Somewhere along the way, you got a student who didn’t fit the lesson you planned. Maybe they couldn’t hold the instrument the way the method book showed. Maybe the echo song fell apart because processing the call took longer than the response allowed. Maybe you looked at a room full of kids and realized your go-to repertoire wasn’t reaching the kid in the corner, and you didn’t know why, and nobody had ever taught you what to try instead.
That’s the gap this site exists to close.
I’m Dr. Eric Bottorff. I teach general music to students in kindergarten through fourth grade in South East, Michigan. I’ve spent the better part of fifteen years thinking about what it actually looks like to teach music to every student in the room, including students with disabilities, not as an accommodation tacked onto the end of a unit, but as the starting point for how the lesson gets designed in the first place.
Meet Them in Music is the resource I kept wishing existed.
The name Meet Them In Music is meaningful. It is my belief and approach to align my teaching to where my students currently are, not where I wish they were. Meet them in Music means to greet your students at the level they are with care, joy, and music.
This site is not a special education manual. It’s not a therapy resource. It’s a music education site, written by a music teacher, for music teachers who want to get better at including students who learn differently. The research is here, but you won’t have to wade through a literature review to get to the part that helps you on Monday morning.
Here’s what you’ll find as this site grows: blog posts on inclusive practice grounded in current research, a searchable library of songs with adaptation ideas built right in, and eventually a newsletter and community for teachers who care about this work.
You don’t need a special education degree to be good at this. You need a willingness to meet your students where they are, some flexible tools in your kit, and maybe a place to think it through.
That’s what this is.
Start anywhere.
