“Most music teachers in public schools don’t have any opportunity to get honest, specific feedback about what they’re doing.My goal is to help them become self-reflective,” she says. As a teacher in the Virginia public school system during the early to mid- 1990s, Katherine Strand found herself constantly evaluating her own teaching strategies and comparing them to those of other educators. Today, she works to develop research models that teachers can use to evaluate their own teaching methods in the classroom.“I would like to see music teachers think of themselves as teachers of creative and critical thinking processes,” Strand says.

Creativity and critical thinking are the focus of Strand’s research. Her studies focus on identifying the most effective ways of teaching music composition; and how to encourage young musicians to become independent thinkers and to create, perform, and listen once they leave the school setting.“Creative opportunities are so rare in some children’s schooling, but the music class is one place where kids can learn to express themselves and explore open-ended questions,” she says. Strand advocates broadening the scope of teaching to include more than just band, chorus, and orchestra programs. She says that classes in nontraditional areas such as African drumming,music technology, and guitar can be used to encourage musical understanding and creativity in kids who would not otherwise be involved in school music programs after elementary school.

Brent Gault has spent time in schools examining the perceptions of elementary educators regarding general music programs.He and a colleague just completed a research study of 300 elementary school principals in which the school administrators were asked what areas they perceived to be most important in terms of music education.

Another prolific member of the department, Estelle Jorgensen, is internationally renowned for her research into the foundations, curriculum, history, and philosophy of education. She has published several books, including In Search of Music Education(University of Illinois Press, 1997) and Transforming Music Education(Indiana University Press, 2003).

In the introduction to the latter, Jorgensen discusses the changes that have taken place in music education in recent years.“Much more attention is now given to teacher preparation; multicultural awareness has increased; new approaches to assessment have been developed; systematic philosophical examination of commonplaces has begun to emerge; school restructuring efforts have forced music teachers to take a more active role in advocacy for the arts and curricular development; and creative ways have been devised to relate music to its social context, other arts, and school subjects, and to take advantage of recent technological advances,” she writes.

“Still, in other fundamental respects and like other school subjects,music instruction remains very traditional, and its rationale has changed little since the early part of the nineteenth century, when publicly supported schools were established.”

Through their various travels and experiences, IU’s music education faculty members have developed their own perspectives on the state of music education in the public schools, both in Indiana and across the nation.

The song they sing is not always pretty. It’s no secret that the future of music education in the nation’s schools is at risk. Several reports suggest that recent state and federal mandates, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, have caused schools to place a greater emphasis on standardized testing in math and English— at the expense of music education. Furthermore, despite efforts by IU and other institutions, there is a shortage of qualified music teachers. And more than ever before,music teachers are being forced to justify the existence and value of their programs.

Still, the department’s faculty members remain hopeful that music will always have a place in schools and that their efforts are making a difference.“There’s lots of advocacy work being done at the IMEA,” says May.“In terms of ‘changing the world,’ I do believe that our teachers tend to be extremely confident. They do make an impression. They always make an impact.”

Leaders In Education and Performance

It’s the Thursday afternoon before spring break week.Outside the music school, cell phones are ringing, cars are honking, and music is blaring. Students are happily tossing bags of clothes into their car trunks. The annual student exodus from Bloomington is on. Meanwhile, on the fourth floor of IU’s Music Annex building, senior music education major Ryan Endris is trying to maintain order among 90 or so student singers. The students have gathered for an important rehearsal, but their minds are elsewhere.

The Singing Hoosiers, who bill themselves as America’s premier collegiate concert show choir and have performed with such legendary entertainers as Bob Hope, Tony Bennett, Duke Ellington, and Hoagy Carmichael, are practicing for their 55th anniversary concert. Endris, the group’s undergraduate music director, has been tasked with warming up the singers’ voices before their primary conductor,music education professor Michael Schwartzkopf, steps up to the podium. The students begin singing a tune that even non-music lovers would likely recognize.

“Fame, I’m gonna live forever…” “Come on, guys, we’ve practiced this a hundred times!” Endris says.

“Men, I need more presence from you! Let’s make our approach to singing much taller and make the text much crisper. It sounds like we’re in high school!”

Beads of sweat begin to form on Endris’ forehead.His face is flushed and fixed with an expression of determination.He finally takes a breath and sits down when Schwartzkopf takes over.

Endris—whose performing experiences range from opera choruses to show choirs and barbershop quartets—sums up what it’s like to be a student leader of such a talented ensemble.“I have to take charge, yet remain their peer.While it’s challenging at times, it has been a great opportunity for me. If you can lead your peers, you can lead anyone.”

The Singing Hoosiers are “more than just a choral ensemble,” Schwartzkopf says.“They’re an educational institution within itself.”

The group includes a staff of about 35 students who handle choreography, costumes, sales, transportation, equipment, and publicity. Jennifer Shuck, a music education graduate and former student manager of the ensemble, says working with them was “extremely challenging and time consuming. I have put so much time into this in the past four years because I have wanted to be a part of something special and have as many performance opportunities as possible.”

Endris and Shuck represent the type of student the Music Education Department seeks to send out into the world. IU’s Music Education students are acquiring critical leadership skills and gaining invaluable experience in the making and performing of music. The Singing Hoosiers “expose students to a popular style of music and create great performance opportunities,” Schwartzkopf says.

The department’s undergraduate music education program offers additional opportunities for future teachers to gain valuable experience. Under the close supervision of coordinator Pete Miksza and director Lissa May, the IU Young Winds precollege program provides opportunities for instrumental music education students to teach young brass, woodwind, and percussion students in small group lessons and full band rehearsals.

The program serves Bloomington area middle school band students and has served as a model for music education programs throughout the country.

Music education faculty members share a common bond with other teacher-performers in the Jacobs School: the desire to give future performers the best possible musical education and training. In October 2005, the department hosted an annual Big Ten conference on music education that highlighted the ways education, performance, and research intersect for music’s greater good.

“I want our music education majors to become the best musicians, teachers, and researchers a university can produce,” says Patrice Madura. “It’s the excellence in all three areas that makes the IU Music Education Department exceptional in its ability to influence future generations’ capacity for fine music.”

Departmental faculty members are also accomplished musicians. Not surprisingly, several are products of the department they now serve. Schwartzkopf, a former standout Singing Hoosier, has conducted state, regional, and all-state choirs throughout the United States and Canada.Madura, an accomplished pianist and choral conductor, and a graduate of IU, has collaborated with Distinguished Professor David Baker in preparing IU jazz singers for the annual “Big Band Extravaganza” on the Bloomington campus. She also serves as vocal jazz director for the Singing Hoosiers. Fellow IU music education alumna Lissa May, as well as Brent Gault and Katherine Strand, are in constant demand nationwide to serve as guest teachers and conductors. Gault and Strand maintain a dedicated involvement with the IU Children’s Choir.

“The standards are so incredibly high across the School of Music,” says Madura.“Personally, I don’t think any other school compares. It’s an amazingly strong and dedicated faculty,with an ideal balance of research, teaching, and performance expertise.I couldn’t ask for better colleagues.”

For the Love of Music

It was the very first day of Brent Gault’s first student teaching job at an elementary school in Waco, TX, and he marveled at the way his mentor interacted with her students, many of whom came from poor backgrounds and whose parents couldn’t afford music lessons.

“I remember being awestruck,” Gault says.“The teacher I taught with didn’t have a real structure to her lessons, but she would walk into any room with a child and they would just flock to her. She was music education for those kids. She was a bright spot for them, and it was because she really loved music.After seeing how music affected children of that age, I was hooked.”

As he moved on to other teaching positions in Texas,Wisconsin, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and, finally, Indiana, Gault would incorporate structure into his classrooms and develop his own teaching style.He borrowed from different methods of teaching, including the Kodály approach, which teaches music literacy through folk music.He has lectured and written about this approach extensively, and today serves as president-elect of the Organization of Kodály Educators.

Despite acquiring a wide range of knowledge about Kodály and other approaches to music education, Gault has never forgotten the lessons he learned during his early student teacher days in Texas.And despite the challenges that all music educators face, he and his colleagues in the Music Education Department will continue to fight to ensure every child receives the opportunity to experience the joys of music.

Gault says,“Think about not speaking to a child for the first five years of his or her life.How much would they be able to do with language? Very little.Now think about what kids of this age could do musically if we sang to them and actively engaged them in music.”

Back at First Presbyterian Church,members of the IU Children’s Choir continue singing, while several early-arriving moms and dads trickle into the main rehearsal room. Two girls in matching rainbow-colored bows and sparkly shoes whisper secrets to one another. Seated in front of them is a boy wearing a longsleeved Pokemon shirt and shaggy bowl haircut. The boy scans the room for his ride.As if in perfect tune with the boy’s wandering mind,Gault urges him and his fellow singers to “Stand up tall.”

Stand up tall, for these children are the future of music—and that future appears to be in very good hands. The smiles on the proud parents’ faces say it all, and so does the song the children sing so beautifully. Its title . . .
. . .Viva la musica.

If you are a graduate of the IU Music Education Department, we’d love to know what you are doing. Please email us at MusicEd@indiana.edu.

To sign up for the School of Music’s e-newsletter Fanfare, which includes regular updates from the Music Education Department, e-mail musicpub@indiana.edu.