Music Teacher Newsletter: National Month Newsletter Ideas

Music teachers have an advantage with awareness-month newsletters that most subject teachers do not: you can include a listening link. A newsletter about Black Music Month that links to Louis Armstrong playing West End Blues, Ella Fitzgerald scatting on How High the Moon, or Mary Lou Williams's Zodiac Suite does more in 30 seconds of listening than three paragraphs of description. Use it.

Music in Our Schools Month (March): advocate with data and evidence

March is the primary advocacy month for music education nationally. Use it to make a case for your program with actual numbers. "This year our ensembles have collectively rehearsed for more than 400 hours, performed 14 pieces across three public concerts, and logged an estimated 4,000 hours of home practice. Research on music education consistently shows that students in music programs graduate at higher rates, perform better on spatial reasoning assessments, and demonstrate stronger verbal and reading skills than comparable students who are not in music programs. That is not because music students are different. It is because music education develops specific cognitive habits that transfer."

Include one quote from a current or former student about what the program has meant to them. The human element makes the data feel real rather than abstract.

Black Music Month (February or June): center the music, not the month

"We are in the second week of our unit on the Great American Songbook. This week we are looking at the composers who built it: Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Harold Arlen are well-known names. Less well-known: Duke Ellington wrote more than 1,000 songs, many of which are performed more often than the famous names. Billy Strayhorn wrote Lush Life and Take the A Train, two of the most recorded songs in jazz history, while working in Ellington's shadow for decades. Fats Waller, Mary Lou Williams, and Jelly Roll Morton built the rhythmic and harmonic vocabulary that jazz inherited. We are learning the music these composers wrote and the history of why some names are remembered and others were not."

Hispanic Heritage Month (September to October): connect to the current repertoire

Here is a newsletter excerpt that connects Hispanic Heritage Month to active repertoire:

"This month we are learning a Latin jazz arrangement of Tito Puente's Oye Como Va for jazz band, alongside our fall concert piece Fantasias for the Common Man, which draws on Cuban son and mambo rhythms in its second movement. I want students to understand that what they are playing has roots. Tito Puente was born in New York to Puerto Rican parents and became one of the most important figures in Latin jazz and salsa. The clave rhythm that the rhythm section is learning to feel in Oye Como Va is the same rhythmic foundation that underpins salsa, mambo, and much of the popular music of the Caribbean and Latin America for the past 70 years. These are not exotic rhythms. They are one of the most widely heard rhythmic traditions in the world."

Jazz Appreciation Month (April): give families a way to listen

April is a natural time to introduce families to what jazz ensemble students are working on. "April is Jazz Appreciation Month. Our jazz ensemble is performing at the Spring Arts Festival on April 25. Before you attend, I want to give you some context for what you will hear. We are performing three pieces: Miles Davis's Freddie Freeloader, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, and an original arrangement of Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely. Listening to the original recordings before the concert transforms the experience. Here are the links: [Spotify links to each piece]. Notice in Freddie Freeloader how each soloist enters, plays for a chorus or two, and passes it to the next player. That is what your student is doing when they improvise. They are entering that conversation."

Women's History Month (March): highlight women in the canon

"March is Women's History Month. In our repertoire this year, we are playing one piece written by a woman: Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral, one of the most widely performed contemporary orchestral works in the United States. Higdon is a Pulitzer Prize winner and was one of the first women to have her work performed regularly by major American orchestras. In jazz, we are studying Mary Lou Williams, who was improvising and composing at the highest level in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, a period when women instrumentalists were rarely taken seriously. We are learning her Zodiac Suite this month."

Close with a listening recommendation for families

Every awareness-month newsletter should end with a listening link and a one-sentence invitation. "Ask your student what we are listening to this month in class. Then listen to it together. You do not need to analyze it or know anything about music. Just listen. Students who know their families are listening alongside them feel more connected to the work." One ask, specific, and completely free. That is the right close for a music awareness-month newsletter.