Marching to Their Own Beat

Souls, like music, start with a beat.

From there, we build. Next comes joy and pain, from our first kiss to our last goodbye—these are the instruments and voices that accompany the beat, building into a full-fledged human being. We take those experiences out into the world and join a chorus of other people, ultimately contributing to a symphony of love and sorrow that keeps us all moving forward.

But there is always the first beat.

For me, that first beat was heard by one of my elementary school teachers, Mrs. Lydia Richardson. She saw something in a shy boy from the Miami ghetto who stuttered (if he spoke). She knew music would bring that something out. She taught me to sing, and I learned new and different definitions of who I was—and who I could be.

From there, my song grew. In high school, I joined the band. Next, I was the first in my family to attend college. At Bethune-Cookman University, I was a drum major—now leading a band onto a field of hundreds of screaming fans. After graduating, I became a high school music teacher myself.

It was during my time as a music teacher that I first heard another beat.

Michael (not his real name) was 14 years old when we met. When he was in my class, he was often asleep, and I would later find out Michael slept at school because not only did his Miami project apartment have no air conditioning, but he was up all night selling drugs to support his family. Michael had already spent time behind bars and had been kicked out of school more than once. He was, for many people, a sad statistic to be vilified and campaigned against during election cycles.

But Michael started meeting me in the band room at 6:30 every morning when I arrived at work so that he could play the drums, and I heard something different. I remember pulling up a chair next to him one day, looking him in the eye, and telling him, “If you trust me and we rely on each other, I will make sure that you get where you want to go.”

And trust me he did. He was a natural drummer and, even more importantly, worked hard to master his skill. I worked hard at ensuring he knew his innate worth—if no one else heard him, I did.

Two years later, Michael was playing drums at a Miami megachurch, making paychecks bigger than mine. But his song was bigger than Miami. So, when he set his eyes on New York City after graduating from high school, I connected him with everyone I knew there, and off he went.

Today, Michael is the main drummer for a neo-soul legend and has traveled the world making incredible music—that all began with a beat in the heart of a poor 14-year-old kid who society had written off.

There is a rhythm to our lives.

I tell my story and Michael’s story to illustrate not just that our lives are so unique, but that they are special. They show us something specific and magical about music’s ability to connect us to ourselves and reveal our purpose. These stories are also a testament to the efficacy and value of an arts education.

An arts educator helped me find a new purpose in my life. And, as an arts educator, I saw purpose and potential in my students and gave them the tools to discover it for themselves.

Finding Purpose—and Joy

During my time as a high school music teacher, most of my kids were Black and Caribbean and had very little. These kids led challenging lives, dealing with poverty, crime, hunger, and other forces outside of their control. But in my classroom, they won some of that control back. By embracing the challenge of the instruments in their hands, they were giving themselves something new to understand and ultimately master on their own steam.

I know music kept me out of trouble and off the streets. The same was true for the kids I taught, who would be so worn out from practice that they didn’t have time to get into trouble after school. Mastering their instruments opened the door for them to opt for a greater purpose in which they felt joy and shared it by performing. It allowed them to reprioritize what was really important in their lives—not just what was easiest or most popular. Ultimately, I like to think that music saved their lives just as it saved mine, by offering them a structure on which they could build a new version of themselves.

It’s not just my anecdotal experience that speaks to this. A study that examined the impact of an arts initiative in Houston that involved 42 schools and over 10,000 third- through eighth-grade students illustrates how arts education can improve a child’s well-being. Students who had access to, on average, “10 enriching arts educational experiences across dance, music, theater, and visual arts disciplines” saw mental, behavioral, and academic improvements, including “a 3.6 percentage point reduction in disciplinary infractions, an improvement of 13 percent of a standard deviation in standardized writing scores, and an increase of 8 percent of a standard deviation in their compassion.”¹

Even a cursory glance at the growing body of research about music education reveals its amazing benefits for students’ academic experience. I’ll start with the obvious: test scores. A longitudinal study of 112,000 Canadian students found positive relationships between music participation and exam scores in English, math, and science.² Another study focusing on middle school students in California found higher scores on math and English language arts standardized tests for those who participated in instrumental music, band, or ensemble for at least one year.³ These results are in keeping with a body of research that has found a correlation between participating in a music education program or playing an instrument and academic achievement.⁴

Music education also seems to contribute to well-being and academic success in college⁵ and in students preparing for careers in healthcare. A disproportionately high number of musicians are admitted to medical school,⁶ and music participation has been shown to be a key indicator of academic performance and resilience in nursing students.⁷

This makes sense to me and to anyone who has had to learn the intricate and often confusing ways to not only play an instrument but make music. Due to its complexity, making music engages the technical and emotional parts of your brain and requires them to work in tandem. Children who engage with a music education have higher levels of brain plasticity⁸ and greater executive function⁹ and social-emotional growth,¹⁰ which can lead to better communication, critical-thinking, and cooperation skills.¹¹ And as in Michael’s story—and the stories of my other students who later became music ministers or wedding or corporate musicians—these skills can lead to satisfying, good-paying jobs both during school and later in life.

Inspiring Education, Community, and Activism

As encouraging as these study results are, students have to actually show up to benefit from an arts education, and that is not a given in our post-pandemic world. In the 2022–23 school year, 26 percent of public school students were chronically absent—missing at least 10 percent of the school year*—a sharp increase from the 15 percent who were chronically absent in 2018–19.¹² But that’s just the average: it has been said that when America gets a cold, Black folks get the flu. Over that same time period, absenteeism rates for nonwhite students rose from 17 to 30 percent, and for students in low-income, under-resourced districts, they rose from 19 to 32 percent.¹³

Though there are many tools educators and parents can use to help stem the tide of absenteeism, I can tell you through my own experience that an arts education can do wonders for preventing it in the first place. Before I truly gained a love of education, I was like a lot of kids, reluctant to sit through class. I was bored easily and tuned out when a subject no longer interested me. However, once I discovered the worlds that music opened for me, I became excited to go to school.

In learning to play or create music, kids enter a new world with its own language, culture, and customs in which they can become what they never before imagined—cultivating a love of learning from the inside out. I think back to Michael, asleep in my classroom until he picked up the drumsticks. Soon, he was the first to class and the last to leave. Arts educators have an incredible opportunity not just to introduce students to new ideas through the arts but to create a unique environment unlike other classrooms. By encouraging students to open their internal worlds, we can make school a soul-deep and cathartic experience they are unlikely to have elsewhere in their school day.

Thankfully, the truth of the matter is not dependent on my experiences alone. A study examining the impact of arts education on absenteeism among K–12 students in New York City schools concluded that the lack of arts education is a good predictor of high absenteeism rates, and the benefits of an arts education are most significant for elementary school children.¹⁴

In my experience, there is no better place to witness this in real time than watching children play in a band. They are having an intensely personal and communal experience by mastering their own instrument while ensuring it melds with the instruments and tempo around them. Playing in a band requires a sense of self and a sense of belonging to a larger collective simultaneously.

The sense of community that music cultivates is also key to the cultures many of our students are coming from. Black, Asian, and Latine students are often the children of parents who have experienced both societal and systemic discrimination and disenfranchisement. In response, their communities, neighborhoods, and churches have often produced music that not only dominates global culture but also is the soundtrack of political resistance and change.

Music has always been at the heart of social commentary and activism in our country. For every movement, there are songs that drive it and that give us the energy to keep pushing. Especially for those of African heritage, we know how music can define and refine the culture. Our ancestors turned spiritual songs into code, communicating crucial information they were forbidden to read, let alone share. Songs like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Wade in the Water,” and “Steal Away” were testaments to the power of music to unite people for a common goal, communicate details, and challenge the system of oppression they fought against.

That activism is seen in music from gospel to blues to jazz to rock to hip hop—moving from the interior of Black homes to national radio and beyond with the popularity of artists such as Melle Mel and the Furious Five, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Common, Beyoncé, and even Taylor Swift—but there was always a beat. Learning not only how to play an instrument but also its legacy in our history as a vehicle for articulating struggle and resistance is an important part of music education. Connecting then to now requires the critical-thinking skills and empathy that an arts education can provide and insulates our students from myopic visions of the past and, by extension, their future.

Funding the Future

Sadly, all of these benefits of arts and music education are not equally distributed across the country, and funding for it is hardly commensurate with its positive outcomes. While federal provision for arts and music education was made through Title I of the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act and allowed through the 2023 Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding following COVID-19, state and local agencies have broad discretion over how funds are applied.¹⁵ Recent data indicate that 92 percent of public schools have access to music education, but that access is widely inequitable. The millions of students without access are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, or Native American and go to school in low-income and urban communities.¹⁶

Music is foundational to our lives. We sing in the shower, we tap on our desks at work, we rap in our cars. We use music to amp up, to calm down, and to teach important concepts. Through it, we find ourselves, develop ourselves, and become better people. But when we downplay the arts by not properly funding arts and music education for all students, we downplay what music can do in us and through us. We must treat arts education not as an elective or an afterthought, but in the same way we treat math, reading, and other types of education. While schools are encouraged to increase funding for technology—computers and coding—the same does not go for music. My own experience as a music teacher has shown me schools with old, damaged instruments and educators who must dig in their own pockets to ensure their students have the right resources to learn and thrive.

Music not only unites us—through adversity and across demographics—but ignites a flame of discovery in a child. Some of my fondest memories as an educator are watching a school band perform for the first time in front of their families and peers. Until this point, we’d all heard them practice and it didn’t always sound great, but once they are marching together, performing together, everything changes.

I’ve seen their faces—both students and their families—when they hear all that hard work finally pay off. It does something to your heart to know these kids have found the motivation and discipline to be excellent. You see them taking that first step into their new future that began when they decided to pick up an instrument or sing out loud. As their teacher, my only job was to convince them that we could do this together and to guide them on their way. But we cannot work this magic without the support these programs need.

It all starts with a beat.

Fedrick C. Ingram is the secretary-treasurer of the AFT. Previously, he served as the president of the 140,000-member Florida Education Association and as an AFT vice president. In 2022, he was elected to serve as a trustee on the board of the NAACP Foundation. Early in his career, he was a music teacher and band director in Miami-Dade public schools; he has performed nationally as a saxophone soloist and conductor.

*To learn more about the impacts of chronic absence on student and educator well-being, see “Back to School.” (return to article)

Endnotes

1. B. Kisida and D. Bowen, “New Evidence of the Benefits of Arts Education,” Brookings, February 12, 2019, brookings.edu/articles/new-evidence-of-the-benefits-of-arts-education.

2. M. Guhn, S. Emerson, and P. Gouzouasis, “A Population-Level Analysis of Associations Between School Music Participation and Academic Achievement,” Journal of Educational Psychology 112, no. 2 (2020): 308–28.

3. M. Little, “Music Participation and Effects on Academic Achievement and Standardized Test Scores,” PhD diss., Capella University, March 2015, proquest.com/openview/c980d4340b5e02f623c68eb6fc8d5656/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750.

4. R. Román-Caballero et al., “Please Don’t Stop the Music: A Meta-Analysis of the Cognitive and Academic Benefits of instrumental Musical Training in Childhood and Adolescence,” Educational Research Review 35(February 2022): 100436; American Psychological Association, “Music Students Score Better in Math, Science, English Than Nonmusical Peers,” June 24, 2019, apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/06/music-students-score-better; D. Freeman and D. Shifrer, “Arts for Whose Sake? Arts Course-Taking and Math Achievement in US High Schools,” Sociological Perspectives 66, no. 2 (April 2023): 226–45; and B. Woodard, “KU Research Establishes Link Between Music Education, Academic Achievement,” University of Kansas, January 15, 2014, news.ku.edu/news/article/2014/01/14/ku-research-establishes-link-between-music-education-and-academic-achievement#:~:text=LAWRENCE%20%E2%80%94%20University%20of%20Kansas%20researchers,in%20student%20achievement%20and%20engagement.

5. C. Hadlock, “School of Rock: The Relationship Between Music Training and Academic Achievement,” Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology 13, no. 2 (2018); and J. Jiang, “Impact of Music Learning on Students’ Psychological Development with Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy and Self-Esteem,” PLoS One 19, no. 9 (2024): e0309601.

6. A. Lotfi, “How a Music Background Can Help Premed Students,” U.S. News & World Report, November 2, 2021, usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-doctor/articles/how-a-music-background-can-help-premed-students.

7. K. Mthimunye and F. Daniels, “Predictors of Academic Performance, Success, and Retention Amongst Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Systematic Review,” South African Journal of Higher Education 33, no. 1 (January 2019): 200–220.

8. A. Rodrigues, M. Loureiro, and P. Caramelli, “Musical Training, Neuroplasticity, and Cognition,” Dementia & Neuropsychologia 4, no. 4 (December 2010): 277–86.

9. L. Bayanova, E. Chichinina, and M. Aslanova, “The Association Between Music Training and Executive Function in 6–7-Year-Old Children,” Frontiers in Education 9 (2024): 1333580.

10. J. Váradi, “A Review of the Literature on the Relationship of Music Education to the Development of Socio-Emotional Learning,” Sage Open 12, no. 1 (2022).

11. Merit School of Music, “How Playing an Instrument Makes You Smarter,” meritmusic.org/how-playing-instrument-makes-you-smarter.

12. S. Mervosh and F. Paris, “Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere,” New York Times, March 29, 2024, nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/29/us/chronic-absences.html.

13. Mervosh and Paris, “Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded.’”

14. Metis Associates, “Connecting Arts Education with Attendance in New York City,” metisassociates.com/case-studies/connecting-arts-education-with-attendance-in-new-york-city/#:~:text=Study%20Finds%20More%20Arts%20=%20Better,substantial%20at%20the%20elementary%20level.

15. National Association for Music Education, The Impact of Federal Funds on Music & Arts Education: Results from 2023 Survey; a Report for Music and Arts Education Advocates (Herndon, VA: November 2023), nafme.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/November-2023-Federal-Funds-Issue-Brief-Arts-Advocates.pdf.

16. Arts Education Data Project, “Millions of U.S. Students Denied Access to Music Education, According to First-Ever National Study,” September 12, 2022, artseddata.org/millions-of-u-s-students-denied-access-to-music-education-according-to-first-ever-national-study.

[Photos, from top: AFT; Allison Shelley / The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages; courtesy of Fedrick C. Ingram; Tancread / Flickr, converted from color to black and white]