Teacher

I'm an Assistant Professor at the University of West Georgia. I got my first taste of teaching in middle school, when my choir director asked me (the designated piano player) to run sectionals; I'm still ignited by helping other people get better at making music. I've taught kids (as young as five), amateur adults, and working musicians. At the college level, I've taught 79 sections of nineteen different courses, at six different institutions (including three years at Oberlin Conservatory).

In recent years, much of my attention has been devoted to issues of equity in music instruction. I work in a program that places virtually every one of our music education graduates in teaching jobs, and they shape the P-12 education landscape in West Georgia. My vision is to make it so that my students' students encounter a music curriculum that honors all kinds of music and musical creators. And I aspire to have an even broader impact: as I develop teaching materials, curricular structures, and instructional policies for my own program, I try to share them publicly as much as possible, often on Twitter (@bengeyer).

The centerpiece of this work is my free textbook, Music Theory in Mind and Culture, (2021) which has been used at DePauw University, the University of New Hampshire, Arizona State University, and Ithaca College, the University of Michigan, and others. I hope Music Theory in Mind and Culture can offer both a model for how a more equitable music theory curriculum might be designed, and the practical materials to implement it.