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Contrary to popular beliefs, the first step towards an equitable music room is not selecting diverse repertoire or designing arts integrated lessons. The first step towards cultivating an equitable music classroom is understanding your own mindset and frames of reference.
Understanding your own frames of reference and your own culture (yes, everyone has a culture, not just Black and Brown folks!) is necessary when developing your lens for equity. And until you as the music educator have begun to develop your equity lens, your classroom won’t be able to move towards equitable music learning for all students.
Today, I want to share why beginning with understanding your own frames of reference is the first important step towards cultivating an equitable music classroom for all of your students.
What are frames of reference?
Frames of reference are the ways in which you see the world which are informed by your own culture and lived experiences.
There’s a lot of confusion over what the word “culture” means, so here’s a quick definition:
Culture: the shared beliefs and value systems of a group of people.
Culture is not just something that Black and Brown folks have, everyone has culture! Your family has a particular culture, or set of beliefs and values that you all hold. Your school has a certain culture, if you’re like me and served in more than one school building a time, you have most likely noticed that in one school the way things are done, how it feels to walk the halls, how people talk to each other, is different from the other school; that’s a difference in the school culture.
Culture can be about race and ethnicity, but it’s not only that. Culture is about shared beliefs and that occurs in any group of people, like a sports team, a choir, or a chess club.
Understanding your own frames of reference enables you to better understand why you believe the things you believe, and what motivates you to act in the ways that you act.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to better understand your frames of reference:
- Who am I? (race, ability, socio-economic status, gender, occupation, citizenship, religion, location, language, etc)
- Where & how did I grow up? What common experiences and beliefs did the people around me have?
- What are my values? Why are those important to me? What experiences have I had that are related to those values?
Why understanding your frames of reference matter
Understanding your own frames of reference matter because everything we think, do, and believe is affected by them (whether you realize it or not).
When you better understand what motivates your thoughts and actions, then you are better positioned to be able to understand that others have different thoughts and actions that are shaped by their own frames of reference. You’re better able to recognize differences as just that, differences, and not someone being better or worse.
Being able to recognize differences as just differences is key to developing cultural competence and embracing diversity. This also leads to the ability to be able to see how it’s necessary to make space for other’s frames of reference. And this is how we start moving towards equity.
In our music classrooms, better understanding your own frames of reference may lead you to realize that because you are an English speaker, you only sing songs in English, however many of your students are multilingual. Realizing that you’ve been operating only from your own frame of reference then allows you to see how you need to make space for songs in the languages of your students in your music classroom.
Or maybe, because you have an average cognitive processing speed, you teach your music lessons primarily in whole group, aurally, and with few visuals, however you have some students who need supports for processing. Realizing you have only been operating from your own frame of reference then allows you to see how it’s important to include multimodal supports for every activity as well as include wait time and small group discussion structures to aid in processing the music lessons.
Whether you realize it or not, everything you do in your music classroom is informed by your frames of reference. As you consider how to move towards equity in your music room, continue to consider how your frames of reference are motivating the teaching choices you are making and then begin to consider how those choices can better reflect not just your own frames of reference, but also your music students.
What considerations will you make as you consider your own frames of reference and those of your students?
I would love to hear your thoughts on what considerations you need to make in your music classroom as you think more about your own frames of reference, as well as those of your students!
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Until next time,
Ashley
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Thought-provoking as always. Thank you!
You’re very welcome! Thanks for reading, Sarah!
This has given me a few things to think about. Yes, we need to include multimodal supports for every activity. I do this, but I feel I could do more but there is always not enough time. I feel as if I’m just spewing the information some days even after 25 years. I am going to be more cognizant of including more supports for those who may need it.
Being more cognizant is a great place to start, Brandy!