The MusicsEnergy: Learning and Literacy Curriculum (ME: LLC) leverages the broad appeal of popular music and media to facilitate youth-friendly dialogue, instruction, and therapeutic interactions. This peer-reviewed, evidence-based approach to health education and media literacy provides the foundation for prosocial learning and healthy coping by addressing the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of dis-ease, the social determinants of health, wealth, and wellness, and provides tools to learn how to thrive in school and beyond.
ME: LLC is comprised of three courses:
MusicsEnergy: Reducing Dis-ease in America™
MusicsEnergy: Messages in Music™
MusicsEnergy: Songwriting with Young People™
Outcomes linked to this approach include measuring changes in:
1. Competence [cognitive, behavioral, and moral]
2. Engaged Teaching ,Learning, and Therapy
3. Bio, Psycho, Social, Emotional Wellbeing
4. Specific 21st Century Skills ™
5. Creative Expression
6. School-Connectedness
7. Entrepreneurship
Select state-adopted, national standards in the following five academic areas include:
1. Computer and Information Technology: Internet basics, MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint basics; how to identify accurate, credible, and reliable information.
2. English Language Arts: Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of the words.
3. Visual and Performing Art/Media Arts: Make connections between music, other art disciplines, other content areas, and the world.
4. Health Education: Analyze the influence of family, peers ,culture, media, technology, and other factors on health-related outcomes linked to behaviors.
5. Social Studies: Assessing the extent to which the reasoning and evidence supports author’s claims.
MusicsEnergy: Messages in Music ™[ME: MIM]
ME: MIM helps young people achieve higher levels of competence in five key areas of human development. The five areas are: cognitive, behavioral, emotional, moral, and social competence. Specific skills in these five areas are targeted and measures are taken at timed intervals to assess the uptake of knowledge, shifts in behavior, and behavioral intentions. Select skills include: cognitive skills [i.e., critical analysis and logic, including describing steps/rationale for decision-making, reading comprehension, critical listening, and critical viewing,]; emotional skills [i.e., identifying, expressing, differentiating feelings, assessing the intensity of feelings, identifying options and managing feelings, learning techniques to control impulses, learning techniques to effectively cope with and reduce stress, anger, sadness and excitement; learning the benefits of delayed gratification, and; social and behavioral skills [i.e., asking questions and learning how to ask progressively more thoughtful and thought provoking questions, learning how to take notes, learning the expectations and benefits of classroom participation]; and moral skills [i.e., learning how to assess and respond to ethical, affective, and social justice dimensions of situations that present moral dilemmas, demonstrating an understanding and respect for rules, demonstrating the ability to articulate the rationale behind making decisions when faced with a moral dilemma.]
ME: Reducing Dis-ease in America™ [RDA]
ME: RDA helps young people improve their self and social awareness by deconstructing race, class, gender, and sexual orientation/sexuality from a historical perspective through the contemporary lens of the Information and News Industries, and Media Entertainment [INIME™] with special attention to themes and messages in popular music multimedia. Over the course of seven units of instruction, students achieve higher levels of media literacy, self and social awareness, by focusing on the origins of poor health, economic disparities, and bio-psycho-socio- vulnerability domestically and internationally. Students gain a greater awareness and understanding of the origins of violence, aggressive behavior, trauma and culture, including individual and group adaptative and mal-adaptative responses. Students learn the protective and destructive roles of cultural norms and cultural attributes, historically and currently. Contemporary music from is used as prompts to facilitate dialogue and introspection about media’s role in shaping and reflecting perspectives about “realities”. Students learn to clarify and express their individual values – especially those values that align with or conflict with optimal bio-psycho-sociocultural and economic health and wellbeing. Students also learn to identify common stressors and coping strategies to mitigate negative outcomes linked to anger, stress, sadness, attention deficits, and other mood disorders. Additionally, student gain an understanding of the bio-psycho-socio-cultural and economic contexts that create health disparities in the United States and other nations.
ME: Songwriting with Young People™ [SYP]
ME: SYP introduces students to fundamentals of songwriting, music composition, production and recording technology. Instruction is from a socio-cultural perspective and encourages entrepreneurship, over the course of Levels I and II. Emphasis on creative, personal and social responsibility and marketing. Students also participate in seven units of instruction to help them achieve higher levels of awareness and mindfulness regarding the role music plays (and its potential) in four specific areas of human development during adolescence. The areas we address are: 1) Identity Development; 2) Values Clarification; 3) Effective Coping Strategies; and 4) Communication Norms. ME: SYP Levels I and II challenge young people to become conscious consumers, armed with knowledge, skills, abilities, and a heightened awareness of music and media’s powerful potential to change, shape, or shift attitudes, beliefs, choices, and perceptions, especially perceptions about self, others, and the world around us.
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