Of course Santa delivers there.

I may have shed a manly tear over this drawing.

This Has Got To Stop!

I woke up this morning and did my usual social media checks, I didn't get all that far before I noticed that a teacher at my old high school had posted on Facebook that school was cancelled there for the day. I thought this was a little odd, since I didn't think the forecast had been stormy, at least not enough to merit a snow day. So I went to Twitter to see if any of the local news sources had tweeted about what was going on, and that's where I got the whole story.

The Cache County School District made the decision to cancel school today, as well as games and activities, because a student was overheard making threats; the student said that they planned to come to school today and take their own life and the lives of others. Now I don't know how credible the threat was, I don't know if the kid was serious or just joking. I don't know if the student who reported overhearing it was credible or not, and I don't think it really matters; there is a pattern with school shootings and other violent tragedies and suicides, it seems that one act will spur others on the edge to commit the same type of act. The district is almost obligated to cancel school for the safety of the students.

It frustrates me to think that a student would even joke about this sort of thing, let alone be serious about it. I almost feel like it is somehow a failing of the education system, like we teachers were supposed to teach this kid coping skills but we failed. I just don't understand the mentality of these students, they are looking for such a permanent solution to what is in reality a very temporary problem. It's even more crazy to me when an adult does something like this. I just can't fathom that sort of mental breakdown. I don't think that this is something that we will ever be able to eradicate completely, but I think something has to be done.

I think one issue is that there is limited access to mental health professionals for those who do cannot afford health insurance. President Obama's Affordable Healthcare Act will hopefully increase access to treatment for those individuals. I think that if these people were to have someone helping them to cope with what is going on in their life they would not turn to violence so often. Along with this, it is high time that America removed the stigma surrounding mental illness; many people do not want to get treatment or admit they have a problem because society has convinced them that to do so means to admit that they are weak, or incapable of the rigors of daily life.

I think the other issue here really is the access these people have to lethal weapons. Many conservative news sources reason that if these people don't have access to guns they will simply use a knife, and this may be true, but unless they are capable of accurately throwing that knife, they are much easier to stop before they have the chance to murder more people. It's much easier to rush and overpower someone with a knife than someone with a gun. I'm not saying that we need to ban gun ownership altogether, but we should think seriously about how we check those to whom guns are sold, and how those guns are stored. The shooter at Newtown didn't use his own guns, he used his mother's.

In an case, even though I know that this is something that will never be completely eradicated, I think that as and educator I can do my part to try and reduce the number of tragedies in the world. I hope to help kids develop coping skills, and as a music teacher I hope to encourage all kids to join my classes so they can have a feeling of belonging. I also intend to make my classroom a safe space, where mocking, teasing, and bullying will not be tolerated. I hope that I will be able to affect change for the better.

Student Teaching Part III/Football Mourning

Today's post contains good news, and bad news. I'm going to go ahead and start with the good news, it's better that way. The good news for the day is that I have a student teaching placement, for real this time! I will be teaching at White Pine Middle School, which caters to sixth and seventh grade students. It is still in the area where I live, I don't have to commute too far, which is nice, and I think that I will be doing more than just woodwinds, which makes me a bit less nervous. This teacher also has choir classes, so I might get to teach a little choir too, who knows. I think it would be fun.

So the bad news that I have today is that Utah State has lost their head football coach to Wisconsin. I know that that is the way of things, college athletics has become more about business and less about loyalty to the team and to the school, but this coach made it a point to tell reporters in a press conference that he had no interest in taking another job, so that kind of made it sting a little more when he turned around a couple of days later and took another job. I just can't wish him the best after he did that, so I guess I just won't wish him anything at all. His offensive coordinator has interviewed for the job, and I hope he is as good as Anderson was, but who knows.

Student Teaching Part II

So over this weekend while I was on my way to Boise for The Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (which my Aggies won) I received an e-mail from the Office of Field Experiences telling me that the vice-principal at the school I was supposed to student-teach at had called them an informed them that the teachers at that school only wanted to work with one student teacher, not two. My placement is once again up in the air, and I'm kind of bummed. This has been a very inconvenient process for me, and I'm tired of being stressed out about it. I just hope that they can work something out within the week so that I can actually go and meet whoever I will be working with before I actually start teaching. I may even have to commute as far as the Weber school district, so it would be nice to know if I need to make living arrangements before I am supposed to teach.

No Child Left Behind: Football Edition

Thanks to Nathan Mensink for sharing this, and Mr. Charles Long for posting it to Facebook.

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time, even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. This will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all team will reach the same minimum goals. If no child gets ahead, then no child is left behind. If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that can screen out the non - athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.

 

I think that education reform is a good idea, but I don't think that programs like NCLB or even Race to the Top are the way to do it.

Student teaching!

I got my student teaching assignment over the weekend, and frankly it scares me a little. I have been assigned to work with a teacher who does woodwinds grades 7-9, and I am a brass guy... I really am not so good with woodwinds, I'm terrible at playing them, I mix the fingerings up all the time, so it will be an adventure.

This kind of made me think about my instrumental methods and materials class. The course is taught by the band director at my university, he is a very particular guy, but he is a solid classroom teacher. As a part of our methods course he insisted that everyone was to learn the fingerings for all of the common instruments used in band and orchestra. At the time we all hated the quizzes we would take daily, but I realize now that these quizzes are a life saver, because I have to use that information now. I'm honestly scared, but at least I have some basic idea of what is going on.

Improving Literacy Through Music

Well, I've hit the end of the course I set this blog up for, though I've had fun with it, and I think I'll keep using it, you never know when you will want to be able to refer people to a blog. To be perfectly honest, when I began the course I really wasn't convinced that I was going to gain much useful information out of it, because the music classroom is so much different from most. I wasn't really sure that it was even remotely my job to make sure that I was supporting my students in all of their learning endeavors, not just music. Was I ever wrong! I don't think that my educational philosophy has undergone so many changes in the last three years as it did in the last three months.

See, the problem is that a lot of us that go into music education do so because we love music. Big surprise, right? The problem with that is that we love music to the exclusion of a lot of other things, and when we get to the university level we suddenly realize that there is more to music than showing up and playing the horn. These are the things that at the public school level could be ways to support learning. Over the course of the semester I've come to realize that I can use music theory, music history, music analysis, etc. to help students improve their writing skills. I have have them discuss these things in small groups to help them improve their interpersonal communication skills. I can ask them to read texts about these subjects to improve their reading skills. All of this will help support their learning in other subjects, and can be done in the context of something they enjoy.

So basically, I never realized what sort of potential I have to include technology, reading, writing, group activities and projects, etc. in my instruction, and the prospect excites me. I don't think there are nearly enough music teachers who promote this type of literacy instruction in their classrooms, so I hope to make an impact that way.

Technology in the Music Classroom

As developments in mobile computing fuel our current technology boom, more and more educators are turning to tchnology to enhance their classrooms and instructional methods. Unfortunately there is an equal, if not greater, number of teachers who do not incorporate current technology and methods in their classrooms, and choose instead to try and quash the use of mobile computing devices in their classrooms. In 2011 roughly 50% of high school students had a smartphone and just over 20% had a tablet; these devices, if properly incorporated into the classroom, could greatly enhance students' classroom experience.

In the context of the music classroom this issue is somewhat problematic, as these devices can be distractors and contribute to breaks in the flow of a rehearsal. It is up to each instructor to determine how he or she might best incorporate technology in their classroom, if at all. I will give just a few examples of useful applications as well as situations in which I have personally benefitted from having technology at my disposal in a rehearsal.

A year or so ago I was in a rehearsal for the USU Symphonic Band (the non-auditioned wind ensemble that I played in to keep my band scholarship) rehearsing David Del Tredici's Acrostic Song from "Alice". I didn't understand the form or title of the piece, and found it boring as a result. The title did, however, pique my curiosity, so I decided to look it up on my smartphone. As a result I learned that an acrostic poem is a poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word or phrase. This piece is based on the acrostic poem that Lewis Carrol wrote at the end of "Through the Looking Glass" that spells the name Alice Pleasance Liddell. It made the form of the piece make sense, and I enjoyed playing it much more after that.

I also had the opportunity to play trombone for the university's production of Mozart's "Die Zauberflöte" a singspiel (opera with spoken dialoge instead of recitative) in German. I was not familiar with the intricacies of the storyline, so I turned to my smartphone for a synopsis and translations. It really enriched the experience. (My Kindle also saved me during the first act, which I barely played in)

As I mentioned before, music classrooms can also be enriched through the use of supplemental apps or programs. Here are a few apps of which I am fond:

Notion: Notion is an iPad score editor. At $15.00 it is still less expensive than the $350.00 student license for Finale, even if it is a relatively expensive iPad app. The stock instrument package will allow students to score for full orchestra and wind section, and can be expanded via in-app purchase. This is the only way to get a large percussion pallette, but the app is still solid. The note input is done through a virtual piano keyboard, which is one of my favorite parts of the app, along with remarkably good playback sound samples. Notion would give students the opportunity to complete, listen to, and export and e-mail composition assignments. This is certainly an app I would use in my classroom, especially if I work at a school that has an iSchool program.

Notability: Notability is a general note-taking app for iPad, however it has a couple of features that would make it a valuable tool in a music classroom. One of he most useful features is the abilit to import PDFs from Dropbox or a few other cloud services. This would allow students to download files from a class account, much like Canvas. Once imported PDFs, or even notes typed in the program can be annotated or highlighted, and those can be exported and e-mailed as a PDF. Using this I could assign score analyses, students could highlight, annotate, and draw on PDFs of score excerpts from major works, then export their work as a PDF and e-mail me the result.

Can technological literacy on the part of educators help stem cyber-bullying?

Social media sites and other news sites have been flooded over the past 24 hours or so with the story of Amanda Todd, a Canadian teenager whose struggle against cyber-bullying and physical bullying led her to share her story on YouTube last month, and who passed away on October 10, 2012. An article from the Huffington Post described the extensive cyber and physical bullying that Amanda faced, prompting her to switch schools multiple times and leading her to resort to self-harm in an effort to cope with her emotional distress. Much of this bullying could have been prevented, I feel, if teachers and parents had been more aware of what was going on in this young woman's online life.

America's youth spends an increasing amount of time online or communicating through other digital means every day. This article from the New York Times cites a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that children ages 8-18 generally spend up to seven and a half hours online, and an hour and a half texting every day. It is estimated that children spend up to eleven hours per day involved in some sort of media consumption or digital communication. This is a very recent phenomenon, one which has been fueled largely by the advent of sophisticated smart phones that bring the vastness of the internet to the pocket of many students. The opportunity for digital communication has increased exponentially in recent years, as chat rooms and message boards have been supplanted by social media giants such as Facebook or Twitter as the primary means for online communication. Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has grown steadily, and now boasts over one billion users. Twitter has accumulated 500 million active users since its launch in 2006, and Reddit, launched in 2005, receives more than a billion page views per month, sharing news and discussing issues mixed in with the plethora of cute cat pictures. Even smaller services garner many users, Google plus has 400 million registered, and 100 million active monthly users, and Tumblr hosts 64.7 million blogs. These are just the sites that are based on intentionally seeking out people you know, or with whom you have common interests all over the world. Other sites like Omegle (~150,000 daily pageviews) and Chatroulette (~1.5 million users) succeed on the concept of connecting people to random strangers, some hoping for casual conversation, some hoping to make friends.

Given the sheer volume of traffic these services see, and the increasing developments in technology, both online and with mobile platforms, it is a fairly safe assumption that social media is not going away, at least not for a very long time. Why, then, do so many parents choose to remain ignorant of these services and shy away from them? Why do so many educators choose to do the same? As I read the story of Amanda Todd I cannot help but think that if there had been an adult, a parent or teacher/mentor, who were more involved in her virtual life, she may not have been driven to such emotional distress that she felt there was no other way out than to end her real life. I am going to focus on what an educator could do in this situation, since I'm sure there are plenty of people who will discuss what her parents could have done in the coming days and weeks.

As educators we are encouraged to find ways to distinguish ourselves from our students, so that we do not form relationships that are anything less than professional. Many educators have taken this to mean that we should not engage in online activities that our students might engage in, and to an extent this is true. It certainly would not be appropriate for students to view a teacher's Facebook page and find pictures of them drunk at a party, or dancing questionably at a night club (though hopefully teachers have grown up and moved past this sort of behavior); a teacher can, however, establish a professional Facebook page, one from which they can manage groups or pages for their classes and/or activities. If you request, for your class, that your students "friend" your professional Facebook page for information on assignments, or for supplemental material, you have opened up an important avenue of communication and information for your students. They will be able to reach you in a manner that they are perhaps more comfortable with, and they may be willing to communicate with you digitally, whereas they would be afraid to do so in person; you will also have given yourself the ability to see your students' Facebook pages.

I use Facebook as an example, as it is the most commonly used, however these same ideas could be applied to Twitter, G+, or Tumblr. The ability to see a student's Facebook page can open a new avenue of important information to the teacher as well. If students use their personal profile (some will create a clean profile for teachers/parents and a real profile for themselves and their friends) to communicate with you, you may be able to see if they are having a difficult time at home, or with friends. DO NOT get involved directly online, this will not help and can lead to problems down the line, but if that student is misbehaving in class, it may give you an idea as to why. You may also see some of their communications with their peers, whether positive or negative. You might come across students planning to bully another student, or you may see cyber-bullying occur through Facebook. All of this information can be vital to supporting the student in the classroom or the halls, as long as teachers remember that communication with students in the digital world should be as appropriate and professional as it is in the real world.

The question then is: Once you have the information, what do you do with it? This really kind of depends on what state you are in, but here are a few general suggestions. As mentioned above, it can help you to know when to take it a little easier on a student who is acting up in class. If you observe cyber-bullying online, you can pay closer attention to the offenders over the course of your class, or even throughout the day in the halls. You could include a small segment about cyber-bullying and the issues associated with it in your lesson, or you could even discuss the issue privately with the student who has been involved. Keep in mind that since cyber-bullying does not occur on the school grounds you cannot actually take disciplinary action against the culprit in most states, but sometimes just mentioning it in class or to the student privately after class is enough. The fact that a teacher is aware of the situation could encourage students to back off. Again, DO NOT get directly involved in the situation online, it will not help the student, and it will not help you.

Again, states have varying laws concerning cyber-bullying, and there is not currently federal anti-bullying legislation*. A few numbers you may find interesting or helpful

• 49 states have anti-bullying laws, Montana is the only state that does not**.
• DC has an anti-bullying law
• Of those, only 15 states have included cyber-bullying specifically as part of those laws (AR, CA, CT, HI, KS, LA, MA, MO, NV, NH, NY, NC, OR, UT, WA)
• Proposed in GA, IL, KY, ME, and NE
• 45 states have laws concerning "electronic harassment" (the five who do not are: AK, MO, VA, VT, WI)
• DC has a law concerning "electronic harassment
• Proposed in IN and ME
• 12 states require criminal sanction (AR, ID, KY, LA, MS, MO, MT**, NV, NC, ND, TN, WI)
• DC does not require criminal sanction
• Proposed in CO, GA, MI, NY, and NC
• 43 states require school sanction (AL, MI, MT, NV, NH, OK, and RI do not require school sanction)
• 49 states require a school bullying policy, Montana again is the only state that does not
• Only 8 states include off-campus behaviors in these laws (AR, CT, LA, MA, NH, NJ, NY, SD)
• DC required to include off-campus behaviors
• Proposed in GA and NE

While you, as an educator, may be limited in the ways that you can respond to cyber-bullying, there is little reason not to do all that you can by having an online presence, and addressing it in your classroom, whatever your content area may be. Educators have a responsibility to be on the cutting edge, insofar as is possible, of technology, both in their content area and in general. Your influence could be the one thing that stops a student from making a permanent decision about a temporary problem.

*In 2009 Federal anti-cyber-bullying legislation was proposed: HR1966 (proposed in 04/2009; last action 09/2009); Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act; whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. 

** State (Montana)does have a criminal statute prohibiting harassment via electronic means: “a person commits the offense of violating privacy in communications if the person knowingly or purposely: (a) with the purpose to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy, or offend, communicates with a person by electronic communication and uses ob- scene, lewd, or profane language, suggests a lewd or lascivious act, or threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of the person. The use of obscene, lewd, or profane language or the making of a threat or lewd or lascivious suggestions is prima facie evidence of an intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy, or offend.”

Using music to increase students' interest in history

If you are like many students (music majors not included) you will likely need to turn to your trusty search engine to understand the joke being made here. It seems normal, right? Why would you know an obscure fact about two composers? Music is an esoteric thing, totally uninfluenced by history, just an independent form of entertainment, right?

Unfortunately, many history teachers are not qualified to add music history to their curriculum, and many of them probably would not see the value of doing so, especially at a time when they are under so much pressure to meet standards. I would like to make a case for including the history of music in standard social studies curriculum. Now, I am not asking social studies teachers to take in depth courses in counterpoint and partwriting, rather that they familiarize themselves with important works, and take the time to learn their basic characteristics, and how they have been influenced by, or even infuenced, history.

Take a lesson on Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire for example. Were I to teach this lesson, I would, of course, include standard facts about Charlemagne, his birth/death dates, the fact that he found education to be an imortant virtue, and was thus somewhat of a bright spot in the dark ages. I would, however, include the somewhat less standard fact that Charlemagne used the standardization of Gregorian chant in his empire as a means of unifying those under his rule. This was not only politically significant, it is musically significant as well, since Western music, and by that I mean popular genres like jazz, rock, or hiphop as well as classical, developed out of this tradition.

It seems a little farfetched to use Gregorian chant to interest students in a lesson, I understand. I have noticed, though, that music of any kind tends to catch students' attention, and many students will really buy into it if you can demonstrate how what you are showing them relates to what they love to listen to. It also can help them to connect more personally to historical events or social climates. Take the following example:

As a high school student I took a European history class. As we learned about the events of World War Two, we often wondered how anti-Semitism could be as widespread as it was. It was not until my music history courses in college that I learned that anti-Semitism was quite common throughout the 19th and into the 20th century. Richard Wagner was an outspoken anti-Semite, giving the villains in his operas stereotypical "Jewish" characteristics. Gustav Mahler, who somewhat ironically was Jewish, grew up listening to, and came to greatly admire, Wagner's work. Mahler struggled against anti-Semitism throughout his life, going so far as to convert to Catholicism to obtain the directorship of the Hofoper, which he directed for ten years dispite pressure from anti-Semitic forces in the Vienna press. This occurred between 1897 and 1907, so it is not so hard to imagine how this same anti-Semitism could be a pervasive influence in Germany and Austria.

When presented, at least occasionally, through the lens of music, students can contextualize historical events or social climates in meaningful ways. Historic events may take on a new meaning when viewed from te perspective of a piece they inspired, or a composer whose work was shaped by them. Music doesn't have to be something that is relegated to a room in the far corner of the school, it permeates or society, why not our schools?

Just a quick thought

I had the opportunity to attend the 3rd annual Dean's Convocation for the Caine College of the Arts and hear Dr. Robert Blocker, Dean of Music at Yale. He said something that stuck with me, well, a lot of things, but this one especially. He said "How do you best invest in the future of our civilization, our way of life? Invest in education. "

Remember that when you feel like society thinks we teachers are unimportant, or whiny, or overpaid. We foster the knowledge and talents that will build our future.

An example of why I think general music/instrument knowledge is useful

I recently read this article from the Huffington Post about a controversy over a purple violin in Farmington, New Mexico. For those who don't feel like clicking the link, the controversy rose up over a school orchestra requesting that a student not play on the instrument (which was a gift from the child's grandmother) in the school orchestra. The district went so far as to offer to waive the normal rental fee for a school owned instrument. The girl's mother claimed that she was not trying to create drama, rather she was trying to show her daughter that she could stand up for her beliefs. I honestly was a little torn over this article, but there was one point that jumped out to me, and which I feel is almost a little tragic (as Camille, the student decided to just give up on orchestra entirely): Sherry Lopez obviously does not understand that the quality of an instrument has a HUGE effect on the sound it produces, and that in turn can seriously mess with an ensemble, not to mention make the child feel like a sub-par musician.

In recent years Ebay has been flooded with instruments made cheaply in China and then resold for at least double what they are worth (which is still quite cheap). These instruments can be made in any color a student wants, in some cases they can even have the student's name engraved on them instead of a brand name. What's worse is that some local shops that are run by individuals with little or no knowledge of band/orchestra equipment have begun to carry these instruments. A few years ago I worked at a local store that was in transition from these sorts of instruments to higher quality product. They had finally worked their way down to a few clarinets that they were going to sell at a clearance price, and eventually they all were sold. I also worked for the local repairman at the time, and lo and behold, within a few weeks those instruments were back in the shop to be fixed. When play tested they were horribly out of tune, and hard to play. I can only imagine what some poor student thought of themselves, simply because they were playing on an instrument of poor quality.

I guess the question is this: At what point to you step back as a music teacher and say "Okay, you can play on whatever you have, quality be what it may."? There was an initial reaction on the site where I saw this article saying that the child should have been allowed to play whatever instrument she wanted, but I don't agree. I think that if the school had the means to waive the rental fee and provide a suitable instrument for the student, they have the right to request, for the benefit of the other students participating in the ensemble, that a student use the instrument of higher quality provided to them. Sure, she can play on the purple violin all she likes at home, but when playing with other students a suitable instrument should be used.

What I think is really tragic in this situation is that Sherry Lopez refused the instrument offered, thus making her daughter feel alienated from the orchestra, and pushing her toward choir instead. This is not to say that choir is not a wonderful activity, it is, but clearly the child had primary interest in being in the orchestra. I think it is sad that if this mother had understood more about music/instruments she could have made a more informed decision, and this girl could have continued in orchestra as she had wanted. This, to me, is one reason why I hope to teach a general music class, and to cover these sorts of issues in whatever band/orchestra/choir that I may teach. It may seem silly to some to teach students about these things, especially if they are not going to study it in college, but one day they may be parents, and may be confronted by this situation. It seems small, but it could totally change the rest of this student's schooling experience.

Starting off...

I feel like I should explain the title I chose for my blog; I just don't want anybody to think that I'm trying to say that my blog's content falls short of relevance, rather that I, as a pre-service teacher, am almost ready to move into a stage of my life where the things that I learn and talk about now will be relevant to my current situation, and not just ideas and ideals to be applied at a future date. I am a Music Education major, I play the tuba and I enjoy music theory. I enjoy being outdoors, mountain biking and hiking, just as much as I enjoy rehearsing and making music. I enjoy learning, I speak fluent French. I make it a point never to neglect learning things that are outside of the content area I plan to teach, because, in my opinion, you never know when you can use that information in teaching, whether directly or as a metaphor.

I have been involved with music since I was very young, and I have been interested in making a career in it for most of my life. I feel that music is something that is enjoyed almost universally, and as such there is great potential for it to bring people together. I also feel that the act of making music is one of the most intimate ways of interacting with people; it allows you to work together with those around you to create beauty and send it into the world. Music is magical, stimulating, exhilarating, and can greatly enrich those who choose to make it. This is why I have always felt so strongly that music and the arts are an important part of a student's development. They provide students with a means of self-expression as they are trying to forge their identity. They provide students with a new outlook, and expose students to other ways of thinking, other cultures, other time-periods.

I suppose that is what makes it so easy for me to consider music/arts education such an integral part of what it means to be literate. I see literacy as a multilayered skill set. The most basic level of literacy is simply the ability to read what is on a page, have a basic level of comprehension,and to be able to write at a basic level. This functional level of literacy is better than nothing, but it is by no means sufficient to empower. A person can attain a higher level of literacy by being taught how to think critically, and how to interact with the environment in which they live. There are many things that can contribute to an individual's cultural literacy, knowledge of art, literature, and the most relevant to my career goals, knowledge of music.

I find that a common fear among music education majors is the possibility that our programs will be cut when budgets become tight. Music is often dumped off in favor of subjects that are considered more valuable, math, science, English, or even football/sports in general. This is not to say that there is no value to these things, I love football, literature, and science. I think it is valuable to be informed about all sorts of things. I also firmly believe that literacy in regard to music is a very important thing. Music can be a wonderful means for self-expression. Music can make one relaxed or agitate, happy or sad, it can be a means for spreading love or hate. It is important, especially for young people, to learn to appreciate the very best that music has to offer, from Bach to Ellington, Chopin to Journey. Literacy in music can inspire students to perform better in other subjects, it can help them work through difficult times in their lives, and it can give them a hobby that they can enjoy throughout their life.