NEA Jazz in the Schools is a web-based curriculum designed for high school teachers and students to explore jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a means to understand American history. The free, cross-disciplinary curriculum, produced in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center, is available online at www.neajazzintheschools.org. The units meet lesson objectives and national curriculum standards in five subject areas: U.S. history, social studies, arts education/music, civics and government, and geography.

NEA Jazz in the Schools provides five flexible units, each of which can be taught in a day or expanded into a more comprehensive series of lessons.

• The five units of NEA Jazz in the Schools are The Advent of Jazz: The Dawn of the Twentieth Century; The Jazz Age and the Swing Era; Bebop and Modernism; From the New Frontier to the New Millennium; and Jazz: An American Story.
• Each unit includes:
• An introductory video;
• A lesson essay;
• Links to a wealth of multimedia resources (musical excerpts, period photographs, and additional sources of information);
• A teacher’s guide with cross-curricular activities, assessment methods, and student activities.
• The curriculum’s multimedia content enhances the learning experience for tech-savvy students and provides teachers with varied tools for students’ participation.

NEA Jazz in the Schools is part of the NEA Jazz Masters initiative, a comprehensive program of jazz support that includes the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, NEA Jazz Masters Festivals, television and radio programming featuring NEA Jazz Masters, audio recordings, and publications.

The full curriculum was launched in January 2006 as an online resource and a toolkit and since has garnered much interest and many accolades. More than 13,000 teachers from more than 9,000 schools have ordered the toolkit, passing the materials on to another 212,000 teachers and so reaching more than 6.3 million students. In addition, hundreds of visitors per month use the curriculum online.

Among the teacher comments are:

“My heartiest of compliments to you on a fantastic web site and unique learning tool for teachers and students alike!...It is colorful, creative, decent recording quality and the site even LOOKS LIKE JAZZ!!!”
-- Mary Jo Papich, Fine and Applied Arts Chair, Highland Park High School, Highland Park, IL

“I used it with my classes and the kids loved it!!”
-- Dawn Miller, Lindsay Community High School, San Diego, CA

For further information on the program, send an email to info@neajazzintheschools.org or call Katja von Schuttenbach, phone 202.682.5711.

June 2008

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