Ithaca College School of Music assistant professor Baruch J. Whitehead has been chosen to present a session at the 2005 Eastern Division Conference of MENC: The National Association for Music Education, which takes place March 3-6 in Baltimore, Maryland. The topic of the session is "Children of the World: A Look at Multicultural Music for the Elementary Classroom."
Whitehead, an assistant professor of music education at the College, is an elementary music specialist with the Orff-Schulwerk process and the founder of the Ithaca College Orff certification program. He presented a research paper titled "The Effect of Music-Intensive Intervention on Mathematics Scores of Middle and High School Students" at the International Arts and Humanities conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. Whitehead also presented a workshop on African and Native American music at the 2004 International Society of Music Educators in Tenerife, Spain. His article titled "The Spirit of the Schulwerk" was published in Reverberations.
He is the director of the multicultural chorus, Voices, in the greater Ithaca community and founder of the African dance and drumming ensemble at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center. Whitehead is co-director of the Community Unity Music Education Project, an after-school music program for underrepresented students at the Southside Community Center. He is a gospel music specialist and advocate for the preservation of gospel music within mainstream musical settings. He studied African drumming and dance in Ghana, West Africa.
Whitehead has been chosen to write a chapter on music in the civil rights movement for the upcoming book titled Music and Peace. He was chosen from among scores of applicants for this prestigious event. The presentation will focus on multicultural music education in the elementary classroom. Participants will learn how to present multicultural material in a culturally sensitive way.
Thousands of music educators are expected to convene in Baltimore, Maryland, to celebrate the importance of music education for all through performances and workshops by some of America's finest educators and most talented school groups from the eastern United States. More than 100 symposium workshops and educational sessions will be devoted to a wide range of music education issues, including early childhood music education, curriculum building, assessment strategies for performance ensembles, and new technology. Performances include the Fred Hughes Band, Juanita Williams, and Rockapella. Other highlights include an evening performance by the Boston Brass and the Get America Singing...Again! program by Roger Emerson.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20050228091339114