Dr. Ermolaeva became a certified Music Together© Instructor in 2014 and earned her Level I Certification in September 2019. She began teaching at the Music Together Princeton Lab School in 2017, where she continues to teach today. In 2018, she joined the Music Together Song Advisory Board as a founding member and serves as a musicological consultant, conducting research into the origins of songs in the Music Together curriculum and advising on their appropriateness for early childhood music classrooms.

 

Bringing together her training as a musicologist and her experience as an early childhood music educator, Dr. Ermolaeva provides guidance on the inclusion of traditional children’s songs in the curriculum. She was honored to serve as the keynote speaker at the Music Together Annual Convention in May 2019, where she presented her research on traditional song inclusion in early childhood music education.

 

Dr. Ermolaeva’s research explores cultural appropriation in American children’s music, as well as the racist origins of many children’s songs in blackface minstrelsy. Her article, “Dinah, Put Down Your Horn: Blackface Minstrel Songs Don’t Belong in Children’s Music Class,” which examines “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” has received over 250,000 views on Medium.com.

 

She has presented her research on racism in childrens music at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and the University of Northern Kentucky

 

Dr. Ermolaeva would be delighted to present or lead a workshop on anti-racism in children’s music at your next conference or professional development event. Please contact her at contact@katyaermolaeva.com to inquire.