As you may know, we recently partnered with NAfME’s leadership and staff for a workgroup meeting at the NAfME National Research and Teacher Education Conference in Atlanta. Denese Odegaard, Kathy Sanz, Glenn Nierman, Mike Blakeslee and Chris Woodside joined us, along with division officers/National Executive Board members including Lance Neilson, Mike Raiber and Judy Bush (please let me know if I forgot anyone so that I may correct any omissions, which are not intentional). We had a productive dialogue about Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, centered on possible action items. Amanda, Juliet and I (along with the wonderful Karen Howard, thank you for being willing to step in, Karen) took notes during this meeting. After working through these notes over the past few weeks, we sent Denese this list of concrete action items for the National Executive Board to consider at their May meeting.
We have suggested that NAfME leadership start following the #ThisIsMusicEd, and at our meeting, we also suggested they create and curate #IWishNAfMEKnew to discuss the disconnects that teachers/students perceive between the national office/staff/officers and practicing music teachers. We encourage you (if you are one who tweets) to contribute to the dialogue in these spaces.
On another note, we are seeking presenters for webinars. Our webinars are free and made available here for free to anyone regardless of membership status. If you are interested in submitting a webinar on a topic related to Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, the call is here: https://smte.us/2018/04/23/call-for-webinars-2018/
We appreciate what we perceive as productive collaboration and look forward to continuing this momentum. Please contact us if you have ideas, questions, or concerns.
All the best,
Karen, Juliet, and Amanda