Connection & Community: An Introduction

by Dr. Amy Lewis

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As music educators and music teacher educators, we hold great responsibility to cultivate a music learning environment that embraces our shared humanity. The purpose of this series is to highlight how music educators understand the current political climate in order to strengthen our ability to create learning spaces that reject and resist all forms of oppression and prejudice. The particular focus of this series includes stories on how music educators navigate their experiences of ICE intimidation and how they deal with the rise of fascism in the United States. 

Connection & Community, a series, is an extension of an event hosted by the NAfME Social Justice Special Research Interest Group. Music educators and music teacher educators gathered in February of 2026 to discuss these issues with a panel of expert educators. In this panel discussion, teachers from Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Boston discussed their experiences based on these two guiding questions:

  1. What role does music teaching/learning have in developing a sense of care and a recognized sense of our humanity?

  2. How have you navigated teaching and learning with threats or fear of ICE occupation and raids?

After the panelists shared their stories, all attendees had the opportunity to connect with each other in breakout rooms where everyone asked further questions and shared personal reflections. 

This blog and video series highlights the stories shared at that panel discussion event. By using kitchen table talks from McNeill et al (2021) as a grounding frame, the contributors of this series center the importance of storytelling as a means of knowledge-sharing. The stories that the contributors share are meant to be a resource for music teachers and music teacher educators who are curious about how to best equip their learning spaces in ways that center humanity.

In the poem, One Year to Life On The Grand Central Shuttle, Audrey Lorde emphasizes how hope is counterrevolutionary and suggests that instead, pressure cooks. This quote reflects the contributors’ desire to share knowledge that enables music teachers to generate pressure for the common good and our shared humanity. The timeliness of this series can be seen in the continued state violence perpetrated not only by ICE but other events of systemic violence throughout the United States.

Citation:

McNeill, O., Love, B. L., Patel, L., & Stovall, D. O. (2021). “No Trifling Matter”: A Kitchen-Table Talk on Abolition and Fugitivity. Equity & Excellence in Education, 54(2), 112–120. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2021.1951634