ABSTRACT
The heart of the Fertile Ground Framework is the young adolescents who take middle level general music. This chapter begins the focus on these young adolescents by addressing the multifaceted developmental needs and cultural identities young adolescents in middle level classrooms embody. Young adolescents need teachers in all subjects who are attuned to the developmental changes they are experiencing, open to responding to students’ cultural and personal identities, aware of the individual home and personal circumstances of each student, and willing to create learning environments to facilitate these evolving and vacillating developmental needs and cultural identities. Consideration of students as whole persons with multifaceted needs and identities, the first democratic principle outlined in Chapter 1, is an essential foundation upon which successful middle level education rests. When students feel that their intertwined identities are not valued, they will not make themselves vulnerable in learning, an essential element for creative learning in general music. Thus, it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that all students feel safe and comfortable expressing their most authentic identities and changing selves in the middle level general music classroom.
