Exploring El Sistema

AMP finalist for national youth arts award

"The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and its cultural partners – the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services – are proud to recognize 50 outstanding programs all over the country for their work in providing excellent arts and humanities learning opportunities to young people."

This year, the Atlanta Music Project is one of the 50 finalists for this prestigious annual award. Congratulation to Dantes Rameau (Sistema Fellow '10) and Aisha Bowden (Sistema Fellow '12)!

Incorporating the Orff Approach?

Last summer I participated at the International Orff Course “The Singing Garden” in Pilsen, Czech Republic with the generous support of the Sistema Fellowship Resource Center. Why Orff? At the Take a Stand conference in Los Angeles in 2014, I was very impressed by the performance of Youth Orchestra of Salinas, an El Sistema-inspired project in California that uses Orff instruments in their pre-orchestras as an introduction to music making before students attempt a more complex orchestral instrument in their second year. I wanted to explore how far the Orff Approach can be used as an entrance into ensemble playing in an El Sistema-inspired program.

About eighty people—kindergarten and music teachers, musicians and dancers, Orff specialists and novices from all Eastern European countries, Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, Hong Kong and Australia—met in Pilsen for this weeklong course. The Orff Approach is much more than playing with Orff instruments. It is a holistic approach which combines music, movement, drama and speech similar to a child's world of play. The German composer Carl Orff founded it in the 1920s. There are Orff associations all over the world now.

The course included workshops in all areas of the Orff Approach. I was really fascinated by the playfulness of the different activities. Many of them were simple but there was a beauty inherent in this simplicity that was stimulating. I was impressed with how these activities were able to overcome not only the cultural differences but also the differences of experience of the participants. A professional violinist was having fun with a kindergarten teacher or a folk dancer, all doing the same movements or patterns. The Orff Approach enables people to create art with rudimentary elements. My experience was that, unlike playing my instrument, I didn't have to worry about technique at any point. There was a natural flow in every action that was liberating.

Reflection on Reframing El Sistema

The recent Reframing El Sistema conference in Baltimore featured a rich program of both scholars and practitioners discussing the potential directions in which El Sistema-inspired work is or might be heading. As someone who has been actively involved in a variety of El Sistema convenings over the past several years (e.g. Take a Stand, the ISME El Sistema Special Interest Group, the El Sistema and the Alternatives conference in London), it was exciting to see an international cohort of individuals doing work around El Sistema come together in one place.

Fellows in Baltimore, with Resource Center director Heath Marlow

Having graduated from the Sistema Fellows Program three years ago, and being reminded of the fact that we are coming up on the ten-year anniversary of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s seminal BBC Proms debut,[1] my goal as a conference participant was to listen to what questions were being asked in discussion, what people wanted to continue talking about, what people were most excited to hear presentations about. Upon reflection, one thing that continues to stand out to me was the strong through line of thinking about evaluation practices in relation to El Sistema-inspired work.[2]

Two compelling thoughts about evaluation continue to be at the front of my mind: Carol Frierson-Campbell’s[3] overview of the different vantages and objectives that characterize researchers as compared to practitioners,[4] and Michael Raiber’s[5] statement that we best be careful in stating what El Sistema-inspired work can achieve, because we don’t want to end up having to hold Music responsible if those stated objectives aren’t obtained. I can’t remember what example he gave, but a hypothetical case would be one in which we say that our programs improve math skills. Then, if math scores don’t in fact improve, how might we have unintentionally held Music solely responsible?

Both of these points contain important truths, but I also want to propose that we shift the paradigm in thinking about the relationships between theory, curriculum development, and evaluation (and research more generally). What happens when we place these three parts of praxis in an ongoing and overlapping cycle, rather than delineating them as of separate concern? To continue with my hypothetical scenario, if an improvement in math scores is identified as a serious objective, and even in the case that it fails to be attained, how might we then more intentionally think about how music curriculum may in fact relate to mathematical technique? In tandem, how can practitioners guide researchers about theoretical and evaluation directions based on their experiences with specific students in specific communities? Additionally, how can research findings be taken into account to deliberately bring innovation to curriculum?

Dennie Palmer Wolf spoke to this in her comment that evaluation measures and instruments need to be continually critically appraised and re-shaped to be most appropriate to the students they are being used on. For example, she proposed speaking with students before implementing a survey to ask how they interpret the questions on the survey tool or why they might be inclined to respond in certain ways. Indeed, one of Dennie’s responses described her interest in thinking about cosmopolitanism as a direction to move in with regard to evaluation measures, based on her view of the learning and experiences of students she has encountered at El Sistema-inspired programs.

This resonates with my own work as a doctoral student at the City University of New York, thinking through theoretical frameworks of cosmopolitanism and how potential curricula of a cosmopolitan music education might be relevant to El Sistema-inspired work—as I have presented on at other El Sistema conferences. I think that the cosmopolitan ability to negotiate different cultures and identities is something which many El Sistema students I’ve encountered around the country do already bring to the table, and can be honed as a valuable tool for dealing with social injustices. Furthermore, I think cultivating such a cosmopolitan sensibility is something that can be done aptly through music education, specifically a curriculum that represents multiple music cultures. While my inquiry has taken me through different theories and pedagogical ideas around cosmopolitanism, Dennie’s remark reminded me that measures for evaluating cosmopolitanism as an outcome was something that I have thus far neglected to think enough about.

If we take an idea like cosmopolitanism and think more dialogically around it in all aspects of praxis, we can continuously (re)frame questions like:

How do our experiences in the classroom indicate that this is an important objective to have?

What does this evaluation point out about how we might change our pedagogy? What evaluation measures actually correspond to the pedagogies we are practicing?

How do the specific experiences of students in this community differentiate from and contribute to existing theories of cosmopolitanism?

Are the evaluations still pointing this out as a need in this community, or what other objectives might we consider focusing on?

Many left Baltimore grappling with the questions that were particularly magnified throughout the weekend: what exactly is El Sistema? And are we going through an identity crisis? In his own conference reflection, musicologist Geoff Baker writes that a movement ought to have more unified coherence around its goals.[6] Indeed, during his presentation at the conference, Eric Booth presented a fascinating rundown of varied El Sistema-inspired philosophies and mission statements around the world.[7] I think both notions—unity and variety—are compelling, with benefits as well as drawbacks. In either case, though, I want to encourage more thinking about objectives and mission not only theoretically, but as an ongoing, dynamic process and cycle that links theory, practice, and evaluation.

Elaine Chang Sandoval, Sistema Fellow ‘13

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[1] As we were reminded during Geoff Baker’s presentation.

[2] This is undoubtedly thanks to the presence of such prominent scholars as Dennie Wolf and Steven Holochwost of WolfBrown, Shirley Brice Heath, and Kate Camara, as well as the research focuses of conference organizers Larry Scripp and Brian Kaufman – all have been involved in varying capacities in evaluations of El Sistema-inspired work.

[3] Coordinator of Music Education at William and Patterson University (New Jersey), scholarship on urban music education.

[4] She drew on the useful piece: Neumann, Pallas, and Peterson. 1999. “Preparing education practitioners to practice education research.” In Issues in education research: Problems and possibilities, eds. Condliffe Lagemann and Shulman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 247-288.

[5] Busey Chair of Music Education at Oklahoma City University and Director of Teacher Support at El Sistema Oklahoma.

[6] http://tocarypensar.com/blog/is-sistema-a-movement

[7] From his work with Tricia Tunstall, to be published in their forthcoming book.

Knowing your community

The Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Awareness conference in Chicago left me with awe. True awe, the jaw-dropping, mind-blowing "wow," so bear with me as I struggle to articulate the experience into a blog entry. First off to hear words like "evaluation" and "holographic" in the same sentence was certainly a new experience. These are the people that care more about the stories and "soft" qualitative evidence as the statistical quantitative data. There were large representations of native Hawaiians and New Zealand Maori people along with several American Indian tribes. The conference began with three of these tribes singing their equivalent to the national anthem and then the representatives of the visiting tribes bringing gifts to the local tribes to thank them for letting them be on their land. It was incredible to see the intentionality in these tribe members of not only thanking them for hosting, but acknowledging the land that we were standing upon. That in itself made me know this conference was going to be a game-changer.

The next 2.5 days were spent listening to speakers from many different communities of color and researchers and graduate students talking about how they had implemented culturally responsive practices in their cultural contexts and/or work. A main lesson I learned during the Sistema fellowship of tailoring your program to the community was discussed in almost every presentation. After breaking down epistemology (ways of knowing), I want to take that concept one step further: value your community. Knowledge is only the beginning. Knowledge means nothing if one doesn't use it to respond in a culturally responsive way, which requires valuing the culture(s) of the people one is working with...

Continue reading on my personal blog.

Sara Zanussi, Sistema Fellow '13

Music and Universal Design for Learning

After four years of teaching elementary music, I still felt unsatisfied by my lack of knowledge in music and special education, my two areas of interest and passion. During my Sistema fellowship year, I spent the vast majority of my time exploring and questioning “inclusion.” What does inclusion mean? What does it look like? How feasible is inclusion here in the United States especially in regards to policy and practice?

With unanswered questions continually emerging, I decided to attend the Harvard Graduate School of Education for my Masters in Arts in Education to strengthen my knowledge around the intersectionality of these two fields.

My continual exposure to new materials prompted me to consider how to disseminate a portion of my findings to the El Sistema-inspired field. I decided to create a document that addressed the topic of neurodiversity in the music classroom. I asked Andrea Landin [Sistema Fellow ‘13]  to provide a typical music lesson on the basis that I would redesign this lesson to meet the needs of learners.

The purpose of this document is to introduce Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how this framework can be applied to music settings. I chose to present this information through drafts, so that you can experience the transformation from a typical lesson to a UDL lesson. This is simply supposed to act as a guide to begin the conversation around how to meet the needs of learners.

Please continue reading here.

Elise Seymour, Sistema Fellow '13

Reframing "Expertise"

The recent Reframing El Sistema Conference at the University of Maryland Baltimore County aimed to connect “the evolving practice and research of social impact through music.”

The conversation on Friday, April 8th (the only day I was able to attend) at first lent itself to the field’s most enduring questions (i.e. what differentiates traditional music education from Sistema? What is the relationship between music learning and youth development outcomes?). However, throughout the day, a new line of questioning emerged around how power is used and distributed in El Sistema-inspired programs, specifically in the classroom.

As I listened to these conversations (and followed the projected, real time tweets of the audience), I was struck by what felt to be a conspicuous omission in our discussion of power: Why do we—practitioners and researchers—continue to meet for critical discourse without students and parents in the room? What does this say about how we view their expertise and agency? And, how would the language—and the questions posed—change if these conferences included all voices in meaningful ways?

This line of inquiry is not meant to discredit the contributions of the conference organizers, or the many practitioners and researchers in attendance. Indeed, the collective knowledge sparked intellectual debates and compelling considerations. However, the exchange was accordingly narrowed by the perspectives of the individuals present—many of whom (like me) have studied oppression, racism and/or El Sistema in important and academic ways, but have not necessarily experienced it first-hand. So, how might we, the service providers/supporters, shift to valuing the insights of our students and parents as much as we value the insights of scholars and “professionals”?

When I posed these questions at the conference, I shared how my own vantage point has evolved (largely due to the influence of Marianne Diaz at the Southern California Counseling Center). I’ve come to see that every student, family and community I collaborate with holds all the inner fortitude necessary to address the challenges and opportunities they face. Understanding this means viewing my role not as that of the expert who needs to “fix” or “save,”but rather as that of the facilitator, who helps individuals and communities access this already innate capacity.

The facilitator role requires respect for and recognition of an individual’s agency and competency. To quote Marianne, whose chapter in “El Sistema: Music for Social Change" explores these themes more deeply, it acknowledges that all individuals are “the experts in their own lives” and can therefore provide the most meaningful insights and solutions.

Embodying this role involves regular—and often difficult—reflections on how assumptions and blind spots shape the way one views the world. This is especially critical for those of us working in communities battling inequity who come from positions of privilege. So for me, for example, working to stay aware of how my privilege as a white woman with a college education shapes the way I understand and fit into the world. Those involved in El Sistema-inspired work are generally cognizant of systematic oppression in the US. But how many of us have truly examined our own personal culpability? Do we unintentionally perpetuate cycles of oppression in our classrooms and values? These are incredibly difficult questions—and ones we need to explore not only amongst ourselves, but also with communities, parents, and students.

The recognition of students and parents as holding expertise worthy of inclusion in critical discourse would be a pivot for the field. It is not at all lost on me that as I write this reflection today, it is clearly to an audience of practitioners and researchers; that the “field” as defined through my own writing is limited and exclusive. Further, the language used here points out that “we,” individuals in positions of power in this work, get to yield that power to decide who is included. I struggled with this. I wanted to write the reflection in a way that could be heard by other service providers/supporters, but I also conceded to the current position of the field. Clearly, we (and I) need new language and a new frame to discuss these issues more deeply, but neither can be genuinely reformed until the conversation is first expanded to include all voices.

Though I was unable to stay for Saturday’s portion, I heard and read that the conference continued to lean further in the direction of exploring how power is distributed, and what it means to be a “social justice though music” program. When this work is done with deep intentionality, it yields outcomes for the practitioners and supporters as well as the students and families. After all, most of us have as much (if not more) “personal development” to do as those with whom we connect to through our work. My hope, therefore, is that Reframing El Sistema will have acted as a crucial stepping stone for reconsidering the way the field is defined, valued and heard.

Christine Witkowski, Sistema Fellow ‘10

Modeling the Artist part of Teaching Artist

This spring I had the opportunity to arrange and perform John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil together with our resident performing ensemble at Community MusicWorks. I had wanted to play The Protecting Veil ever since I first heard a recording of the piece as a college student and was drawn in by the transcendent beauty of the music. It’s been incredibly fulfilling to see that dream come to fruition with help from an innovation grant from the Sistema Fellowship Resource Center at New England Conservatory.

The Community MusicWorks vision of staff working to build community as both teachers and performers is what initially drew me to the organization, and I still hold the belief that the energy and inspiration for teaching flows directly out of my love of music and performing. The opportunity to work as a performing musician is what sustains me and feeds my love for sharing my musical life with students and families in the community.

At the Daily Orchestra Program, we try to draw connections between what we are doing as musicians and what our students are doing in their daily practice. A student in the Daily Orchestra Program recently asked me what I would be doing during the next week, and I explained that I would be rehearsing every day for a performance at the end of the week. At first he replied, “Whoa, that’s a lot,” but after reflecting for a moment he added, “Well, I guess that’s what we do, too.” As we were preparing to perform The Protecting Veil, we shared a recording of the piece with students and told them that this was something we were really excited to play. We talked with them about John Tavener and added him to the composer timeline we’ve been building.

I was glad that many of our students were able to see the performance, and that they were able to see me pursuing something that means so much to me. My hope is that seeing that will in some way inspire them to also pursue the things in life that are meaningful to them.

Adrienne Taylor, Sistema Fellow ‘11

Arts Education Learning Exchange reflection

Many El Sistema-inspired initiatives in the U.S have moved out of start-up mode and have begun asking deeper, more complex questions. We are asking these questions in our respective cities and as a field. "How can we increase the amount of students we serve, enhance quality, and become financially stable and sustainable?"

The dynamic partnership between the San Diego Youth Orchestra and the Chula Vista Elementary School District provides an incredible case study about how the inspiration of El Sistema not only provided students access to music education for the first time, but also become a symbol of advocacy and a catalyst for change across an entire school district.

The San Diego Unified School District, having allotted $3 million for arts integration in their Title I schools, shows that we have finally left an era in which undervalued arts education programs exist in silos and hang on to every dollar with clenched fists, and entered into an era in which more and more individuals see the arts as a core part of any and every public education experience.

Some may worry that "arts integration" allows school and district leaders the chance to collapse sequential programming and still receive a passing grade on their arts education report card. But rest assured, there was unanimous agreement at this conference, from Superintendents on down, that we need high quality, sequential arts programs as well as arts integration initiatives in our schools. As an El Sistema-inspired movement, how can we ensure that the students we serve have access to sequential music education through graduation? And perhaps a question that we have thought about less is: How can individuals inspired by El Sistema play a role in arts integration either as practitioners of this beautiful work or as advocates and facilitators?

Patrick Slevin, Sistema Fellow '11

Three kinds of arts learning experiences

The group that convened at the Arts Learning Exchange in San Diego came from diverse backgrounds and organizations--from school districts, to city arts councils, to El Sistema-inspired programs, to a variety of arts education nonprofits. It was refreshing to broaden our perspectives of the larger world of education and arts education. I only observed the word "El Sistema" mentioned a few times in the two days that I was there, although it was inevitable that the Sistema folks found each other, brainstorming how to connect the knowledge and our ideas to our specific programs. Chula Vista School District has gone from 0 to 70 arts and music teachers in just a few years, and San Diego is starting down a similar path, as well as collaborating with various arts organizations and teaching artists. Additionally, the Community Opus Project, San Diego Youth Symphony's El Sistema-inspired program, serves hundreds of kids after school where they receive even more intensive and in depth instruction.

Amidst the many partnerships, initiatives, and programs, it was important to distinguish between the different kinds (and intentions) of the student learning experiences. Arts integration, where artistic mediums are woven into various school subjects (e.g. science, language arts) to further mastery of the subject, was an effective way to employ and engage teaching artists and outside arts organizations (while raising student achievement). After observing a theater teaching artist working with a first grade language arts class, I began to wonder if any teaching artists from my particular program could ever take on a similar role, in addition to their after school work, in order to create more job opportunities and utilize their skills. It was pointed out that arts integration, while effective and necessary to enhance school learning, was not a replacement for arts education (i.e. the traditional music or art classes that have been cut from schools in recent years).

Andrea Landin, Patrick Slevin, and Xochitl Tafoya in San Diego

The seventy arts and music teachers that have been hired in Chula Vista work during the school day, teaching skill-based arts and music classes that schools so desperately need. While the Sistema discussion in the U.S. has often referenced filling the gaps that exist as a result of the lack of these school day programs, after school El Sistema-inspired programs are not the solution or replacement. They are the third type of student learning: in depth, transformative music practice and performance. There was overlap in teaching artists between the school music education programs and teaching artists in the Community Opus Project, which provided for a stronger partnership and continuity between the school day and after school.

What struck me most was the strength and number of private-public partnerships in both the Chula Vista and San Diego school districts. Each type of learning was important and empowering, and each entity seems to understand that they hold a unique role in the community. No one can be everything, but everyone can be something--and the combined strengths have a powerful effect.

Andrea Landin, Sistema Fellow '13

AMP's guest conductor

On March 12, Jose Luis Hernandez-Estrada, Sistema Tulsa director and Sistema Fellow '12, was the guest conductor for the Atlanta Music Project's winter concert. (Photos by Anthony Alston, Jr.)