Music education & international studies

“I love giving the kids time to compose,” says Ciera DeSilva, a violin and viola teacher based in New Brunswick. “Watching six and seven year olds figure out how to play notes on their instrument and notate what they hum and play is watching creative genius.”

Music education is only part of the equation for DeSilva, however. She’s also keenly aware of her students’ identities, histories, and experiences. New Brunswick is the only bilingual province in Canada and it has recently become a beacon for immigrants and refugees. Sistema New Brunswick, the program where DeSilva teaches, is as much an education center as it is a social program. Students–many of whom carry the trauma of intergenerational poverty, parents who are separated, low literacy rates, and food insecurity–are empowered by the holistic approach of the program. 

Sistema NB aims to help students grow not only as musicians, but as people, by providing the type of environment that boosts self-esteem and belonging. Modeled after the successful Venezuelan music program “El Sistema” (founded in 1975), Sistema NB now serves more than 1,100 students 3 hours per day, Monday to Friday, across nine cities and towns.

“It’s the most beautiful thing, to watch them get so excited about taking their instrument home or playing for somebody’s birthday,” says DeSilva. “A lot of them do Zoom calls with relatives halfway around the world.”

A Commitment to Social Change

DeSilva’s passion for music dovetails with other interests: international relations and education. At UMass Amherst, she is pursuing her master’s degree in International Education (IE), taking classes completely online while continuing to teach full time at Sistema NB.

She knew that the College of Education was the right fit after picking up a copy of Dear Paulo: Letters from Those Who Dare Teach, edited by Professor Emerita Sonia Nieto. She had already heard about the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in the footnotes of articles, too, so she decided to explore the College of Education website. When she learned how flexible the IE program is for master’s students (especially that students take 10 elective courses), she decided to take the next step.

“I was longing for that deeper dive into educational issues and realities,” says DeSilva.

What she discovered in the College of Education was a nucleus of faculty and students who shared her critical approach to culture, justice, multilingualism and identity within the context of teaching and learning.

Studying with Professor Laura Valdiviezo, for example, cemented a mindset that DeSilva herself long knew to be true: “education is grassroots.” Her experiences living in and traveling to different countries like Mexico and Peru illustrated to her how social change often starts from the ground up, taking shape between people in informal settings. 

DeSilva grew up in Bermuda before her parents emigrated to Canada in 2002. After graduating from high school, she chose to participate in a Rotary International Youth Exchange program in Chetumal, Mexico for a year, before pursuing college. Doing so after earning her high school diploma allowed her to fully focus on learning Spanish and about Latin American culture through immersion. The experience was transformative for her.

“Meeting people from so many different indigenous cultures within Mexico, and also international exchange students, made me really want to learn more about how the world works, human relations, inequalities, and why the economy is the way it is,” she said.

“You start learning that Spanish is just another colonial language,” DeSilva recalls. “We should have been speaking Mayan”. She recalls seeing human rights violations amid an explosion of construction of foreign-owned all-inclusive hotel resorts in the region, catering to Canadians and other tourists, prompting her to delve into international relations in university.

Music acted as an anchor during her time in Mexico. DeSilva began playing the violin when she was nine years old, thanks to a free NGO program in Bermuda, eventually joining a community consort orchestra in Canada in 10th grade and performing Dvořák. While living in Mexico, the local public music school lent her a Suzuki violin, thereby providing an outlet to play music in the Quintana Roo youth orchestra, and with her new friends and host families.

Following her year in Chetumal, DeSilva enrolled at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, where she earned a degree in international relations with minors in French and Hispanic Studies. Education, international relations, and music continued to intertwine in her life there and during a CIDA youth internship in Chiclayo, Peru, where she decided she wanted to become an educator while part of a local grassroots NGO team, Centro Esperanza. She then earned her bachelor’s degree in education in 2016 at the University of British Columbia, taught French and Spanish at various schools and managed NGO educational programs before joining Sistema NB in 2021.

At Sistema NB, DeSilva brings all of her experiences to bear on her lessons and activities. She introduces students to fundamental concepts of music, including reading and singing notes and playing instruments. But she also makes it a point to introduce her classes to a wide range of composers and musicians, especially those outside of the European tradition.

“I mostly teach in English and French, but also speak in Spanish and Portuguese,” says DeSilva, noting that since joining Sistema NB, children from 17 different countries and both English and French-speaking Canadians have joined her classes. “I invite kids to lead bow hold practice activities in their language, so we all learn to count in so many languages.” 

DeSilva finds herself “texting and calling parents all the time,” to engage support from families and monitor how her students are doing. The program coordinates with school teachers and counselors, too, all with an eye to identifying students’ needs and meeting them. “A lot of the kids we have, have anxiety, challenges with socializing and from immigration…” she says.

For DeSilva, part of the appeal of Sistema NB is that it embeds students in children’s orchestras, where they can feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. 

“I only started when I was nine, but it was this little snippet of music every Tuesday, in a group setting, where we learned how to play basic songs,” she said. “Then the next year I joined the little school orchestra and I really loved that beauty of how everyone in the orchestra has a role.”

While DeSilva has been stationed in Sistema NB’s Moncton center, she is embarking upon a new experience this fall: moving temporarily to a rural community in northern New Brunswick to establish a brand new Sistema NB centre. She will act as interim Centre Director and teach the first class of students how to play the violin. On top of support from her professors, she is grateful for the friendship and camaraderie of many IE classmates with whom she is in touch, many of whom are educators and NGO professionals.

“Music has always been there,” says DeSilva. “It’s like this therapeutic tool. I’ve met incredible people through it…I could have never predicted that happening over time.”