My name is Debra Cotterall and I am a board-certified music therapist who has been working as a lead teaching artist with Buildabridge for over 3 years now. Throughout the month of February 2017, I had the pleasure of working with fellow music therapist, Grace Clements and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) Afterschool Program in order to implement a therapeutic, creative-arts based series of four lessons aimed at promoting students’ sense of self-efficacy and positive vision for the future in order to further increase personal resiliency. The curriculum aimed to support students’ holistic development through creative and academic experiences to foster inclusion, hope, resilience, self-efficacy, mastery, and vision for the future. Each lesson primarily integrated the music modality, exploring a variety of musical elements as they related to real-world application in everyday life. Music and movement were utilized to assist students in processing and coping with current resettlement to the US, promoting mental health and acculturation, and building community.
This was an exciting and new experience for all involved as this was the first multi-week series with the HIAS after-school program. Students were enthusiastic about using instruments and working on English language skills. After our first session, it was clear that interventions and activities to support language learning and increased impulse control were best suited for this active group. There were a few activities that worked best and led to great learning/teaching moments, community building, identification of resiliency statements, and embracing and sharing of one’s personal culture. After beginning each lesson with our opening ritual, students learned new musical terms such as “allegro” or fast, “adagio” meaning slow, etc. The group discussed that most musical terms are written in Italian. Students eagerly shared the meaning of these words in their native languages and discussed how they could be applied in our music making as well as everyday lives. This time always seemed to foster increased community and understanding of others as well as reinforcing the importance of one’s culture and background. Our next activity, created and led by assistant teaching artist Grace Clements was a big hit! The students were seated in a circle and each had a different instrument. They initially worked on following the teacher’s instructions to stop and go and pass instruments to their peers in order to try all instruments. As lessons progressed, the students began following musical terms/instructions in order to change the tempo or dynamics. Teachers encouraged students to lead the activity at times and utilize musical terms in their native languages as they had shared with the class.
The next activity combined both music and movement to reinforce language learning, specifically opposites. This body percussion exercise was entitled “This is…” and included the following lyrics: “This is big, big, big [clap, clap], this is small, small, small [clap, clap], this is short, short, short [clap, clap], this is tall, tall, tall [clap, clap],this is fast, fast, fast [clap, clap], this is slow, slow, slow [clap, clap], this is yes, yes, yes [clap, clap], this is no, no, no [clap, clap]!” Students were taught with limited verbal directions but through modeling of hand gestures and melody. The group seemed to love singing this song several times each week and eventually added musical directions to change tempo and dynamics. The movements of the arms to mimic words in the song helped to support the newest language learners in the group to understand and practice basic vocabulary in a fun and creative way!
All four weeks culminated with our Resiliency Song! A verse of the song was written each week and then recorded in our final session. It was based on the song “Stand By Me” originally performed by Ben E. King. Each week students focused on different resiliency statements including “I haves” (identifying personal supports), “I cans” (personal skills and coping skills), and “I ams” (positive traits and characteristics). Students utilized musical experiences from the beginning of each session to identify such statements (i.e. I can sing, I have friends, I am funny, etc.). The group re-wrote the verses to the song to include a resiliency statement from each student and learned the chorus to “Stand By Me” which includes “so friends, friends stand by me, oh stand by me…” This project allowed students to identify and share the basic building blocks for personal resiliency and worked perfectly with amount of time given for this group. This was such a fun and inspiring group to work with! Each amazing student shared some part of their journey and I will remember our work together for years to come!!
