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Arts Education

Syliva Easley, Cleveland

Nominated By: The Music Settlement

For more than 40 years, Sylvia Easley has worked diligently to insure that music and movement are an integral part of the early childhood education experience. As director of Early Childhood Education at The Music Settlement in Cleveland, Ohio, Sylvia Easley has helped create programs that benefit nearly 700 children annually. Under Easley’s guidance, children are immersed in a unique atmosphere of creativity and free thought.

In 1965, Easley broke barriers by entering a field not traditionally open to young African American women. Early in her career at The Music Settlement, she recognized that an arts-rich education yielded even greater results when offered in the first years of life. From the start, her inspired incorporation of music and the arts into the program enabled an expansion that now includes a day school, early childhood arts classes and highly successful summer camps. The programs are so well developed that they are recognized by Ohio’s Step Up to Quality initiative (a group child care and education rating program) as “three star” the top ranking in the field. In 1996, she developed a Music & Movement class for students from birth through age three that is still considered a model for successful arts education programs.

Easley’s desire to influence positively the development of children extends beyond the walls of The Music Settlement. She is a passionate advocate for bringing the arts to children in underserved neighborhoods and she has led the effort to provide quality teacher training and professional development. She recently developed a bi-annual two-day conference, The Arts in Early Childhood: A Summer Institute to empower educators and therapists to help young children develop critical readiness skills through the arts. Additionally, Easley has published articles on methods of introducing music to young children and has conducted workshops for Head Start, the Cleveland Public Schools, the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, and the Cleveland Association for the Education of Young Children. She also served four years on the board of the Ohio Association for the Education of Young Children.

Easley works daily to uncover and develop the potential that exists in each and every child. Her dedication and years of hard work are fuelled by her belief that arts education is vital for the emotional, physical, social, and intellectual development of a child. When offered accolades, she will share that she feels honored every day, when she receives hugs from her students and sees the happiness her programs bring to the five-and-under crowd. Her warm and nurturing spirit finds the joy in all children, and her accomplishments and contributions to arts education are immeasurable.

Sylvia Easley's video tribute (7:34 minutes)