Mapping Your Place: Developing a Place-Conscious Music Classroom

Abstract

When beginning music teachers enter a new classroom for the first time, they start a journey toward understanding a new context and community. Place consciousness develops as they become embedded in their community and begin to recognize how its culture and environment interact with their teaching practices. By mapping the objects, people, and history that inhabit the music classroom, a music teacher will develop a clearer understanding of what is happening and has happened in this place, prompting critical considerations for its future. Teaching decisions informed by place-conscious inquiry such as mapping may lead to the development of a music program that nurtures and sustains a deep and harmonious relationship with its students and surrounding community.