2025 Maine Music Educators Association Conference

The disconnect between music students experience at home and music found in school inhibits responsive pedagogy, equitable engagement, and both students’ short- and long-term engagement in music class. Researchers have demonstrated that while home music is of greater interest than most other subjects, interest in music at school trails those same subjects. This session will cover pedagogies to explore home music in the classroom, including distilling rhythmic content to grade appropriate levels, transfer of tonal concepts between genres, connecting the representation of emotion between music with and without lyrics, and composition strategies which utilize aesthetics of home music.