Music Teachers: Boosting Learning Through Music
By Kathy Pierre
Arts education and music education can frequently be viewed as nice-to-have rather than essential parts of a balanced education. However, for many educators, students, and communities, music education should really be a must-have because of its positive effects.
“Students recognize pretty quickly how valuable music is as a part of their education as opposed to a replacement for education,” JC Pineda, a Teach Plus Texas Senior Policy Fellow, says. “For whatever reason, society has adopted this view when it comes to music, it is going to replace your core classes, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. Elective courses, music in particular, are meant to supplement and enhance what the students are already learning.”
As schools and students all around the nation attempt to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, social-emotional learning (SEL) is widely accepted as a major component of that recovery. According to Education Week, SEL “typically involves teaching non-academic skills to help students be successful in school, work, and life.”
Music educators are clear that their coursework can play a major role in the recovery.
“At a very fundamental level, music has the ability to really help us express ourselves,” Aaron Taylor, a high school music teacher and Teach Plus Pennsylvania Policy Fellowship alumnus, explains. “There are a lot of different genres and styles of music. And I feel like when students — especially at a young age — are able to tap into those powerful emotions, it can help us tell our stories as well as get a lot of sometimes unprocessed emotions out.”
Music education also requires students to actively participate. Whether that’s through playing their instrument or using their bodies as the instrument, students are active participants in what they’re learning and are tested on it in real time via being able to play or repeat that music.
“Music is inherently creative, and I think you have to feel free to be yourself in order to be creative and to make music. Teachers strive to do that every day by building connections with their students and by having students build connections with each other,” says Teach Plus Illinois Senior Policy Fellow Madeline Wood, who is a regional Illinois Teacher of the Year and teaches music in a rural school in western Illinois. “And music is a great way to do that because you get to interact verbally as well as non-verbally. We’re also providing students with a social environment where they can be themselves and have friends with common interests and be able to learn and grow within the sometimes missing societal component.”
All of those aspects make music and SEL a very natural fit, Pineda, the Texas educator, explains. He directs the bands of two schools and teaches a percussion class.
“Music teachers who understand that what we do is a team activity and that students need to be engaged in the learning and the choices and the leadership in their program are the teachers that do really well with including SEL,” he says. “That’s what SEL comes back to: Are you pushing students to become better citizens, better workers, better learners, better friends? Within any music ensemble that I’ve taught, you can see that very easily. You can point it out with different students every day.”
Music education can also be complementary to subjects like math and language arts. Research has found connections between musicians and high math abilities and test scores.
According to Scientific American, “It is also possible that other cognitive factors contribute to an individual’s success in music and mathematics. In fact, research has suggested that the link may be driven by high-level cognitive-processing skills that are necessary for both subjects, such as executive functions, which allow individuals to adjust to changing task demands. Executive functions are known to be a strong predictor of academic achievement, even more so than general intelligence. Playing a musical instrument recruits these functions through, for example, constantly adjusting your motor movements to changing tempos and key signatures.”
“Math was one of my favorite subjects, and I don’t know if it was because of music, but the research does prove that music helps students advance more in just having the ability to be creative and have an outlet,” Teach Plus Arkansas Policy Fellow Phylicia Butler says. She teaches music in an elementary school.
While the exact link is not confirmed, educators have their explanations for why music can be so complementary to students’ other academic endeavors.
“When students are being taught how to read and interpret music, what we’re essentially doing is teaching students how to understand and be influenced in a completely different language,” Pineda explains. ”We’re teaching a whole different kind of literacy acquisition. … We’re teaching how to read and interpret symbols in order to produce sound and music.”
Inclusivity in music
In addition to her work in the classroom, Wood has been integral in the creation and advocacy of Illinois’ Racism-Free Schools Act, legislation which asks every school in Illinois to adopt a specific policy on race-related acts of hate, train employees to recognize and report them, and inform students and families of their rights and reporting options.
Because music education requires a level of vulnerability for the students and the instructor, Wood sees a direct connection to the need for a safe space.
“For years, music educators have been creating communities and safe spaces within their classrooms, and I think that’s a natural extension for Racism-Free Schools because if students don’t feel safe, they’re not going to learn,” she says. “If they don’t feel safe and included, then they’re not going to prosper. So in addition to creating a safe space in my music classroom, I want to make sure we’re creating safe spaces for all students, especially students of color.”
As a Black music educator, Butler, the Arkansas teacher, works to provide her students the diverse and inclusive curriculum she didn’t always receive as a student. She’s incorporated lessons on West African drumming and music pieces from musicians around the world so her students will have a holistic understanding of music and the musicians who have contributed to the field to make it so rich.
One of the things that makes music education so effective is its unseen effects like discipline and hard work.
“When it comes to advocacy for music education, most people think, ‘Oh, you’re teaching how to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’ what is that going to do for them in the long run?’ ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ by itself, not much. But it’s the work that went into learning ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ that is incredibly valuable,” Pineda explains. “And the coolest part is: These kids more often than not don’t realize how much work they’re actually putting because they’re too distracted by the fun they’re having.”
Kathy Pierre is Communications and Media Manager at Teach Plus.
