Adaptive Music Instruction: Making Music Accessible to Students With Disabilities
Presented by Kelly Surette
Adaptive Music Instruction: Making Music Accessible to Learners With Disabilities addresses the long overdue conversation about the landscape of adaptive music instruction and the ways it can radically transform the lives of students with disabilities and teachers alike. Through opportunities for both student centered and teacher based learning, a multi-sensory teaching approach, environmental, activity, and physical adaptations, and an emphasis on genuinely connecting to each student through their preferred method of communication this presentation outlines exactly how music and the performing arts can be made accessible to all learners, including those with hearing loss. The Challenge: Students with disabilities and Deaf and Hard of Hearing learners with disabilities are not receiving the music and arts education they deserve. Why? Misconceptions about their disabilities…i.e. Deaf and Hard of Hearing students have no interest in music, students with disabilities can’t learn music the way their typically developing peers can, students with physical challenges can’t play musical instruments, etc. The Solution: Adaptive Music Instruction: music education designed specifically to meet the individual needs of every student. Through opportunities for both student centered and teacher based learning, a multi-sensory teaching approach (multiple entry points through sound, sight, and tactile stimulation), environmental and physical adaptations, and an emphasis on genuinely connecting to each student through their preferred method of communication, music and the performing arts can be made accessible to all students.