Hear Me Earth, My Spirit Soars

Children naturally love the arts. They are readily drawn to rhythm, melodies, lyrics, creative movement, and the magical, mood-lifting qualities of the arts. There is an old Chinese Proverb that goes like this: I Hear (Tell Me.) I Forget. I See (Show Me.) I Remember. I Do (Involve Me.) I Understand. In the arts, there is much hands-on learning for the children, so the learning becomes exciting. In this project, the children would be introduced to the culture of Native Americans, their musical heritage of songs and drumming, their tribal dances, and their storytelling. Through this project, the children will gain an understanding about the real people who have created tribal music and carried on the tribal traditions within their individual roles in those tribes. The children will understand that these people are just like themselves and that each work they create represents a special part of self-expression. The children will be encouraged to express their own ideas about what they hear, see, and create. This project will promote the importance of allowing children to know that their ideas have value--ultimately realizing that they are artists too in bridging the gap between classroom learning and real life cultural experiences. I am the general music specialist and teach around 700 children a week. In this project, approximately 350 children would be involved in grades 3-5 of 25 per class. Our school serves a very diverse population with many children from different cultures--Asian, Hispanic, African American, South American, Caucasian, Native American and many from island areas. Many of our children are from low socio-economic households and single parent families. Many of the children are on free/reduced meals. Materials necessary to the project would be the authentic Native American Drums and videos of Native American music such as “Discovering American Indian Music" and "Into the Circle", and books and CD's such as "Myth, Music, and Dance of the American Indian" and "Native American Odyssey" for the background needed. I would like to add that we have the Native American Tribe of the Catawba Indians here in York County so this area of Native American study would be of great interest. Since we have Native American children in our school, it would be a wonderful learning experience for all our children to understand Native American Culture. In our educational standards, our children study about the Native Americans (third grade--colonial period, fourth grade--Native Americans in the US, and fifth studies the role of Native Americans in the different time periods and what has happened to the tribes). I feel it is extremely important for our children to understand the uniqueness of every individual and their cultural contribution to society.