required, and a short description. A video introduction is included in the categories of Social Emotional Learning and Music of Minnesota American Indian tribes and communities.

• Intentionally Address Social Emotional Learning through Music – In the music classroom, applying opportunities to support student development in Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Skills
• Music of Minnesota American Indian tribes and communities
• Create (and Connect) lessons – Generating original music with intent
• Perform (and Connect) lessons – Sharing existing music using interpretive or re-creative skills with respect to the cultural or historical context in which it was created
• Respond (and Connect) lessons – Listening to and analyzing, describing, or evaluating music with respect to the context in which it was created
• Everything Beethoven! – Celebrate the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth (December 1770)
• Foundations or Combine Standards lessons

Perpich Center believes in art education for all. We are here as a resource to ensure all children can participate in and benefit from the arts.

1. Music opens pathways to creative thinking. Music training sharpens other qualities like collaboration, the ability to listen, thinking that weaves together disparate ideas, and the power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.
2. A study of students ages 9 and 12 who took part in extended music classes found they reported higher satisfaction at school in almost every area, even those not related to the music classes themselves. Participation in sports or visual arts classes did not present similar benefits.
3. “A kid with a music degree isn’t limited to a performance or teaching career. Musicians are everywhere. We are project managers, marketers, Finance folks, IT people and engineers. In my twenty-some years as a corporate HR person, I was always impressed by the way musical people excelled at logic and non-linear thinking, both.”
4. The arts significantly boost student achievement, reduce discipline problems, and increase the odds that students will go on to graduate from college.
5. Students in high quality music education programs outperformed those in lower-quality programs in standardized tests of English and mathematics. Scientists now believe that the changes in the brain caused by music training can lead to improvements in general cognitive skills like memory, attention, and reading ability, all of which are predictive of educational outcomes.

Sources:
1. Joanne Lipman, “Is Music the Key to Success?”, The New York Times, October 12, 2013
2. Eerola & Eerola, “Extended music education enhances the quality of school life,” Music Education Research, Volume 16, 2014 – Issue 1
3. Liz Ryan, “Let the kids study music, already!”, Forbes, September 3, 2014
4. Secretary Arne Duncan, “The Well-Rounded Curriculum,” Remarks at the Arts Education Partnership National Forum, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, April 9, 2010.
5. Johnson, CM and Memott, JE, “Examination of Relationships between Participants in School Music Programs of Differing Quality and Standardized Test Results, Journal of Research in Music Education (Winter 2006), Volume 54, Number 4

MUSIC EDUCATION SPECIALIST WORKSHOPS

Workshop Examples

• Implementing the New Creating & Responding Benchmarks in K-12 Music
• Performance Assessment in the Music Room
• Standards Based Grading in Music
• Demonstration School Visits
• MusEd Summer Series – happens every August at Perpich!
• and more!