Changing One's Tune: A Music Therapy STEM Integrated Project
Stress and anxiety has been on the rise for students in modern world. Learning how to cope with the many stressors our students face today is pivotal for any successful educational outcomes inside and outside school life.
In this project, the ultimate goal of the students will be to create a music therapy space. Hopefully it will be a place where students can find catharsis through several musical pathways:
(1) listening to music,
(2) learning about the physics of music,
(3) building instruments,
(4) playing the instruments,
(5) writing songs, and
(6) sharing their musical creations.
This will also be resource of peer-peer outreach where students can share their knowledge to teach others how to play the instruments. It will also be an inclusive space, where students of all learning capabilities will be welcomed and embraced.
Music Technology will include lessons on consonance and dissonance, ambient sound, music as therapy, making and playing instruments, and teaching others how to play their hand-made instruments.
The Physics component will include lessons on sound waves, scales, harmonics, notes, resonance, as well as building and playing their own musical instruments.
The role of Language Arts will be to include analysis and dialogues on articles on adolescent stress and anxiety, proposals of solutions to stress or ways to deal with stress through creative catharsis (e.g., creating a deck of cards with stress relief ideas), reading and writing lyrical and musical literature and proposal writing for creating 'maker spaces' on or off campus.
This unit is brought to you by Bob Habereder (CTE Music Technology), Alexia Wilson (ELA), and Alex Lowry (Physics) with support from the CTE Online curriculum leadership team and detailed coordination provided by the Course Team Lead Gregg Witkin.
