Module 5-2

In learning the socioeconomic factors of music and their effects on music education, I have made several correlations to my own teaching experiences.  It has also helped to give clarity to a number of different challenges faced during my previous year of teaching.  For most of my teaching career I have taught mostly at-risk youth.  That is to say that most of my students have come from low socioeconomic statuses with minimal parental involvement.  This year I transferred to a brand new middle school where I had the opportunity to build the program from ground zero.  I did not realize that the culture of the school would be so drastically different from my past experiences.  The socioeconomic factors were the main differences.  

In my present teaching situation most of the parents have graduated high school and a great percentage of them have attended college. Most of the students come from families where there parents are either nurses, engineers, business owners, clergy or educators.  Similarly, most of the students live in homes where they have their own bedroom and since of privacy.  These will likely be students who will each have their own cars when they reach driving age. Culturally, the divide is probably 50% white, 30% black, and 20% other.  Because of our location in Georgia, as expected, there is a very high percentage of Christians and Christian groups in my school as well.

Obviously, the big shift in SES from my previous experiences to my current experiences effected the musical selections a bit.  The majority of the repertoire choices remain the same as I strive to use quality pieces of music no matter what SES of students I teach.  Still, the differences between the teaching situations should be observed.  One great example of this is my spring concert this year.  I chose to use the same piece that I used last year in my old program mainly because it went so well, I knew that the performance would be different with my new students, and I am limited in music at my new school so using what I already had was in my best interest.  The piece is called, "Rock the Jukebox".  It is a musical revue that chronicles music from the 1940's to the early 1990's.  In the middle of the show, there is a section called, "Forever and Ever Country". At my old school, I chose to omit this section and add a Motown medley in its place.  I did not find that the Country music section would be relatable to my audience.  The Motown section was a hit!  This year, I did decide to include the Country music section and the Motown section...and they both were successful with the students and with the audience.  I think this came in to play more because of the popular music that was included in, "Rock the Jukebox". With the majority of the music learned in my chorus classes, the only difference between the two teaching situations were that in my previous teaching situation I had to spend more time relating the Classical repertoire to the students.  With my current students, they seem more accustom to delayed gratification as mentioned in the text, which makes it a little easier to explore more challenging choral pieces.

Either way, the information on socioeconomic statuses and external factors is beneficial for the educator.  The information is not intended to negatively categorize students based on their background; rather, it is intended to equip the music educator with necessary tools to better reach and educate today's youth.