QuaverEd celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusiveness both in our company environment and in the resources and services we provide to teachers and students around the world. We develop and support the following curriculum resources: QuaverMusic, QuaverSEL, Quaver Pre-K, and Quaver Music Integration.
Our Beliefs
We have empaneled an Equity Committee within QuaverEd that meets monthly to discuss issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in our resources. The foundation of the Committee’s work is based on the following beliefs.
- We believe in equity, diversity, and inclusion: that all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, disability, economic status, religious background, sexual orientation and identity, academic standing, or exceptionalities have the right to a well-rounded education.
- We believe that teaching and learning is about helping develop the whole child academically, socially, emotionally, and physically.
- We believe that equity, diversity, and inclusion are critical to ensuring a welcome and safe environment for children in school so that learning can be achieved.
- We believe that technology is a great equalizer, one that affords an incredible opportunity to provide access to high quality education, both in the classroom and at home.
To support these beliefs, we are committed to the following principles:
- Developing curriculum resources that are culturally accurate and representative of the diverse population of students and teachers we serve.
- Providing teachers with age-appropriate resources and professional development to inform their students about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Proactively ensuring there is no potentially offensive or inauthentic material in our resources through our Equity Committee.
- Regularly re-evaluating our resources via educator feedback from the classroom and through the wider lens of current best practices for teaching and nurturing children.
- Working towards digital equity, ensuring that student accounts are free in licensed schools to ensure equitable access to high quality learning resources, both in school and after the teaching day ends
- Creating a company environment that celebrates diversity of all types.
We understand that the pursuit of these principles is an ongoing process, and we invite feedback from our educators, parents, and community members. We seek and use this input to continually strengthen our position as an advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusion in the classroom and beyond.
Our Curriculum Library
As an educational company and a market leader, QuaverEd is committed to maintaining quality and well-rounded curricula that promote equity, diversity, and inclusion.
To ensure our curriculum library meets these standards, we regularly reevaluate our resources with best practices for teaching and nurturing children in mind.
- Our Equity Committee that meets monthly to review diversity, equity, and inclusion in our resources.
- We also convene stakeholders, researchers, and experts in the field twice a year to review emerging research and requests for revision that have been received.
- Our Equity Committee studies this research and consider revisions to our resources.
- We announce any revisions to our song catalog in May and remove any identified resources in July.
Resources Removed from Library
As a result of this process, we have removed or revised a number of resources within our curriculum. Examples include:
- We removed anything that might be seen as promoting violence, such as paintball guns and explosion sound effects, from our student website.
- We adjusted our student avatars to be gender neutral and continue to add more accessories to represent all students including wheelchairs, head coverings, and more.
- We have examined all our videos for potentially offensive material and removed sections that might be considered offensive by others.
Song Library Updates
Our evaluative process includes examining offensive or inauthentic resources considering racist, adult, or culturally insensitive themes. Songs that are determined to have been created to demean a group of people will be removed from our resources, through the Equity Committee’s process of monthly reviews, and replaced, when appropriate, with a piece that will help teachers meet the same musical objectives.
Below, we present a list of songs that have been removed from our resources along with titles currently located in the Quaver library that can be used to address the same concepts. In future releases, you will see newly composed songs in place of these pieces that aim to offer your students a joyful learning experience with your guidance.
| Date | Songs Removed | Concept | Suggested Substitution |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2020 | Buffalo Gals | AB Form | Hunting Song The Happy Farmer |
| August 2020 | Canoe Song | Low E and D on instruments | Old MacDonald Overdrive |
| August 2020 | Chicken on a Fencepost | Sixteenth notes | Look at All the Hens |
| August 2020 | Dinah | Sixteenth notes | Old Brass Wagon Paw Paw Patch Tideo |
| August 2020 | Jim Along Josie | Choreography Improvisation | Tideo |
| August 2020 | John Kanaka | Sixteenth notes | Old Brass Wagon Paw Paw Patch Tideo |
| August 2020 | Old Dan Tucker | Low so Low la | Old Brass Wagon Turn the Glasses Over |
| August 2020 | Shortnin’ Bread | L, dr toneset Minor key Call and response | Boots of Shining Leather Charlie Over the Ocean |
| August 2020 | Turkey in the Straw | Dance song | Simple Square Dance 1, 2, and 3 |
| August 2020 | Oh, Susannah | End of the year song for 2nd grade | America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee) |
| August 2020 | Land of the Silver Birch | La pentatonic | Deep in the Forest Don’t Need Riches/Thankful for You (partner song) |
| October 2020 | A-Tisket, A-Tasket | Quarter and Eighth notes Steps, skips, and repeated notes | Abebe America the Beautiful |
| October 2020 | Acka Backa | Steady beat Quarter and Eighth notes Quarter Rest Pitched percussion | Bounce High Snail, Snail |
| October 2020 | Camptown Races | Dotted Eighths and Sixteenth notes Anacrusis/pick-up Dotted Quarter | BINGO |
| October 2020 | Canoe | Low E and D on instruments | Overdrive Old MacDonald |
| October 2020 | I’ve Been Working on the Railroad | Dotted notes Low sol Legato singing | Music Alone Shall Live Old MacDonald |
| October 2020 | Liza Jane | Syncopation Eighth/Sixteenth Pairs Chords Form Beat vs. Rhythm | Alabama Gal 5 Green and Speckled Frogs Brickyard |
| October 2020 | Shoo, Fly! | Dotted Rhythms Form | Do You Know the Muffin Man The More We Get Together |
| October 2020 | Old Folks at Home (FL*) | Swing feel Dynamics Slurs | A Musical Joke, Mvt. 4 (K. 522), Mozart In the Hall of the Mountain King, Grieg |
| October 2020 | The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You (TX*) | Folk song in 4/4 2-beat folk groove | Music Alone Shall Live Old MacDonald America the Beautiful |
| October 2020 | The Yellow Rose of Texas (TX*) | Dotted Eighth and Sixteenth note Syncopation Diatonic major scale Large vocal leaps (6th and 7th) | Old Joe Clark |
*These songs are required as a part of state general music standards and will remain in only those state curricula.
We offer this information on our process and decisions-to-date as an effort of transparency, with the hope that it might also help individual teachers to make their own informed decisions about what they teach in their lessons.
Commitment to the Future
We understand that self-evaluation is an ongoing process. We are dedicated to pursuing a continued path of growth as we work to help educators enrich the lives of their students.
Please contact us if you have any questions, are in need of additional documentation, or would like to submit a request for a specific resource to be considered for review.
