The change needed in urban music education not only relates to the idea that music should be at the center of the curriculum; rather, it is that culturally relevant music should be a creative force at the center of reform in urban education. Teaching Music in the Urban Classroom: A Guide to Survival, Success, and Reform is the start of a national-level conversation aimed at making that goal a reality. Its diverse authors range from classroom music teachers to inner city arts administrators to well-known academics and policy-makers from across the United States and Canada. This first of two volumes includes topics such as Cultural Responsivity, Music Teacher Stories, Teaching Strategies, and Alternative Teaching Models. Author perspectives vary from political to philosophical to practical nuts-and-bolts aspects of reaching kids in urban schools. Editor, Carol Frierson-Campbell begins the conversation by sketching the historical response to inner city music education from the Tanglewood Symposium to the present time. As she notes, while 'urban issues' have been at the forefront of the music education conversation for almost 40 years, they have not yet reached the 'tipping point' needed to create change. These authors, whose voices are distinct and yet united, challenge music educators at every level to tip the issues in the direction of change. This book includes an introduction by Carol Frierson-Campbell and contains fourteen chapters and authors: Chapter (1) Defining Ourselves as Other: Envisioning Transformative Possibilities (Cathy Benedict); (2) Cultural Clashes: The Complexity of Identifying Urban Culture (Donna T. Emmanuel); (3) Building Confianza: Using Dialogue Journals with English Language Learners in Urban Schools (Regina Carlow); (4) White Teacher, Students of Color: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Elementary General Music in Communities of Color (Kathy Robinson); (5) The Challenges of Urban Teaching: Young Urban Music Educators at Work (Janice Smith); (6) Teaching Music in Urban Landscapes: Three Perspectives (Carlos R. Abril); (7) Motivating Urban Music Students (Elizabeth Ann McAnally); (8) Differentiating Instruction in the Choral Rehearsal: Strategies for Choral Conductors in Urban Schools (Daniel Abrahams); (9) Building an Instrumental Music Program in an Urban School (Kevin Mixon); (10) The String Chorale Concept (Jeanne Dolamore); (11) The Small, Big City in Music Education: The Impacts of Instrumental Music Education for Urban Students (Karen Iken); (12) A New Sound for Urban Schools: Rethinking How We Plan (Frank Abrahams and Patrick K. Schmidt); (13) Music of Every Culture Has Something in Common - and Can Teach Us about Ourselves: Using the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method (Edward Green and Alan Shapiro); and (14) Music Educators in the Urban School Reform Conversation (Carol Frierson-Campbell). [Forward written by Willie L. Hill, Jr.]