Erin Gough
Old Songs, New Opportunities
Posted by Mar 18, 2013 4 comments
Erin Gough
It is a familiar trope that early childhood teachers claim that they get as much out of teaching young ones as students get out of their lessons. They do it for the love of children, the excitement of youthful discovery, and the joy of nurturing rather than a hefty paycheck. My own mom, a longtime preschool teacher, often says she gets “paid in hugs.” But for some women in Erie, PA, early childhood instruction is a gateway to a new life.
The Old Songs, New Opportunities (OSNO) program at the Erie Museum of Art creates opportunities for refugee women to use traditional skills and cultural assets from their home countries to begin to build a career as early childhood educators. This program—one part job training, one part cultural education, and one part early education—has been transformative for the both the women who go through the museum’s training, and for the students they care for.
Through OSNO, women who were expert caregivers in their home countries and are interested in learning the ins-and-outs of the American early education process are provided with over 50 hours of accredited instruction in basic child development theory, discipline and alternatives, the role of the childcare work, and how art, music, and movement aid physical and mental development.
At the same time, these women provide exposure to and instruction of their cultural traditions to fellow OSNO trainees, and create a tapestry of song and tradition that bonds teachers with students, and teachers with one another.
Kelly Armor, director of education & folk art, has seen the program grow over the years:
"It is wonderful to see these immigrant women valued as a resource, and that properly leveraging their indigenous knowledge has turned them into marketable employees. Those working in daycares have blossomed. They have more confidence, and clearly love their jobs."
As American parents increasingly treat music making as a performance activity only, the traditional learning songs these women bring to the classroom can seem like a novelty. American parents tend to rely on professional recordings as entertainment rather than engaging children with instructional songs, but those involved with the OSNO programs have seen that instructional music making can, and does, grow children’s social, cognitive, and motor skills, and can help some children to start kindergarten at the same level as their more affluent peers.
Colleagues of OSNO trainees are thankful to see their early education song repertoire grow and expand. Armor says that the songs these women bring from their home countries “are truly a treasure to anyone who works with young children. There is a reason that they have been passed down generation after generation. They are catchy, encourage physical coordination, strengthen improvisation skills, teach co-operation, and bring real celebration and joy to any classroom.”
In the past ten years, the Erie Museum of Art has been able to host three training sessions with about 15 women at a time, and has been featured by the National Endowment for the Arts. The intensive program requires a significant amount of funding, and is also sensitive to world and cultural events that impact refugee populations.
Fortunately, the Erie Art Museum was awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and a matching grant from the Erie Community Foundation for an expansion of Old Songs, New Opportunities in Fall 2012.
The Museum will now be able to provide professional development at every site of Erie County’s three largest child care providers, deliver follow-up training for early child care providers and parent outreach, and offer more job training and internships for 30 additional refugee women who would like to learn to work in American daycares.
The greater Erie community is lucky that this program will be able to grow and continue, and that more early education classrooms will be infused with the gifts and talents of women who have come seeking a better life.
Comments
Hi Kaya,
We'd LOVE to share what we are doing with other museums...it actually would be a viable fit for history or children's museums. We hope to present at the AAAM and NAEYC conferences in a year or so. We are doing lots of PD locally, so if you are near Erie, let me know.
Thanks,
Kelly
Thanks, Korbi!
We currently sell three different CD/booklets, one from each of the three previous trainings. We are currently working on vol. 4. We'll have it ready in May! You can find volumes 1-3 on erieartmuseum.org, just go to the gift shop section of the website.
I do so agree with the "recording dependence"! I am gently reminding teachers that they wouldn't dream of passing out coloring books but using recorded song instead of actually singing to the kids is very similar!
Thank you for sharing this wonderful program with us, I am excited to read more about OSNO. What a great community asset to use a peer education model to share cultural knowledge as a means to tackle many issues including the recording dependence in classrooms. I would love to get to listen to and use the songs you are collecting!
This should be a program in a dozen more museums! Is there any PD or sharing initiative? Have any other musems expressed interest in learning how to create such a program?