Learning Matters: Music is more than an extracurricular activity
Earlier this year, I shared my trepidation as I returned to the role of elementary chorus director, a once-a-week, after-school position I’d last held 11 years ago.
I knew the challenges. I didn’t know the students this time around, and they didn’t know me. Except for the few children who participated in the school’s instrumental music program, most of the third- through sixth-graders came without musical skills.
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If they came expecting anything, it was probably music like they already knew from their iPods or movies, sung to back-up recordings. I assume many came wanting to sound like adult pop singers, not knowing I’d want them to sing like children.
Rehearsals — voluntary, extracurricular, ungraded activities — were an hour long, even longer for the third-graders with a shorter school day. All the children seemed readier for a snack and a break than a 60- to 75-minute music lesson.
So, I was not altogether surprised when the initial group of 50 students whose parents signed the chorus permission slips shrank over the first several weeks. I’d done this job before, and I knew there’d be attrition.
But there were some rehearsals when I wondered if I’d have a choir at all come April. I was definitely worried about whether they could manage the two-part rounds that were central to the program I’d planned. Rounds are songs in which all the voices sing the same music, starting at different times. They’re a great way to introduce part-singing.
“Rounding the John Muir Trail,” a biographical account of the school’s namesake told through songs and passages from his memoirs, was a program I put together when I first directed the chorus in 1995-96, and I’d thought for years about reprising it. But I started to think trying it again was a mistake.
Then, eight weeks into the 12-week program, rehearsals moved from the cafeteria lunch benches to the risers. The microphone was set in position for the narrators, and the piano accompanist who’d worked with me in the past appeared on the scene.
Readers claimed their paragraphs, and a few strong singers began tunefully holding their parts in the two-part rounds, helping the other singers do the same.
When a fifth-grader whose interest I’d worried about losing played the drum part in “Land of the Silver Birch” perfectly on her first attempt, the pride she showed in her shy smile filled me with hope.
I write now, still elated as I think of the 25 children who sang and spoke their way through the life of John Muir on the eve of his 178th birthday. Individually and collectively, those children won my heart, and their success reenergized my dedication to the cause of elementary choral music education.
They learned about rhythm and melody, practiced solfege (known more commonly as the do-re-mi’s), learned traditional songs from musical scores and practiced reading aloud from historical texts. Perhaps most importantly for some, they experienced pride in a good performance.
But they also brought into focus a school district that continues to see elementary choral music more as entertaining student activity than core instruction.
“That was a lot of learning,” said one school administrator with evident surprise.
The comment reminded me of a second-grader’s exclamation years ago as her class clapped note values: “Mrs. Wagner, this is math,” the student said.
Yes, music instruction incorporates a lot of learning.
For years, Glendale Unified has had an arts plan on file, but most would admit the district has not lived up to its plan.
The Visual and Performing Arts page on the district’s website, www.gusd.net, states, “The arts are an integral part of the district’s instructional program… part of the basic curriculum with students introduced to various visual and performing arts experiences in the classroom program. In addition elementary students may sign up for instrumental music and choral music.”
Instrumental and choral music are not part of the regular curriculum. Instrumental music is a pull-out program (serving only a portion of the students) taught by credentialed music teachers at all 20 elementary schools; chorus is an extracurricular program available only where a principal finds a teacher or other adult with some musical background willing to lead it.
With the help of its foundation, Mark Keppel Elementary found a way to offer music education to every child even before it became a magnet school for the arts. Perhaps the new superintendent, Winfred Roberson, will help the district bring music and “a lot of learning” to all our children.
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JOYLENE WAGNER is a past member of the Glendale Unified School Board. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.
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