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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
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Music Education
CUSD brings music back into schools
By Michelle Ku
The traditional approach to music education in schools is either choral or instrumental, but at three local schools, music education is a combination of several different learning styles, from kinetic to oral and visual to auditory.
"Music appeals to all learners," says Gráinne O'Flynn, developer of the Cupertino Union School District pilot music program, which includes schools from Sunnyvale and Cupertino. "Children will learn, learn, learn."
In O'Flynn's classroom, students don't just learn how to sing songs, they learn about notes, rhythms, lyrics, as well as the context and origins of the songs in history. They also become musicians by accompanying their singing using xylophones and other instruments.
"I think it's fun, and I like learning the songs," says Emileigh Norling, 10, a fourth grader at Sunnyvale's West Valley School. "I like playing the instrument, and we played some tunes to some of the songs that we learned."
Since January, the district has piloted the program for the fourth, fifth and sixth graders at West Valley, Garden Gate and Montclaire elementary schools. The program is slated to run through the end of the next academic year.
"It's been a resounding success," says Russ Ottey, Garden Gate principal. "[At a district meeting] I reported out the highest compliment of all, that the sixth graders love the program. And for sixth graders to love anything, that's a strong, strong program. They are excited about it, and they love it."
O'Flynn and her assistant, Matt Powell, meet with students for a 45-minute session a week. During that time, they teach students to recognize notes and follow beats using a variety of methods, like using the body as a percussion instrument, gesturing in time with the music, assigning specific words to beat counts or simply listening and counting the measures.
"We try to fit everything in a lesson," Powell says. "Movement, singing, body percussion, doing something with notation, and we usually have a listening exercise."
Body percussion, clapping and drumming out beats on legs is an important aspect of O'Flynn's teaching.
"Music education is broad-based, and it deals with the body," O'Flynn says. "Your body is the first instrument."
O'Flynn did not want to create a program that focused only on singing or instruments. To have a broad understanding, students need to understand it all, from musical notation to rhythms and chords.
Because music is a form of creative expression, O'Flynn wants her students to understand the fundamental concepts, including rhythms and harmonies, so they can express themselves.
With the basics, students can create their own beats, rhythms and songs. In the lesson last week, students worked with a partner to develop train rhythms. One group at West Valley added a dance component with movement timed to of the beats of a moving train.
"I'm giving them the gift of music and it's developing their soul," O'Flynn says. "The mind, body and spirit are connected."
In addition to providing students with music instruction, the program is implemented in such a way that it reduces class size for a 90-minute period each week. By sending half a class to the music lessons, teachers have the opportunity to work with smaller groups.
"I walked into the classroom [when half the class was at music], and of course, immediately you can tell when there's not 32 in there, only 16," Ottey says. "The teacher said, 'This is the most wonderful thing. I can get around, work with the groups. I actually have time to spend with each student.'"
The music lessons also echo what students are being taught in the classroom. O'Flynn, a former fourth-grade teacher, tries to tie the songs in with social studies. In the fourth grade, students learn about the history of California and the railroads. In the fifth grade, they learn about the Civil and Revolutionary wars, and in the sixth grade, they study ancient civilizations.
Music and social studies fit together because of the great music created about railroads and the gold rush, O'Flynn says. "War brings out a lot of patriotic songs," she adds.
During the last two weeks, students learned a song about an Irishman working on the transcontinental railroad and a train called the Wabash Cannonball. O'Flynn uses the words of the songs to reinforce what her students learn in their regular classrooms.
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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Body movement accompanying a song is an important part of learning the music, according to O'Flynn.
The songs serve another purpose outside of learning about music. Since all of the students know the songs, they build camaraderie and a community feeling within the school. Students can hold an assembly and all can sing the same songs, O'Flynn says.
When the program began in January, almost all of the students were starting from ground zero, but since then, O'Flynn has seen them progressing in note recognition and familiarity with rhythmic notation.
"They can play enough with the notes to make their own rhythms, and they now have a repertoire of songs to sing together," O'Flynn says.
Principals and parents have also noticed the difference in the students.
"It's very positive," says Susan Douglas, West Valley principal. "You hear students humming and singing the tunes they learn in music class, the girls and the boys."
Mary Anne Norling, parent of a fourth grader at West Valley, has also witnessed the change in the children: "What I have noticed in not only my daughter, but in other children is they all of a sudden break out into song. Many times when I'm driving kids in the car they start singing, and they all know the same song, so it's kind of neat."
Douglas sees another benefit in the students developing their musical side. "If they are musical and they are able to express and develop that at school, their self-esteem is boosted and their overall performance at school improves," Douglas says.
None of the students in the program had ever received musical instruction in a district-sponsored music program. This is the first district-backed music program in the six or seven years since budgetary cutbacks caused the district to discontinue its music program.
Parents at West Valley were planning to use funds from the PTA to start an instrumental music program at their school in the 1998-99 academic year. Norling--who, with a committee of other parents, developed the initial program--decided to see what the board thought of the idea.
"I thought, what the heck, I'm going to pass out these proposals to everyone on the board and [Superintendent Bill Bragg] and see how they like the idea. I was really not expecting anything to come from it, but hoping it would," Norling says. "They read it, and I think they liked it. They implemented it all within a couple of months."
After the board approved the creation of a pilot music program, they asked O'Flynn to head it. The district hired O'Flynn 10 years ago as a music teacher. At the time she served four schools and was one of six district music teachers.
All of the elementary schools were interested in O'Flynn's program when the district initially presented it, but not all of them had money to allot for it. Schools have to help pay for the cost of O'Flynn's assistant.
Although the program is now limited to three schools, the district is interested in expanding it to others. But the issue is money. There are plenty of qualified personnel who would like to teach the children, but the district can't afford more assistants for O'Flynn.
"There's a famine, or a thirst, in the land for performing arts," O'Flynn says.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
