Our Strategy
Ethnomusicology has potent tools to create this ‘mirror’ for African – American students. It is time for the discipline of ethnomusicology, with its robust body of ethnographic research, to be put into action to fill the need for a culturally reflective music curriculum for these students. In a time in American education where other subject areas are sealed by the demands of the common core curriculum and standardized tests, music and the other arts are subjects for which teachers can choose or create the curricula they teach. Music education provides an open door through which Black students can receive consistent, step by step, engaging and powerful teaching about their culture. The Ethnomusicology in Action Curriculum Project will use the research, strategies and curriculum material from Cunningham’s Botswanan Fulbright fieldwork, coupled with curricula and instructional techniques refined during her sixteen year music education career, to offer professional development for music educators that trains them to use Black traditional music as a tool for cultural education and empowerment for their African – American students.
Training and equipping music educators to teach Black culture is an effective strategy for reaching our children. The music teacher at a school teaches most students in all grades over a long period of time. Each music educator teaches an average of two hundred students per year over a career span of twenty years or more. Therefore, investing in just one music educator who participates as an EACP fellow impacts 4,000 African – American students over twenty years. The reach of training just ten music educator fellows per year, over a period of twenty years is phenomenal: 200 music educators impacting 40,000 Black children (or more). At full capacity in the United States, the EACP project will train 45 music educators per year in 15 different cities who will teach up to 13,500 students per year. If EACP operates at this capacity for twenty years, our army of 900 teachers will impact 5,400,000 million African - American children. We have the opportunity to capture and influence an entire generation.
Training and equipping music educators to teach Black culture is an effective strategy for reaching our children. The music teacher at a school teaches most students in all grades over a long period of time. Each music educator teaches an average of two hundred students per year over a career span of twenty years or more. Therefore, investing in just one music educator who participates as an EACP fellow impacts 4,000 African – American students over twenty years. The reach of training just ten music educator fellows per year, over a period of twenty years is phenomenal: 200 music educators impacting 40,000 Black children (or more). At full capacity in the United States, the EACP project will train 45 music educators per year in 15 different cities who will teach up to 13,500 students per year. If EACP operates at this capacity for twenty years, our army of 900 teachers will impact 5,400,000 million African - American children. We have the opportunity to capture and influence an entire generation.
