Learning by Teaching: Oberlin Students Share Global Music with Young Learners

Through Oberlin’s Division of Pedagogy, Advocacy, and Community Engagement (PACE), college and conservatory students share the joy of music with the wider community. For students enrolled in PACE 103: Community Music Engagement in the Schools, that means a semester-long partnership with area elementary schools.

Led by Professor of Music Education Jody Kerchner, students in the course created and taught 40-minute music lessons for children at Oberlin and Western Reserve elementary schools. The course is one of the foundational offerings in the PACE Integrative Concentration, which teaches Oberlin students ways of connecting with local and global communities through music.

This fall, the Oberlin students taught third- and fourth-graders songs from Vietnam, Taiwan, and South Korea and introduced them to cultural instruments such as the gayageum and pipa. “We visited the schools’ music classrooms with the goal of introducing children to folk music that guest musicians would perform at a concert later in the semester,” Kerchner says. “It allowed us to present, at a basic level, the instruments, languages, geography, and cultural contexts of non-Western traditions.”

Children begin to lose their cognitive flexibility for embracing unfamiliar musical sounds in the middle-school years, explains Kerchner. “This makes early exposure to a range of expressive musical traditions especially important. Intercultural knowledge and experiences at the elementary-school age can also foster open-mindedness and empathy.”

The lessons culminated in a children’s concert on campus in November, an event supported by the conservatory’s Social Impact Fund. Approximately 300 children gathered in Warner Concert Hall, where wandering performers greeted them throughout the space. Guest musicians Angela Chong, Joyce Kwon, and Tina Huynh—affiliates of the Smithsonian Folkways educational program—led the young audience in cultural songs and games, with help from the Oberlin students. 

Oberlin students Parv Gosai and Choyi Lee also took to the stage, as did faculty members Alexa Still, Hyunsoo Kim, and David Kazimir, performing on flute, piano, and organ, respectively. Between pieces, the Oberlin students narrated fun facts about the music and instruments—ensuring that the children went home that day having learned something new. “Above all,” adds Kerchner, “we wanted the children to actively enjoy the musical experience, from hearing the Warner Concert Hall organ to engaging with the music.”