World Music in the Schools residencies offer your students weekly classes that facilitate cross-cultural learning opportunities in the performing art traditions of the world. A semester or year-long residency will allow one or more of our highly skilled teaching artists to visit your San Diego area school on a regular basis to mentor your pre-K–12 students.
This unique program provides extended, hands-on performance experience in music and dance, drawing from your school’s choice of six broad culture areas: South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Europe.
World Music in the Schools offers students experiences that help create a broad, global perspective. In addition to facilitating mastery of concepts and skills in rhythm and melody, the program promotes the development of self-expression, self-confidence, and social skills like teamwork and empathy.
Music and dancing makes me at peace with the world and at peace with myself.
—Nelson Mandela
The hands-on study of music is particularly well suited to the development of interpersonal, emotional, and cognitive skills in children. Music and dance engage our faculties on numerous levels, using multiple parts of the brain simultaneously to complete and integrate tasks and to enhance memory.
World Music in the Schools residency programs will tailored to fit the schedule, grade levels, resources, and goals of your school. Program length ranges from eight up to as much as thirty-two weeks. During this time, a Center for World Music teaching artist will visit weekly, guiding students through a deep exploration of a specific musical or dance tradition.
In your World Music in the Schools residency program students will
- Practice techniques specific to art forms from around the world, with options from dancing to singing to playing instruments
- Develop concepts and skills in rhythm and melody
- Play insturments, dance, and/or sing individually and with others
- Learn to pronounce and use words in new languages
- Explore world geography, history, culture, and traditions
See our teachers in action!
View this video for samples of K-12 music and dance lessons, workshops, and demonstrations:
Here’s a list of schools that have participated in our World Music in the Schools program, with those engaged over the last year highlighted in bold.
Questions about World Music in the Schools? Feel free to contact Stefanie Schmitz, our schools program director
If children hear fine music from the day of their birth and learn to play it, they develop sensitivity, discipline, and endurance. They get a beautiful heart.
—Shinichi Suzuki