The Com­mu­ni­ty Music School of Water­loo Region (CMSWR) is based in Water­loo, Ontario, and since 2012, the school aims to pro­vide music lessons and music pro­grams to chil­dren and youth in the Water­loo region who are under­served or at-risk. The pro­grams aim to devel­op kids’ musi­cal skills, cre­ativ­i­ty, con­fi­dence, and love for music.

Pur­pose and Context

CMSWR aims to build musi­cal skills of chil­dren and youth as well as fos­ter­ing rela­tion­ships and build­ing com­mu­ni­ty. The school offers one-on-one music lessons and group music pro­grams, all deliv­ered by vol­un­teer music teachers. 

Social ser­vice agen­cies refer kids to CMSWR, and fam­i­lies can also fill out a self-refer­ral form. The school serves many fam­i­lies who are new Cana­di­ans, or who have come to Cana­da with­in the last five years. An addi­tion­al 30% of par­tic­i­pants are referred through men­tal health agencies. 

In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of music pro­gram­ming, CMSWR also lends instru­ments to fam­i­lies to be able to prac­tice at home, and has a nutri­tion pro­gram for fam­i­lies in the build­ing when lessons are offered.

Struc­ture of Lessons: Stu­dent-led learning

Music class­es at CMSWR are stu­dent-led rather than cur­ricu­lum-dri­ven. Vol­un­teer instruc­tors get train­ing to focus on meet­ing stu­dents where they are at, whether a stu­dent wants to learn clas­si­cal reper­toire, pop reper­toire, or impro­vi­sa­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly some stu­dents want to learn an instru­ment to a high lev­el of pro­fi­cien­cy; oth­er stu­dents are look­ing for enjoy­ment and connection. 

Activ­i­ties

First les­son is the ‘get to know you les­son’. Try talk­ing to the stu­dent about their favourite music; lis­ten to some exam­ples togeth­er. This helps bond­ing between stu­dent and teacher, and helps the teacher under­stand what the stu­dents likes to lis­ten to and how they interact.

Work­ing with neu­ro-diverse stu­dents requires dif­fer­ent strate­gies with­in a music les­son, such as get­ting stu­dents on their feet, use visu­als, and help­ing stu­dents focus on tasks.

Com­pe­ten­cies to do this work well

Flex­i­bil­i­ty: teach­ers need to be adapt­able and stu­dent-first, par­tic­u­lar­ly in work­ing with stu­dents from diverse cul­tures, with diverse needs. This some­times means that teach­ers need to take their own egos out of the pic­ture, as some stu­dents may not be there to become high-lev­el musi­cians or may not respond to con­ser­va­to­ry-style teach­ing methods.

Strong musi­cian­ship: teach­ers need to be pro­fi­cient in their instru­ment, with a lev­el of the­o­ry to sup­port stu­dents with diverse inter­ests and needs.

Able to con­nect with kids: instruc­tors need to want to work with kids, and be sen­si­tive to each student’s par­tic­u­lar con­text. Instruc­tors need to gen­uine­ly enjoy work­ing with kids. 

Atti­tude that aligns with the school: instruc­tors need to be able to work with kids and sup­port them on their music journey. 

What does suc­cess look like?

Suc­cess will look dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing on each stu­dent. In some cas­es, when a stu­dent feels moti­vat­ed rather than dis­cour­aged, or fig­ures out a par­tic­u­lar skill. Longer term, suc­cess is when stu­dents con­tin­ue to love music even after grad­u­at­ing from the program. 

Anoth­er indi­ca­tor of suc­cess is see­ing par­ents form­ing con­nec­tions with each oth­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly immi­grant par­ents con­nect­ing with oth­er par­ents who speak the same language.

End-of-year con­certs often show all facets of these suc­cess­es, as stu­dents feel a sense of accom­plish­ment in per­form­ing, and friends and fam­i­ly are gath­er­ing togeth­er to sup­port and cel­e­brate the students.

View sec­tions of the documentary:

00:00 Overview of school

02:15 Social and musi­cal goals of program

04:51 Stu­dent-focused rather than curriculum-focused

06:41 Com­pe­ten­cies that teach­ers need

10:54 What suc­cess looks like