overview |
CURRICULUM, MUSIC, AND COMMUNITY | PROJECT OVERVIEW
About the project
THE BULLETIN BOARDS SAY IT ALL. The school halls stretch in cinderblock
monotony at Ashe County’s Blue Ridge Elementary...until you reach
the fourth-grade classrooms. Suddenly, the painted blocks vanish, covered
by a confusion of drawings, diagrams, poems, and journal entries. Over
the four classroom doors, garlands of musical notes cascade onto the walls.
Venn diagrams compare storylines in local versions of the ballad "Barbara
Allen." Bar graphs chart shifts in parents’ musical tastes,
from their fourth-grade days until now ("Bluegrass" and "Southern
Gospel" emerge as the up-to-date winners, leaving the one-time ascendancy
of "Rock" far behind). Crayon drawings depict scenes from the
route of the Virginia Creeper (the "New River Train" so proudly
hailed in local song), complete with finely captured details of local
history and geography. And a cutout figure of a swinging square dancer
gives rise to a text bubble proclaiming, "CMC Rocks!"
The "CMC" is the Curriculum, Music,
and Community project. Its purpose is to re-establish an intimate connection
between school and community, using music as both a point of entry into
local culture and a point of departure for reflection, inviting students
to think of and then beyond traditional classroom themes.
The curriculum that emerges to meet this goal
— a course of study designed by teachers rather than out-of-the-classroom
educators — corresponds fully with the state's Standard Course of
Study. Yet it reaches this place of correspondence via a path very different
from the standardized route suggested by the state. Rather than emphasizing
standardization and accountability — qualities that distance teaching
from the contexts of neighborhood and local culture — CMC teachers
celebrate the connectedness of community. They then use this connectedness
to bring students to a fuller awareness and appreciation of the social
complexities that define their world.
Teachers reach this end through music, a
realm that enjoys grassroots vitality across the state of North Carolina,
and that students engage with a passion quite different from that which
they usually bring to their studies. The frame, in turn, is community,
extending the classroom into the broader world of students’ everyday
lives. And the mode is collaboration — making artists, students,
teachers, and community members partners in a journey of discovery and
growth.