Performances + Events
On Wednesday, December 4, Vanessa Trien, director of Early Childhood Education in NEC’s Expanded Education department, and Phil Berman, Early Childhood Education coordinator and faculty member, will lead a teaching artistry workshop called “Welcome to the Music Circle” that combines research on music learning and developmental stages of play with interactive modeling of teaching techniques. Beyond the workshop, Trien said, Expanded Education’s community-based Early Childhood Pilot Program is the perfect laboratory for NEC college students in the Teaching Artistry and Music Education concentration to learn and practice the skills needed to engage young students. Trien recently answered questions about NEC’s Early Childhood Education pilot program and how its work can serve both Boston’s children and the impact NEC and its students can have in their community.
Q: How does NEC’s Early Childhood Education pilot program function in the Boston community? Who does the program serve and what resources does the program call on to serve those constituents?
A: Thanks to a transformationally generous anonymous gift, New England Conservatory and the City of Boston announced an exciting new partnership in 2022 to expand equitable access to music education for Boston’s youngest learners. With the gift significantly increasing NEC Prep’s scholarship opportunities for Boston students, this partnership also led to NEC’s connection with two of Boston’s leading early childhood education organizations: ABCD Head Start and Ellis Early Learning. Beginning in Fall 2023, three professional teaching artists, trained by NEC, began offering weekly music classes for up to 560 infants, toddlers, and preschoolers at five centers across Dorchester, Mattapan, the South End, and Jamaica Plain. Now in our second year of program implementation, NEC has expanded its teaching team to six teaching artists at six locations, with the capacity to teach up to 734 students.
Q: Do families engage with other NEC programs as a result of the Conservatory’s involvement in the centers?
A: An integral part of the program is to shine a spotlight on NEC Prep’s course offerings for our youngest students, celebrating and expanding already existing, popular programming including the Suzuki Department’s Early Childhood Education course and Twinklegarten. We are extending choir offerings to younger students and have revived the Dalcroze Eurhythmics program. We are developing new programming for young students beginning their music journey at Prep, currently including Musical Explorers, Music Discovery, and the piano department’s newest class, Piano Explorers, to build foundational keyboard and music literacy skills in preparation for private piano study. As we develop the many facets of NEC’s pilot early childhood music program, with community-based music classes for Boston’s youngest students, classroom teacher and family engagement opportunities, programming connections at NEC Prep, and fruitful collaborations with the College’s Teaching Artistry and Music Education programs, NEC is in the unique position to have a strong social impact on expanding equitable access to high-quality music education in Boston.
Q: Can you talk about the impact a program like this can have on a child’s development?
A: As NEC President Andrea Kalyn aptly puts it, “Music is transformational. It connects the whole person — mind, body, and spirit — and so it can unlock the whole child.” The early childhood years, from birth through age 5, is a period of extraordinary growth in brains, bodies, and overall human development. Scientific research has proven that making, listening, and responding to music in these early years — singing with others, clapping a steady beat, moving expressively to music, exploring a variety of sounds and instruments — benefits the “whole child.” It stimulates the development of social-emotional, cognitive, and gross and fine motor skills. It helps children learn to regulate their behavior and manage their feelings, deepens connections with others, and fosters a sense of belonging. Making music is a richly multisensory experience and is one of the most beneficial activities to engage in with even the youngest of infants.
Q: Can you speak more to the connections the early childhood classes make between music and early childhood development?
A: In the Early Childhood Pilot Program’s weekly music classes, the Teaching Artists foster a sense of security and belonging through expected music routines, including hello and goodbye songs and transitional music cues. Students play stop-and-go musical games to develop listening, cooperative, and self-regulation skills important to ensemble music-making. They explore a variety of pitched and unpitched instruments and are exposed to a wide range of tonalities and meters, steady beats, and rhythm patterns, expanding their musical language and, in turn, developing their overall communication skills.
Q: What will the workshop on December 4 look and sound like?
A: Phil Berman and I have now co-led multiple professional-development workshops for classroom teachers in the use of music in daily teaching practices, and for the Early Childhood Pilot Program’s teaching artist team. We share complementary presentation styles of weaving information-sharing with experiential group music-making. As the “Welcome to the Music Circle” workshop title infers, participants should expect to dive into the joys of the early childhood music classroom experience through active singing, movement activities, and instrument play while understanding the intentional music-learning goals embedded in the activities. We will explore the fundamentals of multiple music teaching pedagogies and their applications in the early childhood classroom, and how it all relates to early childhood development. This workshop is intended for the teaching-curious musician, the music-curious teacher, and seasoned teaching artists who want to develop their knowledge and skills in working with the very youngest students.
Q: How do you envision this Pilot Program integrating with the Conservatory’s Teaching Artistry and Music Education concentration?
A: Phil and I were invited by NEC’s Community Engagement and Performances (CEPS) department to present this workshop as part of our ongoing collaborations between Expanded Education’s Early Childhood Pilot Program and the College. Since the program’s launch last year, Phil has presented three early childhood workshops for NEC’s Foundations of Teaching Artistry class. I have taught in Tanya Maggi’s intensive “Musical Storytelling” course and hosted undergraduate and graduate students as they presented interactive “musical storytelling” performances to preschoolers at each of the early childhood partner sites. CEPS and the Early Childhood Pilot Program co-presented a “Spring Music and Stories Fest” at NEC in May 2024 featuring student performances, an instrument petting zoo, hands-on instrument crafts, and an interactive sing-along. Expanded Education’s community-based Early Childhood Pilot Program is the perfect laboratory for NEC college students in the Teaching Artistry and Music Education concentration to learn and practice the skills needed to engage young students. For the first time this fall, we welcomed three student Teaching Fellows, who will be assistant teaching in the early childhood music classes at Ellis Early Learning throughout the school year. We are laying the groundwork to further strengthen collaboration throughout NEC as an institution while integrating relevant, impactful experiential learning for students.
Learn more about the December 4 “Welcome to the Music Circle” workshop. Applications for NEC Prep spring classes, including Early Childhood offerings, open in early December.
