Dana Monteiro has twenty years of experience as a music educator in the New York City public school system.  He holds a B.S. in music education from N.Y.U., a M.A. in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a doctoral degree in music education from Boston University. Originally a classical trumpet player, his interest in Brazilian music began on a trip to Rio de Janeiro, where he was brought by local musicians to the Vila Isabel Samba School.  Since that first visit, Monteiro has made 23 study related trips to Brazil to learn and perform samba percussion and to conduct research for his dissertation titled Samba: The Sense of Community in Participatory Music. Monteiro has studied at over twenty samba schools in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.  In addition, he has made visits to samba schools and community music ensembles throughout the United States as well the United Kingdom, Japan, Uruguay, Argentina, and the Cape Verde Islands to study local musical practices and more importantly, the various methods for how music is taught.  

Monteiro was a panel discussant on alternative practices in music education at the 7th International Symposium of the Sociology of Music Education, a presenter in the Education Section at the annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2013. Monteiro has conducted workshops in Brazilian percussion at the 2015 Teaching World Musics Symposium at Northern Illinois University, the Evanston School of Samba in Chicago, at the Berklee School of Music, and Boston University.  He recently conducted samba workshops internationally in El Salvador, Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico, and Nigeria. 

His current project, Harlem Samba has had great success educating thousands of public school students in Harlem, New York City and is featured as a case study in the Music Educator’s Journal and books The Child as Musician, The Oxford Handbook of Applied Musicology, and Engaging in Community Music. The group has been awarded the Brazilian International Press Award for "Best Institution for the Promotion of Brazilian Culture in the United States" as well as a NAMM “Best Communities for Music Education” School of Merit.  The group was a featured performer for the Clinton Global Initiative and presented at the TED Talks Live conference in New York City. 

Monteiro was awarded "Outstanding Educator of the Year" by Education Update in 2015. In 2016, he received the Big Apple Award from the New York City Department of Education, the Lincoln Center Arts Teacher of the Year Award, and the NYC Men Teach Anchor Award. In 2021, Monteiro was the Manhattan winner of the Flag Award for Teaching Excellence.  He is the author of The Samba School: A Comprehensive Method for Learning, Playing, and Teaching Samba Percussion and is a contributing author to the book Carnaval Sem Fronteiras: As escolas de samba e suas artes mundo afora.