For this Educator, Quaver provides the Key
By Kristin Clark Taylor
Listen to her speak, and you know it immediately: Michelle Lopez is passionate about music.
Her passion extends far beyond the mere musical note, however.
Lopez, a music educator at St. Thomas University-Houston, is also passionate about the connection between music, learning, and life itself.
“Music speaks to the whole human being,” she says with conviction. “It’s relevant to everybody, at every level.”
Lopez should know.
She’s taught music classes at many different levels, and she’s used Quaver as her “go-to” resource consistently.
Throughout the entire course of her eighteen years as an elementary music educator, Lopez says she relied on Quaver in her classroom because the curriculum was so diverse and engaging, and because the ability to customize the lesson plans “allowed me to reach every student and to teach the way I wanted to teach.”
There were also other benefits.
“Quaver,” she says, “also helped create opportunities for me to have important conversations with classroom teachers in other subjects who needed to understand the direct link between music and learning.”
Lopez, who first became a passionate advocate of arts integration at the district level as an elementary music educator, even created an “arts integration campus” where classroom teachers could learn to weave music into their curriculum to help improve test scores in other subjects like math and reading.
As both an arts integration advocate and an elementary music teacher, she often used Quaver to emphasize the point that the arts are a bridge to cross-curricular academic growth and to emotional development as well.
“I wanted to make sure fine arts teachers were not just viewed as leftovers. Music is relevant way beyond the music classroom.”
Lopez also appreciates Quaver’s commitment to educating the whole child is long-standing, heartfelt … and genuine.
“You can tell by the way the lessons are designed that they want to develop every part of the child,” she continues. “Not just academic growth but emotional growth, too. That puts them ahead of the game. Nobody else is really doing that.”
Today, as a music educator at the college level, Lopez has just recently designed a brand-new symposium for incoming freshmen.
She’s named the class “Music Makes You Lose Control!” because she wants her students to learn about the various genres—and joys—of music.
“I want them to get to know famous composers throughout time, from Beethoven to SZA!” she says with enthusiasm.
SZA is one of today’s most popular singers and songwriters – “and obviously way different from Beethoven, but this is the kind of range I want to create!”
The mention of Beethoven brings her back to Quaver again.
“I love all of Quaver’s lessons about composers,” she says, “so I’ll definitely be using some of the classical music lessons and videos in this freshman symposium.”
“The classical videos are almost like a music history lesson. It’ll be a fun way to learn about that period of music.”
Michelle Lopez, a music educator at St. Thomas University-Houston, says she’s excited about using Quaver’s classical music videos in her upcoming freshman symposium.
Within the Lopez clan, music is definitely a family affair: Her husband is also a music educator — and her four daughters are all musicians.
Even when they were small children, Lopez says all four of her daughters loved music.
She pauses momentarily here to reflect on the important role music played during her own childhood — and how music helped her master other subjects as well.
“As a child, I remember using music to help me in other subjects, too,” she recalls.
“When I needed to memorize certain words in science or history, for example, I’d put those words into song,” she explains. “Turning the words into lyrics actually improved my cognition.”
What Lopez is describing from her own childhood is precisely what Quaver is doing to this very day: Quaver uses music as the tool for learning, understanding, and self-discovery.
There is indeed a direct correlation between music and improved test scores in subject areas.
Music helps unlock those doors.
And Quaver provides the key.
For more information on QuaverMusic, go to QuaverEd.com/Music.
Kristin Clark Taylor is an author and a journalist.
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