Actual Music Addresses Educational Needs and Provides Solutions
The Actual Music Program, developed by The Cleveland POPS Orchestra, addresses a primary component of child education and development:
Educational and developmental opportunities that improve the school readiness of underserved children by providing support in the critical area of arts and culture.
We believe that the primary mission of our Actual Music methods can be summarized by four pillars of intellectual and social support:
- Success in social development
- Success in school work
- Success in intellectual development
- Success in dealing successfully with life’s challenges
The Actual Music Program has been developed according to the guidelines and standards set by the Ohio Department of Education for Pre-K through second grade. The program has been carefully created to encourage each child and each teacher to engage wholeheartedly in the mind-improving and body-stimulating world of music, dance and the performing arts. With ongoing teacher training and involvement, the program continues to “live” beyond our initial five sessions of teaching by our professional staff in the schools. A teachers’ website adds even more training and reinforcement to the continuing development of the students and their classroom teachers. In simple terms: the Actual Music staff is in the school for five weeks, but gives the classroom teacher the tools and skills to continue the program throughout the school year.
Our program is designed to emphasize the basic joy and fun of music, singing and dance, while improving the child’s social skills, stressing Patience, Respect and Teamwork. Age appropriate exercises stressing rhythm, posture, breathing, counting, diction, etc. work beautifully in music just like the ABC Song helps with learning the alphabet. Singing and dancing together as a group teaches the children the arts of patience, respect and teamwork, as well as listening skills for learning. Dance movements also help with counting skills and spatial development. We have developed a method that results in a group of young children playing songs on miniature pianos with remarkable precision, as well as singing as a choir and performing a choreographed musical production for teachers and parents.
The Actual Music program has been certified according to the latest (2012) music education program set by the Ohio Department of Education, so that teachers can receive continuing education credits. All of our instructors are professional musicians, singers, dance teachers and degreed music educators.
The beauty of the program is:
- It is basic enough for laymen to continue the teaching process
- We bring it all to the classroom
- It fills the void caused by the elimination of arts education in many school systems.
- It offers an interactive experience that gives young children the chance to experience and actually participate in the making of music and dance, and really receive the intellectual, social and soul-satisfying benefits of an early introduction to music education.