In this workshop on music education held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, composer and conductor Thomas Cabaniss and former Director of Music Education for New York City’s Department of Education Nancy Shankman discuss strategies they and others have used to build and strengthen the music curriculum in New York, and explain a blueprint they created and implemented to assess and improve music education in the city’s classrooms. Cabaniss and Shankman introduce their blueprint and its associated curriculum and repertoire, and discuss some of the teaching theories behind their decisions, as well as what they expect students to get out of the experience.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman introduce the challenges and educational priorities behind the blueprint they created for overhauling music education in New York City’s public schools.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman introduce the project blueprint (not a curriculum) they created for guiding the revision of New York’s public school music program, and why the goals for the project were to provide equitable access to music education for all students, and to provide benchmarks to measure grade-by-grade success, rather than to produce a detailed curriculum that determines how teachers approach the material in the classroom. They also introduce some of the details of the blueprint – how to keep teachers in the driver’s seat, how to involve cultural contributors, and their project timelines –and discuss the need for the blueprint to reflect the common repertoire shared between schools, educators, and their partners in the cultural world.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Nancy Shankman and Thomas Cabaniss discusses the importance of composition in music education in general, and in their draft curriculum for New York City schools in specific.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman introduce the project blueprint (not a curriculum) they created for guiding the revision of New York’s public school music program, and why the goals for the project were to provide equitable access to music education for all students, and to provide benchmarks to measure grade-by-grade success, rather than to produce a detailed curriculum that determines how teachers approach the material in the classroom. They also introduce some of the details of the blueprint – how to keep teachers in the driver’s seat, how to involve cultural contributors, and their project timelines –and discuss the need for the blueprint to reflect the common repertoire shared between schools, educators, and their partners in the cultural world.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman take audience questions about managing, funding, and implementing the blueprint they created for the overhaul of the New York City public school music program.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman begin to dig into the nuts and bolts of curriculum development under the project blueprint they developed for the overhaul of the music program in new York City’s public schools. They articulate five strands of inquiry that the curriculum addresses, explain why their guidelines call for collaboration between music and other subjects such as Social Studies, and discuss the primary need to develop students’ musical literacy.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman articulate five strands of inquiry that their curriculum developed for the New York Public Schools addresses, and explain why their guidelines call for collaboration between music and other subjects such as Social Studies, and discuss the primary need to develop students’ musical literacy.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman discuss the challenges that educators face when seeking out and inviting members of the cultural community (artists, musicians, arts administrators) into the classroom.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenter Nancy Shankman introduces the philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings of the repertoire that she and collaborator Thomas Cabaniss included in the draft music curriculum they created for the New York City public schools.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenter Thomas Cabaniss digs into the repertoire that he and collaborator Nancy Shankman included in the draft music curriculum they created for the New York City public schools, and illustrates how the repertoire they chose illustrates the “five strands” teaching philosophy touched upon earlier in the presentation.

In this segment of a music education workshop held in 2008 at Loyola University, New Orleans, presenters Thomas Cabaniss and Nancy Shankman dig into the repertoire that they included in the draft music curriculum they created for the New York City public schools, and use a musical example from the repertoire to explore teaching opportunities and classroom challenges that await music teachers.