Welcome to the story of jazz and the American experience.
NEA Jazz in the Schools takes a step-by-step journey through the history of jazz, integrating that story with the sweep of American social, economic, and political developments. This multi-media curriculum is designed to be as useful to high school history and social studies teachers as it is to music teachers.
Each of the five lessons contains an opening essay, video, music, photographs, discussion questions, and other resources. Each lesson contains practical suggestions for effective ways to use the materials.
We hope that these lessons serve as an exciting jumping off point for you and your students to learn more about jazz and its unique connection to our nation’s past and present. Please accept this invitation to bring the wonders of jazz to a new generation of Americans!
We suggest that you begin by reading the essays and scanning the lessons. As you do so, you might think about how you could place these within your curriculum.
These lessons are designed as units; five units serve as a week-long curriculum. If you plan to teach a lesson per day, you might find that there is more material than can be taught in one class period. This allows you to pick and choose the items that best suit your students, your curriculum design, and your teaching goals. You might draw on an entire individual lesson or components of several lessons. Alternately, you could spread the units, or elements from the units, across the semester.
Note that each lesson fulfills National Curriculum Standards for social studies, history, arts education, civics and government, and geography.
- The struggle for civil rights
- The pluralistic character of American culture, especially in cities such as New Orleans
- Arts and culture as a reflection of historical events
- Jazz as a metaphor for American identity
- The effect of technology on American culture
- The increasing urbanization of America
- Arts and music as a means of self-expression
- A Lesson Essay written by scholars in the fields of jazz and history; hyperlinks on the website direct you to music examples and photos included in the guide
- A Major Artists section featuring short biographies of important jazz artists of each era
- Lesson Objectives focusing on American history and jazz
- The National Curriculum Standards met by this curriculum
- Suggested Steps for Teaching the Lesson
- Discussion Questions
- Student Activities
- Additional resources including recordings, videos, books, and websites; we encourage you to seek out other recordings and live performance opportunities for your students
- A Student Assessment with 10 multiple-choice questions; essay questions can be developed from discussion questions if you need further assessment
- A Glossary providing definitions for musical terms
Listen
Link to a related musical excerpt.
Look
Link to a related photograph.
Watch
Link to a related video.
Major Artist
Link to a short biography and related resources.
NEA Jazz Master
This icon identifies the artist as a recipient of the NEA Jazz Masters Award. For more information click here
Learn
Link to more information related to this key term in the essay.
