My name is Matthew Sandoval, and I am a senior at UNM working in the Secondary Education program with a concentration in Social Studies. I have been one of the soccer coaches at La Cueva High School for 12 years and my time spent coaching showed me how much of an impact I had on the students. This led me into wanting to become a teacher so would be able to make an even larger impact on these students lives.
While sports have been a major part of my life, music has always been just as important. My father played drums his whole life, and I followed in his footsteps. I played in various rock bands throughout high school, but I eventually had to let that dream go. I still listen to all types of rock, blues, jazz and folk music and am an avid record collector. While the music that I listen to doesn’t reach as far back as some of the history that I teach, there is a lot of music that I listen to that helped shape the history of the USA.
My professional goals start with becoming a certified social studies teacher, but more than that I want to make learning about history fun. While I always interested in the content in my history class in high school, it was not taught in a very exciting way. I do not want my students to be forced to memorize facts and dates. I want them to be able to make connections from the past to things they relate to in their own lives. While music may not be important or enjoyable to every single student, it at least provides them with another way to learn about the past and how it affects them other than reading a textbook and answering questions. I also want my students to feel comfortable with bringing in music that has personal meaning for them and finding ways to connect it to what we are studying about. The music in the classroom should not always be songs that I think fit into the lesson, it should also include music that is relatable for the students. This will allow me to show students new music, while learning about new music myself from my students.
This blog will help me find different resources and gather different lesson ideas that will allow me to implement all types of music into my classroom. While I was focusing on weaving music into my lesson plans, I am also interested in how music can help students relax, concentrate, or get into the right mindset in the classroom.
There was one article that I read a while back that gave me the idea to incorporate rock, soul, jazz, and folk music into the classroom. It is called “Which Rock Star Will Historians of the Future Remember?” and it was included in the New York Times Magazine (I will include the link at the end of this post). It opened my eyes to how important some of my favorite musical artists were to US history and sometimes even World History. I hope that I am at least able to show my students that music isn’t always just for entertainment, it can sometimes be part of a bigger idea and even spark changes that alter history as we learn about it today.
Bob Dylan performing at a civil rights rally in 1965
Here is the article previously mentioned: Which Rock Star Will Historians of the Future Remember?
You are doing it, Matthew - Integrating music in your content area! Continue to pursue this connection in an integrated curricular way in your own teaching! Just go for it and take the risks with your students. You will engage them in novel ways contributing to making history memorable!
ReplyDeleteAppreciatively,
Frances