For my service-learning project, I will be working with early-emergent multilingual students at my public, title-I K-5 elementary school. Many of these students have only recently emigrated to the United States, and have come in through the county’s International Transition Center to be placed in neighborhoods and communities with other families with similar cultural backgrounds.

Within the last few years, we have welcomed in countless new students from Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, China, Russia, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, and The Dominican Republic. These students receive language services from our Speech-Language Pathologists and our English as a Second Language teachers within our school building, who might serve as community partners for the service-learning project.

My service-learning project will serve as an experience for these early-emergent multilingual students to establish friendships with one another as a community as they experience and create music together. Through this experience, these students will be able to feel a sense of collective community with others who, although may come from a different cultural background, may share similar experiences, emotions, trauma, and stories. Through drumming and movement, these students will have a way to feel success as they create music with one another, even without the usage of language. Utilizing my own professional training in drum circles, resources by percussionists and music teachers, and introductory language experience in many of the languages spoken by these early-emergent multilingual students, I will be able to create an environment that is comfortable for musical and social-emotional explorations.

-          Innovative and multicultural drum circle training

-          Introductory training in World Music Pedagogy

-          Advanced knowledge of Spanish language

-          Introductory knowledge of Ukrainian, Russian, French and Portuguese languages

-          Level II certification in Orff-Schulwerk pedagogy

-          Mary Knysh, Kelly Mraz, Samuel Holmes, James Allen – music educators with specializations in percussion

-          Emily Backus – music educator specializing in restorative drum circle techniques

-          Victor Lozada – music educator specializing in emergent multilingual students and literacy strategies

-          Speech Language Pathologists and ESL teachers at my school