Sigma Alpha Iota

10 Fall 2021 • sai-national.org By Stephanie M. Riley Contributions and Project Conception by Adam McLean A s a music educator, I'm constantly searching for lessons and content that celebrate diversity and are socially conscious. Enter the Musician of the Month Project. In a nutshell, the Musician of the Month Project (MOTM) currently provides educators with 40 lessons at all grade levels which feature musicians from around the world. ey focus on providing lessons on musicians of varying color, gender, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation. It should be immediately noted that while the lessons created are for the music classroom, I'm confident they can be adapted for any classroom. Background Background is project was begun in 2011 by Adam McLean. When creating the project, Adam started with the goal "to inspire students to be life-long, active music-makers." When speaking with Adam more, he emphasized that "the featured musicians act as musical role models for students of all cultural, ethnic, and gender identities." Adam had started this in the form of posting bulletin boards of a Musician of the Month display for his K-8 classes in his first years of teaching. is was a way that he could "focus the listening examples." Eventually the program turned into a department-wide endeavor when department head Rick Saunders "started collaborating on featured musicians every month, representing a diversity of styles. When a student noticed that women weren't oen featured in listening examples, that got me thinking about other kinds of diversity we needed to bring to the curriculum, so that all students could see themselves in the music classroom." Lesson Format Lesson Format e lesson format is very simple and easy to use and follow. When you look at the website, for each artist you browse you will find pictures, links to videos, fast facts, and ideas for varying grade levels: K-2, 3-5, and 6-12. Each level has three objectives: "Student Will Be Able To…" and detailed instructions on how to implement each objective. In addition to these units having the perfect price tag (free!), you can use as little or as much as you would like, and you can always extend from various grade levels to fit your own. Remember, just because something is labeled as one thing, it doesn't mean you can't adapt for the grades or population you are serving. One suggestion that has been made by various teachers who have used this project in their classrooms is to send home a link to a program such as Spotify that has the playlist of the music and musicians you are featuring in your classroom. As musicians ourselves, we all know how powerful this can be for families. How the project has grown How the project has grown Over time, "the materials and templates have become more standardized over the years, in order to make the creation and the implementation of the units more efficient and effective. We were also fortunate to receive an Education grant from the Boston University Consortium in 2019. is allowed us to revise our materials with guidance from BU Music Education professor Tawnya Smith, and it also provided the funding to set up the website. Since launching the website in February 2020 with 8 sample listening units, we now have 40 high- quality featured musician units available online." How to become involved How to become involved Getting involved in creating content for the project is very easy. Find the artist you would like to focus your lesson on. You can view the complete list of artists who have units on the page and you can see the list of artists that haven't been Musician of the Month Project SAI Honorary Members Marian Anderson and Gloria SAI Honorary Members Marian Anderson and Gloria Estefan and Member Laureate Jessye Norman are Estefan and Member Laureate Jessye Norman are featured musicians in the project. featured musicians in the project. Music Education CONTINUED ON PAGE 46

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