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Over the past several months, public schools across the United States have experienced a surge of migrant students. This sudden influx of these students has caught many schools and teachers off-guard as they struggle to find and pull together available resources to meet the newcomers' needs. Although the U.S. has a long history of receiving immigrants from all over the world, the educational response schools provide immigrant students remains a controversial topic. In this column, I would like to briefly introduce the historical context into which public school education is situated in addressing immigrant students. Then I'll share some research-informed advice for teachers to consider as they receive migrant students into their classroom. While I do not intend to be overly theoretical, I do hope that these research-informed ideas will inspire and intrigue teachers to learn from the migrant students and create a welcoming environment that better meets the needs of migrant students.

As more states pass bills banning critical race theory in schools, it is especially important for teachers to understand what critical race theory is and the implications of such bills. To understand what critical race theory is and intends to do. I look at its origins and how it has been employed in the field of education. Recognizing the legacy of European colonialism in music education, I propose that teachers critically examine our own subjectivities and engage with students' counterstories to disrupt the dominant narrative.

Cultural diversity is not a new concept in the field of music education. Yet minoritized groups continue to face systematic discrimination. Given the shifting cultural realities, how we as music teachers move beyond recognizing diversity but sustain the various cultural and linguistic ways of being of our students becomes a crucial question. I explore the concept, culturally sustaining pedagogy, as coined by H. Samy Alim and Django Paris and offer some pedagogical approaches for music teachers to consider in this column.

'I wish to be wordless' connects Chinese philosophical thinking to music education at large. Through discussions of values associated with the Chinese instrument guqin, Leonard Tan and Mengchen Lu exemplified [...]

In this column, I explore the relationships between identity work and the sense of belonging. I argue that the absence of critical conversations such as race may prompt students to fit in but does not warrant a sense of belonging. Using a research study on Asian immigrant students as a reference point, I propose that we consider students' engagements with music beyond the classroom as potential sites for critical analysis of elements that play into their realities and frame how they see and understand the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this column, I shared my experiences of inviting students to bring in their "funds of knowledge" into the classroom. Acknowledging the diverse cultures in the classroom, I am interested in how students' funds of knowledge can be celebrated, sustained, and potentially transformed into collective knowledge. Specifically, I am curious how different music traditions and styles interact and generate new conversations. Through this experience, I came to realize the importance of addressing the historical burden many minoritized carry and wonder, "can I be more than the race you see on me?" I share my own experiences to encourage fellow teachers to continue reflecting and attending to the students in front of us. Creating an inclusive classroom requires us to go beyond the present and create space for the changing, the emerging, and the unknown, through which our students may be more than what we know and build a better world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this column, I direct the readers' attention to issues that deserve to be addressed in the postpandemic classroom. While recent reports identified that learning loss, social isolation, political turmoil, and social upheaval have put an enormous strain on students' mental health, I invite the readers reflect on your own experiences and consider pedagogical shifts that would help us meet the students where they are. I propose that topics like uncertainty, flexibility, and versatility should also be taken into serious consideration as we plan for the next school year. I end this column with a few curriculum ideas and suggest that we make space for uncertainty in our classroom and create space for what could yet become. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As schools reopen and students return back to the classrooms, music teachers are faced with the challenge of how and what we could do (and continue to do) to support the well-being and music learning of our students in crises. I suggest that teachers take into consideration the various elements involved in creating engaging learning experiences. Recognize the changing classroom climate and student-teacher/student-peer relationships in the virtual classroom, it is necessary that we consider how to spark students' motivation and generate meaningful dialogue, what strategies we apply to help our students develop critical thinking skills; how we connect with our students and address their emotional well-being while being physically separated from each other. As trivial as these ideas may appear on the surface, I believe that only when we truly listen and attend to the needs of our students will we provide the space for our students to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing diverse student population in the United States, schools across the country face the challenge of addressing cultural diversity in the classroom. While this topic is not new in the field of music education, researchers argue that voices of minoritized groups remain absent in most music programs. Even if different music cultures are introduced, they often reinforce existing racial/ethnic stereotypes. In this column, I would like to share one concept that I found helpful in addressing diversity in the classroom. Through my own work, I learned that the music with which students engage outside the classroom affords rich potential to discuss issues related to diversity. Inviting students to bring in music that matters to them helps them develop their own voices and to recognize and respect different voices, through which we acknowledge the complexity and multiplicity of how diversity plays out in human experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]