“Our Voices Matter” is my own reckoning as a music educator with homeplace in my music classroom using autoethnography as a method. My research is guided by the question “What is homeplace — for myself, my students, and for us together?” Data were collected through personal recollection, journal writing, vignettes, written interviews, public videos of student performances, blog posts, and news articles over a span of ten years of teaching at New Bridges Elementary in Brooklyn, NY. Data were analyzed through bell hooks’ definition of homeplace and Bettina Love’s usage of homeplace. I reckoned with the extent to which I experienced homeplace, perceived homeplace for my students, and actualized a homeplace that is welcoming of both my students and myself.
Findings showed that my understanding of homeplace shifted over my ten years of teaching through the interactions with my students, and societal and cultural reckonings that inevitably affected the shared classroom space with my students. My use of language, content I taught, and personal voice were affected by pivotal experiences throughout my teaching career and personal life that started separately but ultimately intersected in my music classroom. The Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements collectively played active roles in the lived experiences of my students and me. The influences and intersections of these two movements in my elementary classroom led to multiple reckonings through unapologetic freedom dreaming where my students and I visioned futures that prioritize our racial identities, whole selves, and joy through music making, creating, and coexistence in shared space.
In this study, I illuminate the complexities of my personal teaching practice and experience as a music educator that is inclusive of but also goes beyond music for music’s sake. The findings of my study may spark new understandings for educators about the ways that one’s positionalities and lived experiences affect the music classroom space. The findings may also be useful for those teachers grappling with the critical movements in our society which affect both our students and ourselves and require discussion and reckoning within the classroom. Although the findings are not meant to be extrapolated to any reader’s own classroom or students, this study reflects the emotional and mental shifts that have occurred in my teaching and being and as such may ignite personal reflection and shifts for the reader.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48919 |
| Date | 30 May 2024 |
| Creators | Tsui, Alice Ann |
| Contributors | Vũ, Kính T. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
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