With a syncopated beat behind him, James Vernola swings his hips into action and his classmates gamely follow along. It doesn't matter that it's a Thursday morning in a college classroom: the music is infectious and the professor, dressed in a festive red pantsuit, is dancing along. Suddenly, it's a salsa party.
Vernola, a senior music major at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, is part of a team of students using culture, art, food and history to demonstrate how to teach international music to elementary students. The assignment, based on the research of that salsa-dancing professor, Alena Holmes, and her colleague Sharri VanAlstine, is to lead students deep into another culture to better understand its music. They see music education as a critical tool in helping students prepare to interact in an international context.
For the assignment, teams delved into different countries. Vernola, who spent a month in Ecuador in the summer of 2014, shared handmade instruments, stories of time spent with native populations, and his impressive ability to salsa. A member of the Poland team painted a picture of the lavish, meatless Christmas Eve feasts of her childhood, served on a tablecloth stuffed with straw. As students presented, others nibbled food from a table set with sweet and savory pierogi, spicy salsa, almond cake from Sweden, and soda bread and tea from Ireland.
Holmes, a native of Belarus whose exuberant salsa hints at her many years on stage as a professional singer, is international-minded by nature, having performed, taught and lived in many countries before joining UW-Whitewater in 2008. Holmes met VanAlstine -- a Minnesota native who has traveled and worked extensively overseas, including annual visits to Ukraine -- when she came to campus in 2011.
Both faculty members want to highlight the tangible things that educators can do to enlighten their students musically, and as their music study informs their worldview.
"It used to be when you did ‘world music' you'd have a piece from China, another from Russia, maybe a piece from South Africa and suddenly everyone's doing ‘Siyahamba,'" VanAlstine said. "The student doesn't gain any understanding and it only confirms any bias of other cultures as too ‘different' and calcifies their approach to nonwestern music."
"In some ways you are doing more harm by not paying respect to the cultural context than if you didn't teach it at all," said Holmes. "Without context, to the student it remains this ‘other' thing, and, if anything, the sense of distance is increased."
Their respective classrooms serve as incubators for an alternative approach and fodder for their research. It's an approach that has cultivated cultural curiosity in students.
One example is Kristina Neumann, who graduated with a bachelor's degree in music in 2011 and now teaches at an elementary school in the North Lake School District. When it was her team's turn to do the assignment, they chose China, and she became excited about the guzheng, a traditional Chinese instrument.
"She researched it thoroughly and did a great presentation on it," Holmes said. "Mind you, here is a student who'd never been outside of Wisconsin or Illinois."
When an opportunity arose to student teach in China, Holmes encouraged Neumann to apply and then found a grant, a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), to help fund the trip. Neumann ended up teaching in China for nine weeks in the fall of 2012.
"She really immersed herself in the music curriculum and even found there were errors in the Chinese music we'd been using in the U.S.," said Holmes.
Written by Kristine Zaballos
Holmes and VanAlstine, both assistant professors of music at UW-Whitewater, recently published "From I to International: Toward International-Mindedness through Interdisciplinary Music Instruction" in the December 2014 issue of Music Educators Journal. The article describes eight strategies that music educators can use to foster open-mindedness and respect of cultures and people.