Music teachers improvise amid pandemic
Get them young, or not at all.
For music teachers in schools, that’s been an unwritten rule for a long time. And now, in the COVID-19 era, it’s also a warning.
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The pandemic has shut down most in-person schooling in California since March, and in-person schooling is vital to music lessons, especially for beginners. It’s hard to correct a student’s finger position on a clarinet or the bow angle on a violin over Zoom.
It’s also hard to generate the kind of friendships, teamwork and sense of belonging that arise from being in an orchestra or band when you can’t play together.
It was just two years ago that the San Diego Unified School District was celebrating a milestone: 100% of its schools were offering music instruction.
“Research has shown that an arts education improves school climate and culture, and increases student and parent engagement — ultimately contributing to improved academic achievement,” the district said at the time.
In the Poway Unified School District, a team of “XPloration” teachers has been rotating among the elementary schools for the last five years to make sure all 16,000 students get introduced to musical concepts such as rhythm, beat and tempo.
Now teachers throughout the county find themselves improvising — a familiar skill for musicians, but one deployed this time with potentially long-lasting implications for how many students become engaged enough to want to keep doing it.
“Music right now is so important for kids because it is such a good outlet for dealing with life’s struggles,” said Paula Richardson, a music teacher at Wilson Middle School in City Heights. “It helps them cope. So we’re all trying to stay positive. We can still do music things and be successful.”
Richardson paused for a few seconds and then continued.
“The mantra is: Let’s try. If we can make the best of this situation, we’ll all — students, teachers, parents — be better people when we come out of it.” She paused again. “Fingers crossed.”
Creating excitement
In the “before” times, Robin Dye was a traveling teacher, showing up once a week at eight elementary schools in San Diego to introduce fifth-graders to music.
One of her colleagues is a woman who taught Dye how to play the flute when she was a fifth-grader.
“I am a product of the school system here, and I know the value of getting passionate about music early,” said Dye, who is starting her 10th year as a teacher.
Born into a family with musical interests — one uncle played professionally — she started on the piano at 5 before her elementaryschool introduction to the flute.
What all that showed her is that classes in elementary school are mostly about generating excitement for music, not directing a child toward a particular instrument. That can come later, she said.
Pre-pandemic, the excitement came from recorders to play and ukuleles to strum and plastic buckets from Home Depot to bang on. There were choirs. It was all very hands-on.
The sudden shift to remote learning in the spring was chaotic. Not everyone had access to computers, let alone instruments. Zoom and other online platforms aren’t set up for everyone to be playing their instruments at the same time. (In the ensembles you see performing on YouTube, each player is recorded separately, then they’re all edited together.)
Even when schools open for in-person teaching, music classes figure to be problematic, given that the novel coronavirus is spread through the air, and kids would be blowing on instruments and singing out loud.
So the emphasis now at schools throughout the county is on the non-performance aspects of music. Students are learning how to listen to music, how to recognize patterns in the notes, and how to create their own song snippets.
There will still be some playing — on recorders in some schools, on rhythm sticks and tambourines in others. Students might be broken up into smaller groups online, where they can listen to one another play and collaborate on songs. The whole class may play along while the teacher leads them in a song — but only the teacher’s microphone will be on. The others will be muted.
“Even in COVID, we’re trying to provide lessons that give students the chance to find that thing that they love,” said Kimberlee Broaddus, assistant principal for the Poway district’s X-Ploration model. “Maybe the arts will become their passion for life. This is still an opportunity for us to light that spark.”
Plato speaks
The website for the National Assn. for Music Education highlights research about the cognitive, educational and social benefits of music lessons.
There are studies showing how teens who take music in middle school score higher on algebra assignments in ninth grade than those who don’t. How schools with music programs have higher attendance and graduation rates. How almost all of the winners in the nation’s most prestigious math and science competition for high school seniors play an instrument.
Even 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato was extolling the value of music lessons: “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.”
Joan Li doesn’t have to read the literature on this. She’s lived it. Now a music teacher in San Diego, she grew up in a family where everyone played the piano or the violin. She started early at home, then took private lessons, and got into band in middle school. She’s been teaching for nine years, most of it in San Diego Unified.
“One of the great things about music is it’s a universal language,” she said. “It speaks to everybody.”
The key now, she said, is speaking it in a way that engages students watching on a computer screen. “We can’t roam around in the classroom while the students are playing,” she said, “so we need to figure out ways to use the digital formats that will still allow them to find some expression in the arts.”
Richardson, the middle school teacher who has just started her 14th year, is focusing her classes on music appreciation — how to listen to it, what it does to us when we hear it, and how it’s composed.
For students who want to work on playing an instrument, she’s started a “music club” that will meet during flex time and break into small groups. They’ll use computer software to record and share songs.
This was going to be a special year at Wilson, she said. Student interest in music is high. A new performing arts center is being built.
“All the things we worked so hard for we can’t do right now,” Richardson said. “It’s frustrating. But that’s the world we live in right now. Everyone is frustrated.”