The Fund for Teachers has selected Resident Strings Artist Alyze Rabideau as a 2026 Fund for Teachers Fellow. The selection committee said that her proposal “stood out in an exceptionally competitive pool for its thoughtfulness, creativity, and strong connection to your students and school community.” This is Alyze’s third such fellowship, all of which have added breadth and depth to the styles and understanding of Conservatory Lab’s music education.
Alyze has been awarded a grant to “experience three distinct aspects of Cape Verdean culture — the São João Baptista festival on São Antão, the morna style on São Vicente, and the rich culture of Santiago — to gain a deeper understanding of how being from this archipelago nation affects the sense of self” shared by a large group of the school’s population.
When asked how this trip would tie into the school’s curriculum, Alyze shared “This year, the kids did a project about sense of self, immigration, and protest. Over half the population of Cape Verde has emigrated, so I thought it would be an interesting perspective to go there and see it from the other side. I’m familiar now with the morna style of music which is about longing and wishfulness. And the nature there is really cool, and I thought that could be a nice tie-in to some of the science units here – there are mountains and volcanoes, and some of the islands are inhabited and some are not inhabited at all.”
Alyze continued, “Since starting here, I’ve done two other grant opportunities like this. The first brought me to Colombia for a little over a month. First, that trip helped improve my Spanish, so now I can do student conferences without a translator. Second, part of that fellowship was a capstone project where I transcribed about 50 folk songs from around the world, which I now use in my daily curriculum. And last summer I got a grant to go to India. That gave me a lot of insight into socioeconomic differences which are surprisingly similar to our student population even though it manifests differently.”
Finally, Alyze added “We have a lot of students whose heritage is from Cape Verde, but most of our students are from the Caribbean. And I feel like sometimes kids who don’t have ties to the Caribbean feel a little bit isolated. My family is from the Carribean, so I’m excited to see how I can bring both sides into my teaching.”