Reasons and Roots: A Journal


 WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE: Characteristics

“Get Your Knees Off My Neck”

My pictures from the site, August 2019


Martin Luther King III Speaks

  1. Unconditional Love

  2. Vote

  3. Support Legislation in the Community

  4. Peaceful Protest

  5. Refuse to Let Anyone Reduce You to Hatred

Why Me? 

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” Maya Angelou

 Attributed to Maya Angelou by Oprah Winfrey


The centerpiece of the Year of Purpose is asking educators to reflect on their own work in relationship to anti-racist pedagogy and abolitionist practice,

persistently challenging themselves to center Black lives in their classrooms.


"Lives Matter at School Year of Purpose", Rethinking Schools, Fall 2020.

Authors: Black Lives Matter at School


I'm writing this journal so that I can revisit and express my thoughts and feelings

about my past engagement with the issues communities are currently dealing with.


I always felt the marginalization and stress that came with being the “squeaky wheel” advocating for the outliers: music education, inclusion and special needs (especially behavior disorders) and advocating for integrated curriculum, BIPOC literature in the curriculum and technology in education. If I felt the pressure (when I was right and when I was wrong), I can only imagine how hard it has been for BIPOC to constantly have to take a stand and face these difficulties. When I found this article on the Equity, Diversion and Inclusion webpage, it gave me hope that the time has come for real systemic change.

Any meaningful accounting of racial inequities in schools must reckon with this reality. Is our commitment real? Why do emphatic equity advocates often face harsher repercussions for their advocacy than equity heel draggers face for their inaction? Why is taking a strong, impassioned stand on racism interpreted as deviant while refusing to take a stand on racism is interpreted as in a developmental process (Mayorga & Picower, 2018)? 

Educational Leadership / April 2019, Paul Gorski


In the past, I exhibited the racist/white supremacist behaviors of “Assuming Good Intentions are Enough”, “Expecting or Asking BIPOC to Teach Me”, “Celebration of Columbus Day” (teaching songs), and especially trying to “Prove Myself a Good White Person”, most of which I still have to fight against in myself. Putting all of this in writing is a commitment to the work.


Shared by Juliana Cantarelli Vita, PhD Candidate UW, Racial Equity in the Music Room Presentation, CC share alike

Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005). Adapted: Ellen Tuzzolo (2016); Mary Julia Cooksey Cordero (@jewelspewels) (2019); The Conscious Kid (2020)]

I asked one of the speakers in my Ally Group where to begin acts of allyship and her answer was "start local".

Now I’m looking for actions I can take, like working to elect BIPOC,

antiracist and pro-education candidates and joining the

PSD Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee.

In this work, I plan to listen to what BIPOC members are working towards

and asking for (especially students) and provide resources if it is helpful

to move that agenda forward. I believe BIPOC voices should be

leading the process and could easily be overwhelmed on a large committee.

I have time in retirement to collect resources that those

working in education and elsewhere do not have and that can be my main contribution.


After the election, I will be working for accountability in the state and

school districts that will support antiracist reforms and ethnic studies,

particularly in the 26th district where I am a local constituent but also

in Wenatchee where my daughter and son in law's nephews are growing up and in

the Seattle area where my future grandchildren will go to school.

Look for experiences in which there is a vigorous sense of making something happen or pushing something forward.

Resilient by Rick Hanson

You decide what feels true and authentic in your own experience and in your own teaching. Stand firmly in the center of your passion. Deal with those who don’t get it as you must, but don’t get caught in the undertow of their ignorance. Trust your own heart—

THE REAL WORLD ©2008 Doug Goodkin 

My question: How long does it take to listen and change? Is this going to be the time for real systemic change?

Educational Equity | Equity Literacy Framework


Why I worry whether or not change will happen:

An example of the ongoing struggles for systematic change indigenous people have dealt with over time:

I put this Michael Dorris article in teachers’ mailboxes every fall and yet the "Pilgrims" and “Indians”

still play-acted each Thanksgiving.

Original Michael Dorris 1978:

"Why I'm not thankful for Thanksgiving…",   pp. 6-9 by Michael Dorris

Included with many other voices in 2013 at:

Other Native people on Thanksgiving


We may not be able to directly create something we want, but we can still encourage the underlying processes that will bring it into being. Knowing this brings a sense of both responsibility and peace. In terms of responsibility, it’s on each of us to tend to the causes that we can influence, to use the agency that we do have.

Resilient by Rick Hanson

My Roots

“How long has this been going on?”

George Gershwin


“Go back to where you started, or as far back as you can, examine all of it, travel your road again and tell the truth about it. Sing and shout about it or keep it to yourself: but know whence you came. If you know from whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations on where you can go.”
― James Baldwin accessed on Goodreads and in Field Guide for Racial Reality by Fernell Miller

Beginning in a High School Integrated Curriculum

I’ve found that a song can be more effective than a 400-page textbook. It’s immediate and replicable, portable and efficient, easy to understand – and sometimes you can dance to it.

Buffy Sainte-Marie - Official Site

I did not grow up in an integrated neighborhood. In the 1969-70 school year when I was a junior in high school, I had an American History teacher that used music and other arts to frame history and bring it to life for us. We listened to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Now That the Buffalo's Gone to kick off learning about the plight of the Indigenous people of the US and did group projects to express our learning. I remember our group making pemmican, the original survival food, and putting together a band that wrote and performed a song. We read The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp and although there are better options today, at the time it built empathy in me and a thirst for more information and knowledge about what white supremacy wrought in our country. Obviously, I’ll never forget it. The teacher (James Bruner) was controversial, but left a lasting impression on his students. I felt empathy, but had no experience or interactions to back it up.

Becoming an Elementary Music Specialist

Learning about white supremacy, coming to grips with my prejudices and actions and worrying that I might be putting myself in a similar situation watching the wheels spin with no resulting change is unsettling, but I want to do the work because I know for BIPOC it has been so much more devastating. I am unsure about sharing successes without making it about me being a good white person and making excuses for inaction in the intervening years, but I found advice on how to truly move forward from what I did in the past to what I can contribute now:


Call up a sense of being on your own side.

Then begin creating an experience of the positive material.

You could remember when you really experienced it,

perhaps a time you felt particularly safe, satisfied, or connected.

Resilient by Rick Hanson

My early years as an elementary school music teacher were in integrated settings:

Student Teaching with Annette Groves (BIPOC) in inner city Denver. Fall, 1974

Cultural Arts Center, Fairview and Steele, 1975 - 1977 All were integrated student populations

It was the beginning of:

The Legacy of Denver's Forced School Busing Era

Learning to Honor Diversity - With Respect to My Early Teachers

I began teaching with the Orff-Schulwerk process of music education in 1975 and valued its honoring of folk traditions and multiculturism. I learned the materials directly from people of the cultures.

Avon Gillespie

He was one of the few early African-American Orff teachers and had the capacity to not only raise the roof with the collective spirit of black music, dance and games, but equally to hush the room with a beautiful German canon or evocative Gregorian Chant. He embodied the spirit of play, the constant inquiry of what he called “possibility teaching” and the elemental close-to-the-earth quality of what he called “the barefoot connection.”

Words of Doug Goodkin 
Bessie Jones (taught by Avon Gillespie)


Original "Jump Jim Crow" which was changed to "Jump Jim Joe" 

In the write up above, Bessie Jones writes that the "Islanders, however, clearly regard this as a pleasurable dance, probably about birds." This song is an example of how easy it is to excuse using material without considering its deeper and hurtful meanings. I understand now that changing crow to Joe was simply a way to hide the problem, not a way to make it ok. This book is still suggested on the Decolonizing the Music Room site for the other games and songs, but due diligence should be put into researching where there's any question about suitability. 

Jump Jim Joe


Jester Joseph Hairston (July 9, 1901 – January 18, 2000) was an American composer, songwriter, arranger, choral conductor, and actor. He was regarded as a leading expert on Negro spirituals and choral music.[1][2] His notable compositions include "Amen," a gospel-tinged theme from the film Lilies of the Field and a 1963 hit for The Impressions, and the Christmas song "Mary's Boy Child".

Jester Hairston

November 6-9, 1980, Pittsburgh, PA, William Penn Hotel – Focus on Folklore

Guest presenters: David Holt (Southern mountain music),

Jester Hairston (African American slave song),

Heidi Weidlich (Orff Institute), Lynn Rubright (creative drama)


Rene Boyer

"Reflecting Cultural Diversity in the Music Classroom", Music Educators Journal, Volume 75, Number 4 (December, 1988) pp. 50-54. Rene Boyer (White) Anderson

On teaching spirituals:

...It is a part of our history as a nation.

A part that we cannot cover up...no matter how much

you tear apart a person, you can’t tear his insides out… it still exists -

Rene Boyer, Atlanta Conference, 1989 (this is not a conference I attended, but the workshop is similar)

AOSA Members website, accessed 10/13/2020

THE FOLKSONG TREASURE OF BLACK AMERICA; ITS IMPACT ON ORFF SCHULWERK

Spirituals, Blues, and Gospel, with a little bit of rap.


William Amoaku

"Let your minds enter into the psychic corridors of traditional Africa and rediscover the true beauty of its art forms. Only then will your perceptions about African music be holistic and meaningful." —William Komla Amoaku.

African Songs and Music for Children by William Komla Amoaku


Collected by Judith Cook Tucker and others:

Roots and Branches is still available

Memphis Experiences

The AOSA Conference in Memphis, 1996 Bridging Traditions: Memphis Montage Memphis, TN, gave me a chance to spend a morning at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel before the conference started. I was lucky to travel around the museum near a school tour and hear and see the exhibitions through that perspective. The way the museum is set up creates a visceral experience that was moving and meaningful.

Exhibitions

My husband and I flew to Nashville and drove to Memphis and this was the first time I had visited the south and was able to see cotton fields and former slave quarters (at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage which was otherwise a "whitewashed" experience) that I was teaching about through the guidance of Renee Boyer (see above). I will never forget gathering around the bar piano every evening of the conference as she led us in the singing of spirituals. I now know that I was functioning with the white belief that all of this was history and that we had changed it after the Civil Rights era. I now know how naive that belief was, but I am glad at least to be informed by the realities of that history as a foundation for understanding institutional racism.

Incorporating BIPOC Children's Literature

Diverse Children’s Literature in the Music Room



Orff-Schulwerk also promotes the use of quality children’s literature as a catalyst for music making. This was another opportunity to use BIPOC work that is still an important part of many general music classes today. 
Articles from Rethinking Multicultural Education: Teaching for Racial and Cultural Justice by Wayne Au are recommended to guide this practice.


Faith Ringgold, Artist and Author:
Art Briefs Tacoma Art Museum Show
Ringgold’s story quilts were on display at this show and were, of course, impressive to view in person. Some of the stories and other works were depicted in her books for children and were excellent books to use for music instruction.
History: Underground Railroad / Follow the Drinking Gourd
Multicultural Folk Tales / John Henry by Julius Lester (and others by the author)
My first experience with McDermott’s folktales was learning to set Arrow to the Sun to music at a workshop at the beautiful setting of many of Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings, Ghost Ranch - Education & Retreat Center - Abiquiu, NM. McDermott was a white author, but explored folklore around the world. There was/is some scrutiny from different cultural groups (see more about appropriation on the Decolonize and Music Education pages), especially for this book and it’s religious story, but also support for some of his work still exists today. My husband also taught general music and we made our best effort to use authentic music with these texts and had visited the taos Pueblo and purchased recordings directly from a musician there. 
and the beat goes on Kitsap Sun Article about Jeff Burns / Karen Burns, 1997
There are also many examples from a 2011 blog post by Linda Ahlstedt here:
And this post includes other examples and processes for younger children, but does not site any multicultural books:
Literature in the Music Classroom #1, Pre-K-2

The Inclusion Connection
My last years teaching music in Denver were spent in a school north of the city, Bertha Heid Elementary School. This school housed the self contained class for students with hearing loss. I had to adjust music education to these students needs and this sparked my interest in the variety of ways music can be adapted to meet the abilities of all. I learned sign language and many techniques that were in use by other teachers and were already a part of the Orff process. When we moved to Washington State in 1979, I got a job in the Clover Park School District. I was assigned to Custer Elementary and American Lake South schools where special education programs were all housed before mainstreaming was put in place. I also was then assigned to the elementary school and high school on the grounds of Western State Hospital. I received a lot of training sessions and had enlightening experiences there for working with behaviorally disabled students. I also had a passion for the work and pursued and earned my Masters degree in classroom teaching with a special education emphasis.
The Orff Philosophy also had a music therapy process, View of Orff Music Therapy: An Overview | Voices, and I used a lot of these techniques in my work.
A primary resource was Alike and Different by Carol Bitcon.
Second International Symposium of Music Education for the Handicapped: Held at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, August 1981
Burns, Karen,  Orff-Schulwerk in an Institutional Setting, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring 1987), p. 24






Current Articles by Manju Durairaj:

Library Transition

The Clover Park District has a diverse population much like the Denver schools in which I worked. I moved to the Sumner district where I went from 5 schools traveling with carts and temporary music spaces to one school with a beautiful and well equipped music room, but almost no diversity.  Here a student told me he wasn't allowed to learn about Martin Luther King. I was shocked, but then more aware of white supremacy in our state. Then we moved to Fox Island and I changed again to more diverse schools in South Kitsap, Bremerton and in Central Kitsap (my first year of library specialist in an elementary school) after getting my Library Certification at UW. I ended my career in the GHHS library where I tried to positively influence integrated curriculum, an area in which I had become a trainer, and BIPOC reading materials. I successfully promoted Persepolis which was adapted in the World Studies curriculum and the works of Toni Morrison, which were not adopted. Shortly thereafter the block scheduling of social studies and English was replaced by a traditional high school model.
I was also an LGBTQ (IA) club adviser and was a supporter bringing Brent Hartinger (Author of Geography Club) from Tacoma in to speak about Geography Club (Russel Middlebrook, #1).
Classes were reading the book as a literature circle choice. I advocated for LGBTQ (IA) students through some adverse situations.

I stopped doing active work toward diversity, equity and inclusion when I retired since what I did do was inside the education system and within the boundaries of that structure. Now I'm finding ways to be more involved and work on antiracism inside and outside of school settings.

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