February 2011

The State of the Profession

Every year the President of the United States gives his appraisal of the country through the State of the Union address – a time-honored tradition that reaches back to George Washington. For our first issue, we asked thinkers, practitioners, and participants in the field of music education to give their own appraisal of the state of music education.

While the field of music education is currently in a difficult position, our contributors have done a wonderful job of identifying both its strengths and its weaknesses. You will find a wide variety of ideas about how to impact change within your own classrooms and communities. It is our hope that by assembling the thoughts of a wide range of thinkers into one space, readers will be in a better position to formulate their own ideas about music education.

We encourage you to take advantage of the online medium of Leading Notes and leave your thoughts on individual articles in the comments sections. We also strongly suggest that you, when possible, follow our contributors on Twitter and subscribe to their blogs. If you would like to engage in a more robust conversation, please join us over at www.musicpln.org and leave your thoughts.

Contents

• The Future of Strings: A Green Paper Prepared by the American String Teachers Association
  
• The Music Profession Needs You by Paul Beaudry
• How the World of Music Education Can Catch Up to the World of School Improvement by Ben Collins
• Views on Music Education in the 21st Century by Richard Colwell
• Considering the Reach of the Music Education Profession by Rick Dammers
• Tales From a High School Band Dropout by Justine Dolorfino
• An Unsolicited Address to the Music Educators of America by Nick Jaworski
• Is Music Performance Worth Saving? by Ed Lisk
• The Performance of a Lifetime: Knowing the Roles and Learning the Lines by Lindsay Morelli
• Music Education: The Indispensable Core Subject Needed in the “21st Century” by Joe Pisano
• The Music Education Paradox by Andrew Ritenour
• The Necessity of Openness for Music Education by Matthew D. Thibeault
• The State of Our Profession: Perspectives on Social Media by Andrew Zweibel
• And Etudes: Quick comments from around the Internet!

Want to share your thoughts on music education?

Consider writing for Leading Notes!

December 2011: Educating the New Musician

After considering the State of Music Education and exploring the Connections music teachers make with music, other teachers, the community, and, above all, their students, the next issues of Leading Notes will be focused on Educating the New Musician.

Do you have an idea? Check out our submissions page for more information!

Make sure to check out our June 2011 issue!

Spread the Word!

We want to thank you for visiting Leading Notes! We have been working hard to both assemble brilliant minds into one space and to organize the information in a way that is helpful for our profession. We thought of this first issue as a way to get our feet settled and we look forward to working on future issues with your help. Also, we already have some exciting updates planned between this issue and our next one! The only way to be sure that you stay informed is to do at least one of the following three things:

• Subscribe to our Facebook group
• Follow us on Twitter
• Subscribe to our RSS feed