CFP: Sound in the K-12 School, Due 4/15/2017

Pencils Down: Sound in K-12 Schools–Due April 15, 2017

Any day in a K-12 school involves movement and sounds day in and day out: the shuffling of desks, the conversations among classmates, the fire drill alarm, the pencils on paper, the picking up of trays of food. When the students leave school, they leave behind deafening silence. However, in many conversations about schools, teaching, and learning, sound is absent.

For this year’s annual “World Listening Month” Forum on SO!, we are interested in short essays (~1500 words) that engage with sound in K-12 schools. Consider the meanings, histories, definitions, and cultural implications of the sounds of teaching, the sounds of learning, and the sounds of educational policy. What does teaching k-12 students sound like? What does learning sound like?

Your writing (or sounding!) can be personal, critical, historical, academic-y, or an iconoclastic mix of all of those. We welcome research-based posts and posts examining aural experiences through a first-person narrative style; many of our posts mix both. We also welcome ideas for podcasts as well as artistic posts that use the blog format to create an original audio-visual experience. And even though this CFP is guided by rather abstract questions, we seek posts grounded in concrete examples.

Write your 250-word pitch and send it to Liana Silva (lms@soundingoutblog.com) by April 15, 2017. If chosen, your draft is due at the end of May. The series will be published in a special series this July, so make sure you have time for edits in June. And don’t forget to read our submission guidelines before sending us your stuff. Good luck!