Ken Giles set out to make history come alive for his students through music. What the Shepherd Elementary School teacher achieved was an unprecedented, full-length production that is now a national model for educators. Shepherd, located in a diverse section of Northwest D.C., is being featured in the current issue of Teaching Music for the program, dubbed “Songs of Freedom: 150 Years of American History and Song.”
Although it’s not uncommon for schools to put on musicals, “Songs of Freedom” stands out because Giles managed to take 25 songs, put them in chronological order, pick historical characters and then mold them into a cohesive story involving all 300 students on campus.
He also did it in a school system that has struggled to bring arts and music education to its students. “This was all true, all history, so it went beyond storytelling,” he said. “Rehearsing taught the students reading, social studies at the same time as music.”
Another standout about “Songs of Freedom,” which the student body performed in February, was the subject matter. Often, historically driven musicals cover “the more official history,” such as the presidents and big wars. Giles, whose background has included stints with labor choruses, wanted to teach about a less-known part of this country’s past — social movements.
As such, some of the featured characters include anti-slavery figures like Harriet Tubman, and civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. and Marian Wright Edelman, the first black female lawyer admitted to the Mississippi bar.
Eras in history were broken down by grade level. According to Giles, first-graders represented the anti-slavery movement, second-graders the labor movement, third-graders the emergence of blues and jazz, fourth-graders the Harlem Renaissance, fifth-graders the introduction of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and sixth-graders the civil rights movement. Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students, meanwhile, rounded out the chorus.
Giles said perhaps the biggest challenge was finding enough practice time. Altogether the effort took several months and involved devoting classes’ entire music time to the program. But Giles said students’ intensity made the experience especially fulfilling.
“This dealt with what you might think of as adult themes and yet the students handled it in a very mature way and really learned that there was a chronology to history,” he said.
