Meghan Mulligan chose to pursue special music education because of her younger brother who is autistic and was never provided the same musical opportunities that she had growing up. “I studied Special Music Education for my master’s degree at Wichita State University because I felt unprepared to make a meaningful impact on this population,” she said.  

During her last semester at graduate school, she was offered a job at The Deron School, an out-of-district special education placement school, servicing students with various abilities and support need levels. She started working at the Deron, Montclair (D2) campus a week after graduating in May 2023.  

At D2, every student takes general music classes. Mulligan visits middle school homerooms once a week, high school twice a week and bridge classes (for transition-aged students from 18 to 21 years old) once per week. “In general music I follow a Kodaly-based curriculum, but I use multiple methods of teaching music from Orff, Dalcroze, Gordon and others,” she says.

Mulligan has to schedule around students’ therapy schedules, work schedules and community-based instruction schedules. “Every student starts job sampling at 16 years old, and many of them leave the building for these opportunities,” she explains. “As a result, scheduling is one of the most challenging parts of my job!”

Mulligan relies heavily on the school’s paraprofessionals, teacher assistants and classroom teachers to help students truly participate in experiencing and making music. For choir, she consistently collaborates with the speech team to make sure that music vocabulary and lyrics are available to our students. “I work with our related service providers to reinforce concepts from their sessions, and they reinforce concepts from music classes,” Mulligan explains. “For some students, that means taking their lyrics to speech and/or reading sessions to practice interpreting the language.”

Mulligan and the speech team incorporate other innovative teaching approaches. They have created several versions of adapted lyrics for performances. For some students, they created a stop/go sign that prompts students when to start and stop singing; for others, they created a visual version of the lyrics so students can independently follow along. “Since I started offering multiple forms of lyrics to my AAC (augmentative and alternative communication devices) users I have had a handful of students start to approximate singing,” Mulligan says proudly. “These students have allowed themselves to be vulnerable and let me hear their voices; they’ve allowed me to hear them sing!”

A world percussion class, which was first suggested by her student teaching mentor, was a terrifying prospect for Mulligan. “But I truly fell in love with the course because I saw how accessible and motivating drumming was for my students,” she explains. “The barrier of entry is low — all students have to do is hit a drum, and they receive immediate feedback from the drum. Did the drum make a sound? Did it make a long or short sound?”

She excitedly says, “This level of independence is unheard of — just being able to carry the drum on their own is a big deal for my students. Parents and staff particularly like seeing this group perform because we get to see some of our most quiet, reserved and adult-dependent students become the center of attention, loud and independent!”

The Deron School has several community partners that permit Mulligan’s students to perform, including a local nursing home and the Mountainside Medical Center.  She also encourages students to seek musical outlets, and she attends performances of her students who take lessons outside of school. “I also encourage students who have the skills, drive and support to audition for the region 1 honor choir,” she says.

What allows Mulligan to do all she does for her students at D2 is her flexibility. “True flexibility as a music teacher is being able to reframe your goals and adapt your entire concept of what music education is,” she explains. “Flexibility doesn’t just mean finding multiple ways to teach, it means being brave enough — or perhaps delusional enough — to confidently forge your own path so that your students can find success.”