May 2022

In 2010, I started my journey with music education as a full-time teacher at a private school in Amman, Jordan. The immediate result came fast: I resigned after the first week.

Music for social change is a field with enormous potential, yet one that has not been fully realized because of a central paradox: a common reliance on musical and educational practices that have little to do with social change.

Founded just before the pandemic, #LearningPlanet has spent the past two years connecting educators across the world who work with young people to effect social and environmental change. You know the arts are an essential piece of that puzzle—let’s make sure they’re represented in these global conversations.

Access to music education can be a potent antidote to despair for students and their teachers, families, and communities—one of the very few ways that people of vastly different social classes in Haiti can meet and interact as equals. As one of our scholarship participants stated, “music helps one become human.”

At Expression Engine, we hire our students. Our students are our expansion plan, our growing capacity, and our future. We hire them as interns at 14, and, since they have already been participating in peer teaching, they are ready to step up. “The Engine” belongs to them, and they know it.

Several of our Ambassadors had become busy with school, concerts, and auditions, and were unable to attend every meeting. Others had to stay up late at night or get up really early in the morning to participate. We asked ourselves: what if we created our entire composition asynchronously, to make it easier for everyone?

Ensemble editors spoke with three Firebirds about which teaching muscles have been most transformed, asking them to describe a specific change that they attribute to their experience in the Fellowship. Their responses were rich, thoughtful, and relevant in any classroom.