Town and gown: models of musical collaboration. (College Faculty Forum).

I recently asked the director of a large community music school how a newly established branch of that school was doing. My colleague answered, "Not as well as we'd hoped; but they don't really know us yet." This conversation seemed very relevant to a topic musicians encounter regularly: How can all of us involved in music teaching, music learning and music making help to weave music into the fabric of everyone's life? How can the work of the college, conservatory, community music school faculties and independent teachers matter to people who do not have or want careers in music for themselves or their children? How can public school teachers (of music and all subjects) not only feel the excitement and integrative nature of music study, but also work hand in hand with students and teachers from their communities who are passionately committed to music study?

At the 2001 MTNA conference in Washington, D. C., we heard firsthand, about the teaching experiences and school and community collaborations of Roberta Guaspari, who was a violin teacher in East Harlem and the subject of the 1999 movie Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep. In the October/November 2001 issue of American Music Teacher, we read about Midori Koga's inspiring work on music study for the aging, including the touching story of her grandfather, who returned to the violin in his eighties. While attending the 2002 National Summit for MTNA Leadership in Cincinnati, I learned of a recent project related to teaching the elderly, implemented by Martha Hilley, NCTM, and Waneen Spirduso of The University of Texas at Austin. The research project involved teaching two group piano classes for Austin area senior citizens age 70 to 85. Two graduate students from the university joined Hilley and Spirduso, the director of the Institute for Gerontology. They collaborated with an occupational therapist from the medical community to work with elderly beginning piano students. Hilley will further introduce this program during the College Faculty Forum (CFF) panel session at the National Conference.

Piano pedagogy programs frequently invite children from local communities to enroll in lessons for modest fees, giving new teachers and teachers-in-training the opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills to lessons for an eager constituency. The Small Miracles Foundation, founded by Westminster Conservatory teacher Robert M. Diefendorf, partners with area public schools to find children who want to study piano but need scholarships to do so. The college and conservatory provide space for lessons and practice; the undergraduate pedagogy program provides the teachers. Small Miracles designs the policy statements, creates a network for families and also solicits financial support from local businesses to place pianos in the homes of the children. I will present more information about Small Miracles during the CFF panel session.

At the New England Conservatory (NEC), school partnership programs involving the well-known public radio broadcasts of From the Top, the in-school programs sponsored by Young Audiences, Inc., and a laboratory charter school where children are admitted on a lottery basis to partake in a music-based curriculum are just three programs emanating from the Learning Through Music project. Professor Larry Scripp is at the helm of this program, part of a national consortium he founded for helping teach performance and education majors how to develop skills in collaborative models of teaching and learning. Jean Stackhouse, a CFF member, will report on some aspects of the NEC collaborative program.

The Center for Educational Partnerships in Music at Georgia State University (GSU) was founded by David Myers, a professor in the music education department. Meyers directs Sound Learning, a project funded by the Texaco Foundation, which partners GSU, the Atlanta Symphony, Young Audiences of Atlanta, and the Fulton County and Atlanta City Schools in a curriculum-based music education program featuring monthly classroom visits by professional musicians. He is GSU's principal investigator for a consortium grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) with the NEC and Northwestern University, which supports pre-service education about collaborative skills for future music teachers. At the CFF panel session, Myers will describe these programs and address the implications for music curriculum changes in higher education.

The CFF panel session, "Town and Gown: Models for Collaboration in Music" will be held March 17, 2003, during the National Conference. We invite you to learn about and discuss the details of these programs. Following the session, there will be a reception for college faculty. We hope the collaborative models presented and discussed at this meeting will lead to many more musical partnerships between "town and gown."

--Phyllis A. Lehrer, NCTM National College Faculty Forum Chair Kendall Park, New Jersey She is a professor of piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton, New Jersey.