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Introducion

The purpose of this column is to provide both pre-service and in-service teachers with practical ideas and resources for implementing the MayDay Group's Action Ideals.

Members are invited to submit descriptions of specific practices and programs that

* enable and encourage long-term music making rather than musical actions that likely will not continue outside of the context in which they are taught,

* relate to the current social/cultural environments of the students and communities served rather than to limited views of "good" or "aesthetic" music,

* connect musical experience with a variety of human needs rather than aiming exclusively at supposed highest needs such as self-actualization,

* aim at fulfilling current human needs through innovative practices rather than merely at conserving the status quo of specific institutions and/or traditions,

* integrate musical knowledge and music teaching with other disciplines rather than maintain the relative isolation and disjunction of music within formal education,

* value individual and collective teacher understandings that arise through practice rather than give priority to empirical studies, and/or

* stem from empathetic reasoning rather than from unreflective adherence to specific methods and/or standards.

Coordinator

Vincent Bates taught music (band, choir, general music, musical theater, guitar) at Tintic High School and Eureka Elementary School in Eureka, Utah for twelve years. He has earned degrees (BME and MM) from Brigham Young University and a PhD in music education from the University of Arizona where he studied with Steve Paul, one of the founding members of the MayDay Group. Vince now teaches music education courses and horn at Northwest Missouri State University.