Please, let me introduce myself

I am a wanna be middle school resource teacher. And, I want to teach in one of Oaktown’s public schools. I am a proud Black Woman of privilege and yet the object of discrimination and prejudice all too often. My teaching experience includes more than two decades as a substitute teacher in the Oakland and Piedmont Unified School Districts, two years as a special day class intern teacher for 4th and 5th grade students and a year of teaching finance and accounting for non-profit organizations at John F. Kennedy University in Walnut Creek.

I have been blessed with a loving and supportive family and extended family who share an enduring commitment to civil rights and social justice. These compassionate and caring people have always led by example in facilitating the pursuit of freedom and true equity and equality for those in the African Diaspora in these dis- United States of America.

My maternal grandparents and my parents valued higher education and earned their degrees at historically Black Colleges and University. The grandparents at Hampton University. My parents at Morehouse for Daddy, then on to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and Mommy, a degree in library science from Atlanta University.

My paternal grandparents did not have the opportunity to experience higher education. However, my grandfather who graduated high school, not possible for many Black Americans at his time because too often there was no “colored” high school available. Going to school with white people was against the law. Many people had to live with family members in another location.

My grandfather would have gone to college; except that he was the oldest of 14 children. When his mother passed, he was the responsible adult to care for his siblings. My grandmother came to the United States from Cuba, one of 5 children whose mother was from the Cayman Islands and whose father was from Jamaica. After they married, Cuba appeared to be a place where the family would be successful. Not the case. My great grandmother and her children arrived at Ellis Island. They were sponsored by an Episcopal Priest, George Plasket on his word alone. The Ellis Island “administrators” were concerned that this woman and her children would be a drain on the resources of the US. My great grandfather stayed in Cuba for a period of time, working and sending remittances as they are called now to support his wife and his children.

My grandmother completed the 8th grade, but described herself proudly at a graduate of the “school of hard knocks”. She and my grandfather raised 8 children all of whom attended college. The 16 grandchildren from those unions, all graduated college and at least half of us have graduate or professional degrees. Educational accomplishment continues into my generation. I have a 30 year old daughter who earned her BA at the University of California at Los Angeles and her MPA at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. Music and other artistic experiences were a standard part of our daily lives.

Here in this blue gold town, I bleed cardinal red. I earned a BA in economics from Stanford University and a MA in public administration from the University of San Francisco. Currently, I am a mature graduate student at Holy Names University pursuing..well chasing my education specialist credential as well as an MA in urban education.

I developed this guide to be a resource for educators in every environment to complement whatever the required curriculum is to inspire and engage students of all ages to participate in civil society and political activity. Music, because of its connection to protesting difficult circumstances is a natural, organic way to raise activists. I look forward to the time when I will be one of those educators. The teaching strategy for this material is to have a seminar. Teacher and students are co-teaching and learning which results in enthusiastic participation regardless of the age of the students and feeds their imagination, curiosity and inspires life long learning if for no other reason than music is just plain fun to experience.

Music has the power to connect us, move us, heal us and inspire us. In recognition of the people of the African Diaspora’s 400 years of resistance to slavery and injustice, the University of California at Berkeley is providing a year long series of events that honour the extraordinary intellectual, social and cultural contributions of African Americans to the nation; examine the long-lasting impacts of slavery and explore the roots and consequences of continued discrimination , bias and inequality in our society.

In January 2018 a federal law was signed acknowledging the impact of slavery in the United States and mandating the creation of a national commission to commemorate the anniversary of the forced arrival of enslaved Africans in the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia in 1619. It is the responsibility of all of us to never forget that time and the unfortunate and enduring legacy it has on this country. And, to work together to truly have a more perfect union: Equality and Equity for All!

Music is the key to community harmony .

Playlist: The songs, their creators and the songsters

Music can be instrumental only, have lyrics, combine the two, A capella or just be in the air. Music is as varied as people’s personalities are. Most people have a preference for a particular arrangement for their favorite song. A musical arrangement is an adaptation of existing music for a specific set of instruments or voices that vary from the original. Each adaptation is unique. Amazing Grace, is often sung at memorial services, funerals, and life celebrations. Former President Barack Hussein Obama, sang Amazing Grace at the funeral of Pastor Clementa Pinkney, one of the members who was murdered by Dylan Roof at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

President Obama in South Carolina
Amazing Grace
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, Who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.


Words: John Newton (1779)

Aretha Franklin trailer from documentary about the recording of the album Amazing Grace

Lift Every Voice and Sing

by

James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
let our rejoicing rise,
high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea
sing a song full of faith that the dark past has taught us,
sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
let us march on till victory is won.Stony the road we trod,
bitter the chast’ning rod,
felt in the day that hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat,
have not our weary feet,
come to the place on witch our fathers sighed?
we have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
where the…white gleam of our bright star is cast

God of weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way:

Thou Who has by They might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand.

True to our God, true tour native land.

The Morehouse Glee Club singing the Negro National Anthem
Melba Moore , Terri Lyne Carrington , Melba Moore, Bebe Winans, Bobby Brown, Howard Hewitt, Gerald Albright, Jasmine Guy, Debbie Allen, Jeffrey Osborne, Louis Gossett and more friends

The Message

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

Strange Fruit

Lynching in America is STILL not a FEDERAL crime!

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

Music by Dr. Nina Simone and Lyrics by Weldon J. Irvine, My Beloved Brother

To be young, gifted and black
Oh what a lovely precious dream
To be young, gifted and black
Open your heart to what I mean

In the whole world you know
There are billion boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black
And that's a fact!

Young, gifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
There's a world waiting for you
This is a quest that's just begun

When you feel really low
Yeah, there's a great truth you should know
When you're young, gifted and black
Your soul's intact

Young, gifted and black
How I long to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunted by my youth

Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gifted and black
Is where it's at

More songs…..

Let’s go some place

Suggested Activities

These are suggested activities for grades 1.pre-k through 3rd grade, 2. 4 and 5th grade,3. middle school and 4. high school.

  1. Have students listen to the song. For this group, the song is Amazing Grace. Ask them to draw a picture during a second playing. Ask them how the song makes them feel. Repeat, repeat, repeat until they have learned the song to perform at a school gathering.
  2. The song for this group the song is To be young, gifted and Black. Additional tasks are to learn the music vocabulary. Distribute note cards with the words on them and have students guess the meaning and share out. “Corrections” will lead to a discussion about why the words mean what they do. The class will create a call and response mantra.
  3. The song for this group is The Message. It is early hip hop-rap, so connecting will be easy enough for them. Additional tasks, identify the instruments in the piece and design a collage to decorate their classroom. Group work to illustrate a stanza and write a story.
  4. This group’s song is Strange Fruit. Additional tasks are students will work as a group and find other arrangements and performers of this song. They will present to their classmates what they like about the arrangement they found. Half of the class will researcher the writers of the song and the other half will research the history of lynching and create a time line with dates and locations. Students will also select one of the HBCUs and research the music programs as well as create a playlist of that music.

Teach each student Lift, Every Voice and Sing, the Negro National Anthem. For middle school and high students guide them in a compare and contrast discussion of Lift, Every Voice and Sing to The Star Spangled Banner, the United States National Anthem.

Some important reading

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nahesie Coates https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations

The 1619 Project – The New York Times Nikole Hannah-Jones https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations

Film

Civil Rights and Social Justice Advocacy Organizations

Vocabulary

Arrangement: Setting or adaptation of an existing musical composition.

Audience etiquette: Social behavior observed by those attending musical performances and which can vary depending upon the type of music performed.

Body Percussion: use of the body as a rhythm instrument includes hand clapping, foot stomping and thigh slapping.

Call and Response is a succession of two distinct phrases usually written in different parts of the music, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or in response to the first. It corresponds to the call-and-response pattern in human communication and is found as a basic element of musical form, such as verse-chorus form, in many traditions. An African American tradition.

Rubric: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests .

Jazz: American music developed especially from ragtime and blues and characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre , original American music created by those of the African Diaspora

Spirituals: a religious song usually of a deeply emotional character that was developed especially among blacks in the southern U.S.

Gospel: of, relating to, or being religious songs of American origin associated with evangelism and popular devotion and marked by simple melody and harmony and elements of folk songs and blues. Notable aspect of Black culture.

Rhythm and Blues:popular music typically including elements of blues and African American folk music and marked by a strong beat and simple chord structure, Rhythm and blues, commonly abbreviated as R&B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African American communities in the 1940 .

Hip Hop: Hip hop music, also called hip-hop or rap music, is a genre of popular music developed in the United States by inner-city African Americans and Latinx Americans in the Bronx borough of New York City in the 1970s .

Social Justice:  a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. This is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges.

Improvisation: the art or act of improvising, or of composing, uttering, executing, or arranging anything without previous preparation, key component of jazz.

Lyrics: the words of a song.

Variety: a thing which differs in some way from others of the same general class or sort; a type.

Music Appreciation: Music appreciation is teaching people what to listen for and how to understand and interpret what they are hearing in different types of music

Black ( People) is a skin group-based classification used for specific people with a mid to dark brown complexion

African American:

African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The phrase generally refers to descendants of enslaved black people who are from the United States.‎

African Diaspora: African Diaspora is the term commonly used to describe the mass dispersion of peoples from Africa during the Transatlantic Slave Trades, from the 1500s to the 1800s. This Diaspora took millions of people from Western and Central Africa to different regions throughout the Americas and the Caribbean.

Composer: One who creates music compositions.

Context: Environment that surrounds music, influences understanding, provides meaning, and connects to an event or occurrence. cultural: Values, beliefs, and traditions of a group of people that influence musical meaning and inform culturally authentic musical practice.historical: Conditions of the time and place in which music was created or performed that provide meaning and influence the musical experience.societal: Surrounding something or someone’s creation or intended audience that reflects and influences how people use and interpret the musical experience.

Creator: One who originates a music composition, arrangement, or improvisation.

Criteria: Guidelines used to judge the quality of a student’s performance.

Elements of music: Basic characteristics of sound such as pitch, rhythm, harmony, dynamics, timbre, texture, form, style, and articulation that are manipulated to create music.

Ensemble: Group of individuals organized to perform artistic work: traditional, large groups such as bands, orchestras, and choirs; chamber, smaller groups, such as duets, trios, and quartets; emerging, such as guitar, iPad, mariachi, steel drum or pan, and Taiko drumming.

Expression: Feeling conveyed through music.

Expressive aspects: Characteristics that convey feeling in the presentation of musical ideas. intent:The emotions, thoughts, and ideas that a performer or composer seeks to convey by manipulating the elements of music. qualities dynamics, tempo, articulation which — when combined with other elements of music — give a composition its musical identity.

Function: Use for which music is created, performed, or experienced, such as dance, social, recreation, music therapy, video games, and advertising.

Genre: Category of music characterized by a distinctive style, form, and/or content, such as jazz, march, and country.

Harmony: Chordal structure of a music composition in which the simultaneous sounding of pitches produces chords and their successive use produces chord progressions.

Improvisation: Music created and performed spontaneously or “in-the-moment,” often within a framework determined by the musical style.

Intent: Meaning or feeling of the music planned and conveyed by a creator or performer.

Interpretation: Intent and meaning that a performer realizes in studying and performing a piece of music.

Mood: Overall feeling that a section or piece of music conveys.

Motive (motif): Brief rhythmic/melodic figure or pattern that recurs throughout a composition as a unifying element.

Movement: Act of moving in non-locomotor ,such as clapping and finger snapping and locomotor ,such as walking and running, patterns to represent and interpret musical sounds.

Music theory: Study of how music is composed and performed; analysis of the elements of music and the framework for understanding musical works.

Musical idea: Idea expressed in music, which can range in length from the smallest meaningful level ,motive or short pattern, through a phrase, a section, or an entire piece.

Performance decorum: Aspects of contextually appropriate propriety and proper behavior, conduct, and appearance for a musical performance, such as stage presence, etiquette, and appropriate attire.

Piece: General, non-technical term referring to a composition or musical work.

Pitch: Identification of a tone or note with respect to highness or lowness frequency.

Present: Share artistic work, a composition, with others.

Program: Presentation of a sequence of musical works that can be performed by individual musicians or groups in a concert, recital, or other setting.

Purpose: Reason for which music is created, such as, ceremonial, recreational/social, commercial, or generalized artistic expression.

Refine: Make changes in musical works or performances to more effectively realize intent through technical quality or expression.

Repertoire: Body or set of musical works that can be performed.

Rhythm: Duration or length of sounds and silences that occur in music; organization of sounds and silences in time.

Rhythmic passage: Short section or series of notes within a larger work that constitutes a single coherent rhythmic idea.

Section: One of a number of distinct segments that together comprise a composition; a section consists of several phrases.

Select: Choose music for performing, rehearsing, or responding based on interest, knowledge, ability, and context.

Sensitivity: Skill of a creator, performer, or listener in responding to and conveying the nuances of sound or expression.

Setting: Specified or implied instrumentation, voicing, or orchestration of a musical work.

Setting of the text: Musical treatment of text as presented in the music.

Share: Present artistic work ,a composition, to others.

Style: Label for a type of music possessing distinguishing characteristics and often performance practices associated with its historical period, cultural context, and/or genre.

Stylistic expression: Interpretation of expressive qualities in a manner that is authentic and appropriate to the genre, historical period, and cultural context of origin.

Variety: Presence of structural contrast within a work for the purpose of creating and sustaining interest, generally achieved through utilizing variations in the treatment of the elements of music

Venue: Physical setting in which a musical event takes place.

Rap: a style of popular music, developed by disc jockeys and urban blacks in the late 1970s, in which an insistent, recurring beat pattern provides the background and counterpoint for rapid, slangy, and often boastful rhyming patter glibly intoned by a vocalist or vocalists

MARCUS BOOKS, an Oaktown resource for books about music: http://marcusbooksoakland.com/

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

  • Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
  • Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

  • Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
  • What topics do you think you’ll write about?
  • Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
  • If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

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