Urban Music Education: A Practical Guide for Teachers Monday, March 14, 2016
Too often, urban music education is seen as “less than” its suburban counterpart. In Urban Music Education: A Practical Guide for Teachers, author Kate Fitzpatrick-Harnish offers an important corrective that encourages music teachers to focus on students’ strengths as their primary resource. Through a combination of research-based strategies and practical suggestions, she highlights such issues as culturally relevant pedagogy, the “opportunity gap,” race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, musical content, curricular change, program development, student motivation, and finding inspiration and support. Written for a wide variety of school and community settings, the book challenges all teachers who work in underresourced settings to tailor their pedagogy to meet students’ needs.
Author Kate Fitzpatrick-Harnish is Associate Professor of Music Education at the University of Michigan. An avid supporter of public school music programs, she is the former director of instrumental music at Northland High School in Columbus, Ohio.
