Molholm Elementary: Diversity in the Classroom Reflection

As a student teacher at Ute Meadows Elementary and a student of my cooperating teacher

Fritz Anders, I had the rare opportunity to travel and work with another amazing educator: Carrie
Nicholas. Ms. Nicholas is the general music teacher at Molholm Elementary School in
Lakewood CO. For an entire day, I was able to watch Ms. Nicholas teach, as well as work with
her students for a short 15-minute lesson during each class period. I found this especially eye-
opening in two different ways: Ms. Nicholas taught using the Kodly method, where as I
primarily use the Dalcroze approach, and I was able to observe and work in a classroom that was
extremely diverse.
On their website, Molholm Elementary states that Molholm has an exemplary one-way
Dual Language Program for our native Spanish speaking students, focused on bi-literacy and
biculturalism, and calls it a major source of pride for their community. I was excited to observe
and work with these students, as Ute Meadows Elementary was not particularly diverse in
ethnicity, race, socioeconomics, etc.
Upon entering the classroom, I first noticed that about 70% of students in the classroom
were Hispanic, and about 20% of them were far more comfortable in speaking Spanish than
English. At first, I was a little shy, as I had not yet had the opportunity to work with such a
diverse group of students, but I was quickly able to immerse myself in their classroom culture. I
joined in in singing all of the songs and playing in all of the games being taught during each
lesson. Every time I sat next to a student, I asked them their name and tried to establish a quick
relationship with them by complimenting them on something they were doing exceptionally well
with the content. I felt like I was a student with them in their classroom.
At the end of each lesson, Ms. Nicholas gave me the opportunity to teach a couple of
Dalcroze activities that I had been using at Ute Meadows. In order to create effective interactions
among students, I had to take language barriers into account. I primarily taught all of the content
I had planned visually and kinesthetically. If there was a movement I wanted students to follow
me on, I demonstrated it. When I wanted students to respond to something I played on the piano
with a movement, I had student volunteers demonstrate what I wanted them to do. Furthermore,
when I was teaching activities such as my list activity (exemplified in standard 1.c.) I asked
individual students to come up with their own animal, element of nature, work task, etc. that they
wanted to show/become. This allowed students to represent who they were and what they were
interested based on what they wanted to become. Furthermore, students could relate to all kinds
of animals, elements of nature, work and more regardless of their background. This created a
sense of community among students. They could be what they wanted to be, but could also learn
what other students were interested in.
During my list activity, one student even told me that he wanted to be a burro, Spanish
for donkey. At first, we had trouble communicating in what he wanted to be, and what the other
students thought he wanted to be. It took us a couple of minutes of collaborating and
demonstrating what a burro looked like before we were all able to become donkeys as I played a
galloping 6/8 melody on the piano. Ms. Nicholas was also very helpful in providing some
translation for students.
In this scenario, diversity was a great asset in the classroom. Not only were we able to
learn about music, and our natural human responses to music, but we were able to access and use
ideas of students from multiple different cultures. Furthermore, were we able to learn about
musical concepts and characters in two different languages, which is especially helpful in
providing understanding and challenging students in a bi-cultural school such as Molholm
Elementary School.
I had two major takeaways from this experience. One, was that diverse environments lead
to diverse ideas which allow for more overall learning and community creation in the classroom.
I also notice that while each student may have had different cultural, racial, religious, and
socioeconomic experiences from each other and myself, that we were all students, equally valued
and represented in the world of music learning.