Enriching Education - Brooklyn Music Teacher Uses Hip-Hop and Hungarian Methods to Turn Middle Schoolers into Concert-Worthy Composers

When Ted Stafford moved to New York City in 1993 with the dream of becoming a rock star, he never imagined he’d instead become a transformative educator whose unique way of teaching music theory is changing how middle schoolers think about music, creativity, and themselves. 

 

“Composing is the basis for my entire middle school program,” says Stafford. “By 4th Grade, my students can sight sing to some degree, and they know the basics of quarter notes, eighth notes, intervals of major scales, and so on. That’s when they’re ready to start making their own music.” 

 

Stafford, who teaches music at Saint Saviour Catholic Academy in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, is formally trained in the Kodály method, a singing-focused approach to music education created in the 1930s by legendary Hungarian composer and musicologist Zoltán Kodály. But unlike the Austrian folk songs that formed the basis of Kodály’s method, Stafford teaches using music his students are more likely to resonate with.

 

“Kodály believed kids should learn to sing at a young age, and that popular folk songs were the best way to engage them. But this isn’t 1920s Austria, and since folk music really means the music of the people, in modern Brooklyn that means pop and hip-hop,” says Stafford. 

 

Teaching songs they recognize gives Stafford a chance to connect with students on their own level while they also explore other musical styles and histories, including folk, classical, Native American, and African. By inviting them to identify melodies, chords, and other musical components in songs they’re familiar with, Stafford’s students learn how songs are constructed across cultures, which then leads to them composing their own songs, and eventually having their original songs performed live. 

 

This year, Stafford’s 4th Graders are writing their own musical based on the Declaration of Independence, 5th Graders are creating pieces that use a 4-measure melody, 6th Graders learn to play ukuleles and master chord progressions while creating digital video game music, 7th Graders study hip-hop and film scoring, and 8th Graders incorporate everything they’ve learned into creating their own original choral movements and EDM tracks.

 

The variety of music knowledge his students absorb mirrors Stafford’s own musical background: he’s a guitarist with piano training who played trombone as a kid, performed tenor and alto sax and french horns at gigs, and even got really into bluegrass. He says his greatest love of all is heavy metal, but that might be changing: “Growing up, I didn’t really like hip-hop. Then I started teaching it to get in good with my 7th and 8th Graders, but I realized I didn’t know it well enough, so I needed to go deeper. Now I love hip-hop as much as metal.” 

 

As for his own musical dreams, Stafford says he’d love to help music become as vital a part of education as English.

 

“If I’m being honest, I’d love to see composing become as common in education as writing paragraphs,” says Stafford. “If kids can learn to write essays, why not symphonies?”