Making Music on the Santa Fe Trail
SLIPPERY ROCK — Four Slippery Rock University students and their instructor spent the first part of January way, way out of their comfort zones.
The quartet of music education majors spent Jan. 3-12 in a very different culture by teaching elementary and high school students in Santa Fe, N.M.
It was part of an inaugural winter session course called Field Experience Immersion in Music devised by their teacher, Kathleen Melago, an assistant professor of music education and supervisor of music student teachers.
“This is the first time we've done this,” said Melago. “I came up with the idea. This is an official course through the university. It was worth one college credit.”
“Last January, a friend of mine commissioned six pieces for flute and clarinet. She works at Eastern New Mexico University, and we premiered the pieces at the school,” said Melago. “My husband and I spent two nights in Santa Fe, and we were struck by how different it was out there.”
“We went to a church and half the Mass was in Spanish and half in English. The people, the culture and the food were so different from what it was here,” she said.
According to Melago in its 700 year history, Santa Fe has been home to 11 cultural groups: Native Americans, Spanish, Mexicans, Crypto-Jewish, Celtic, German, Greek, Japanese, Tibetan, Sikh and Central Americans.
Today, she added, the Santa Fe Public Schools are part of a “tri-cultural tradition,” including Native American, Spanish and Caucasian.
“I got to thinking about expanding the students' horizons. It's a fun place to go and very different from here,” said Melago.
Melago said she worked with Leanne DeVane, the music education coordinator with the Santa Fe Public Schools, to set up the program.The four students, all music education majors pursuing their bachelor's degrees, were Megan Gallagher, a senior from Berwick; Preston Charlesworth, a senior from Chambersburg; Benjamin Lombardo, a senior from Canonsburg: and Michael Zech, a junior from Pittsburgh.“It was asking a lot of them. They know Slippery Rock, but when you are talking about the other side of the country, I'm glad they were enthusiastic about it,” said Melago.The students observed, assisted and taught in different schools.“Each of our students was placed with one or more teachers from Santa Fe,” Melago said. “Each person had a very different experience because each person was placed with different teachers in different schools.”The students attended the New Mexico Music Educators Association conference in Albuquerque and participated in numerous opportunities to experience New Mexico culture.“We had the opportunity to learn about mariachi music and we really don't have these types of guitar programs here. There was a whole concert with 40 guitars playing on stage,” Melago said.She said the students kept a journal of each day, wrote lesson plans where they were teaching, kept a log of hours spent in professional development and wrote a summary of their experience which factored into their grades.“It's hard to sum up honestly. Our students had a chance to see what music was like outside of Pennsylvania,” said Melago.“I absolutely loved the experience. I have never been that far West, so the chance to travel so far was very exciting,” Zech said. “The teachers I met and got a chance to work with were outstanding, and it was a very rare opportunity to learn so much.”“We don't have a high Hispanic population in Western Pennsylvania, but a lot of the country does” Melago said, adding the trip will help the students learn to engage with people different from themselves and to appreciate the wealth of cultural diversity.Gallagher said, “I really loved the experience. It was so much more than I could have ever hoped for, and I feel that in those two short weeks, I grew in leaps and bounds in the way that I approach teaching.”“I taught at El Dorado Community School in the Santa Fe school district, at K through eight school, where I got to experience first through fourth grade general music, seventh and eighth grade piano lab, fourth and sixth grade choir, pop choir (an auditioned group of students in sixth through eighth grade singing popular songs in three part harmony), and fifth through eighth grade band,” she said.“ I was able to take something away from each class I observed and taught,” Gallagher said.Was the culture really that different?“Yes and no,” Zech said. “It really depended where we were. Santa Fe only has a population of around 70,000 people, and it's a large mix of white and Hispanic, so my school was around 30 percent Hispanic students.”“But in schools right outside of the main town, Hispanic and Native American children would be near 90-95 percent of the school,” he said.“I also noticed that the family bonds are much stronger there, to a level I rarely see here on this side of the country,” Zech said.Gallagher said, “The people of Santa Fe are much more open to people they have never met before. They are very friendly and inviting. The community seems to be very arts oriented and has a very creative atmosphere.“I enjoyed spending time on the weekend walking around the square and checking out the art, vendors and food. The food in Santa Fe is wonderful, and much different from what I could find here. There are green chiles in almost everything, and they are delicious!” she said.“It really opened my eyes to the different types of educational systems the United States contains,” Lombardo said. “ I had no idea that schools could differ so greatly from one side of the country to the other. It really was that different. There were times when I felt like I wasn't in the United States at all.”“I feel very fortunate to have learned so much, and to bring back with me different strategies of communicating with students,” Lombardo added.Melago said, “My plan is to do it again in 2017, offer it every other year. Going back to Santa Fe, that's my plan.”
