How can educators use music to expand engagement in subjects across curricula?

By Lauren Barack
Published in K-12 Dive on May 4, 2022

English teacher Lakisha Odlum likes to play music, including John Coltrane, to “set the tone in the classroom,” she said. This might happen when students are working on projects or when they’re holding their annual poetry cafe. 

She finds the lyrics can provide a gateway to poetry lessons, helping to make the prose more accessible in her classroom at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Queens in New York. Linking music to curriculum works because students are often already listening to music when not in the classroom and view it as something relaxing — not rigorous, Odlum said.