Thornhill Elementary (Oakland, CA): Emerging From the Fog of Music Integration
Updated on July 8th, 2008 • 
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written by alyson swihart, eric swihart, sallyann tomlin, and wesley j. watkins, iv, ph.d. with sidebar features by eric swihart
story: Isolated school with limited music-teaching capacity forms partnerships (with MILE and MIENC LLSN Network) that led to ever-deeper and richer music-integrated curriculum implementation, professional development, community building, and assessment practices. Early products are visible community-wide, and school faculty comes alive. School commits to pre- and post assessment rubrics, forms useful professional development exchange with local school, and is now on its way to becoming a scale-out hub in the area.
key elements:
- Gold Rush Musical: An important visible beginning for music-integration at the school—continues the following year and extends to other grades
- School Sing-A-Long: An important visible attempt to build community and social-emotional development through music
- Professional Development Exchange with El Dorado: Schools host site visits and share successes and challenges
- In-School scale-out: Backwards-mapping State Music standards through Grades 1-5
- The Jazz and Democracy Project: Effective use of music to teach social studies curriculum that students were having difficulty with
- Student and Teacher transformation: Several extended sidebar stories by Eric Swihart, especially as relevant to the Gold Rush and Sing-A-Long
- Increased commitment to pre- and post- assessments
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