Fiona Cunningham

“What’s the biggest thing keeping you up at night, as a leader or as a teaching artist?”

When Nikoletta Polydorou, founder of Sistema Cyprus, recently posed this question to music-for-social-action leaders and teaching artists across different countries and contexts, one concern surfaced repeatedly: when a program’s purpose isn’t clear, and collectively owned, the learning is less focused and effective.

That first day, I felt like a teenager: somewhat defiant, hesitant to initiate, eager to observe, even mistrusting…but also wanting to chat, meet people, laugh, and share.

AIM knew what they were doing. We’d found ourselves on the other side of the classroom, sitting in the student chair. And in experimenting with ways to develop our own community and agency—our capacity for action—as educators, we found ourselves viewing students’ needs with new empathy.

Nuestros cinco pilares de la práctica no sólo articulan las áreas en las que nuestros becarios Firebird se comprometen a estirar con sus estudiantes. También sustentan el enfoque de AIM sobre la formación de profesores.Los profesores necesitan y merecen participar en un aprendizaje empoderador y experiencial que les sirva de base para apoyar a sus alumnos.