Resource: Happy Birthday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lesson Plan

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Like many music teachers, you are probably looking for relevant and pedagogically appropriate lesson plans to help students understand why we celebrate this national holiday, and why MLK Jr. was such an important historical figure in American history.

One of my absolute favorite websites for teaching popular music, rooted deeply in American history, is TeachRock.org. It is truly a wonderful organization, providing music educators around the world with FREE lessons and resources that are beautifully authored and curated.

One of their MANY lesson plans focuses on how Dr. King’s birthday became a national holiday. While it is focused more on the history side of things, there is a wonderful video on all of the work of Stevie Wonder to help make the dream of a national holiday for Dr. King a reality (bottom of the page), including his amazing Happy Birthday song that he wrote for him. Many people believe that Stevie’s work, and specifically this amazing song, led directly to the creation of the holiday. What a PERFECT song to teach your students to help celebrate! There is also an amazing unit on this song (outside of TeachRock) written by Ashley Cuthbertson that you should definitely check out as well.

All you need to do to get to the amazing resources that TeachRock.org offers is to REGISTER for free access. There are literally TONS of other fabulous lesson plans and resources. Bookmark the site today.