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An Opportunity for Every Child – Tim Sharp and ACDA

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childrens_choir.jpgAs I first mentioned on Sunday, ChoralNet will begin to feature commentary from ACDA Executive Director Tim Sharp as a regular feature. 
 
What follows is directly from Tim:
 
One of four initiatives I outlined in my vision for the work of the American Choral Directors Association is a 21st century ACDA that establishes the opportunity for every child in the United States to sing in a choir. We have new research that continues to support the fact that music forms an important piece of a child’s education and development (see www.dana.org to download the Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition: Learning, Arts, and the Brain). We know choral singing has the fewest participation barriers of any music-making and music-teaching opportunity. Further, there is not one choral area that will not benefit directly from every initiative we take in this direction. ACDA has an advocacy statement poised to take us in this direction.
Americans for the Arts continues to provide advocacy tools to help us push forward with this initiative. While I am inclined to argue that singing brings
lifelong joy and happiness to an individual, something that other pursuits cannot promise, Americans for the Arts has taken the more pragmatic argument, which is that the arts are enriched with the stuff children need to succeed. Promoting academic achievement, their recent campaign uses recent studies to state that children involved in the arts are:
 
  • 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
  • 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their school
  • 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
  • 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
The Arts. Ask for More. is a new public service advertising campaign designed through Americans for the Arts to educate parents and citizens on why the arts are essential to a child’s development and empower them to get more art into their lives, both in and out of school. Americans for the Arts has created posters, signs, templates, Public Service Announcements, and a variety of tools to help us advocate for the arts in our local communities.

I encourage all of us to avoid feeling helpless in the challenge of arts advocacy by visiting the following website and start taking action today. As a National CoSponsor for Americans for the Arts, the American Choral Directors Association is in full support of this advocacy campaign, and encourages all choral musicians to sign up (FREE) to become an arts activist on the Americans for the Arts website.

In addition, if you are a teacher, here are Ten Simple Ways Parents Can Get More Art in Their Children’s Lives. Copy and distribute this list to parents and caregivers in your choir and classroom:

1.    Enjoy the arts together. Sing, play music, read a book, dance, or draw with your child at home.
2.    Encourage your child to participate in the arts and celebrate their participation in or out of school.
3.    Explore your community’s library http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/librarysearch/  and read the classics together, from Mother Goose to Walt Whitman.
4.    Read your local newspaper to find out about attending local arts events like museum exhibits, local plays, festivals, or outdoor concerts.
5.    Tell your child’s teacher, principal, and school leadership that the arts are vital to your child’s success and an important part of a quality education. Find out if your school has sufficient resources for arts education, including qualified teachers and materials. If not, offer to help.
6.    Contact your local arts organization to inquire about the arts education programs they offer either during school hours or after school. Volunteer to donate time, supplies, or help with their advocacy efforts and connect these services to your child’s school.
7.    Attend a school board or PTA meeting and voice your support for the arts to show them you care and make sure the arts are adequately funded as part of the core curriculum in the school budget.
8.    Explore your child’s dream to sing, to dance, to draw, to act, and encourage them to become the best they can be through the arts.
9.    Be an arts supporter!  Contact your elected officials lawmakers and school board members to ask them for more arts education funding from the local, state, and federal levels. Visit the Americans for the Arts activist toolkit at  for a list of officials, and templates and instructions on how to make these contacts.
10.    Sign up to become an activist on the Americans for the Arts website (FREE!) Through their e-activist list, you will get news updates and alerts about arts education. Visit their Advocacy Center at   http://capwiz.com/artsusa/home/

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Comments

  1. Great thoughts Tim, Tom, and Barbara!  Thanks for sharing.  As Barbara referenced, ACDA is now hosting a Children’s and Community Youth Choir Conductor’s Retreat.  The first was in Cincinnati in January 2010.  The next one will be in Denver on Martin Luther King Day Weekend 2012.  We are already making plans for the event.  For anyone that was not able to attend the 2010 retreat, we are creating a virutal retreat on the ACDA website.  Included are the hand-outs, including those referenced by Barbara, and videos will be uploaded soon.
     
    Finding opportunities for children to sing are vital to the future of choral music and, I believe, our society.  The arts offer us opportunities to learn about and experience other cultures and to share on a level playing field.  In particular, choral singing can enable the feeling of teamwork, artistic success, and learning outside of our comfort zone for children and youth.  In Cincinnati, there are several wonderful community/church choir programs.  There are outreach programs into the suburbs and plans for choral programs in the urban community.  We are finding more and more school districts in the area are cutting elementary music.  Many are cutting all "extra" activities.  This is a time where ACDA and choral educators need to step up and lead.  To find ways to offer choral music to every child.  We need to think creatively and reach as many children as possible – especially with the statistics Barbara and Tom have quoted.  We influence the future of our country and the globe.  I’d be very interested in hearing from others how they are bringing choral singing to children and youth in their communities.  What are the model programs and what are they offering?  If you know of one, please share!

  2. Amen to that, Tim!
     
    And the pace of institutional change sure is slow, isn’t it? What you describe was called "student-centered" and "process-centered" instruction in the early 80’s (and I’m sure many people were touting it before that). Many educators (myself among them) learned in grad school that it was the most engaging and personally transformative method of instruction, used it then, and continue to use it today.
     
    However, it’s some 30 years later, and many teachers are STILL using (and being taught to use) traditional "teacher-centric" methods of instruction.
     
    Inertia ain’t just a Physics principle….
     
    Here’s to progress — towards a compelling pedagogy even when it’s new and may make us uncomfortable at first. (:-)
     
    Warm regards,
     
    Tom

  3.  

    Good insights and deductions, Tom. In a NYT op/ed on the better classroom, Susan Engel of Williams College writes “A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at the corners of the day.”(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02engel.html) The choral experience does this. It needs to be built into the classroom experience.

     
     
     
     
     
     

     

  4. If you’re interested, here’s the url for the full 147 page Dana Report which Tim referenced above:  http://www.dana.org/uploadedFiles/News_and_Publications/Special_Publications/Learning,%20Arts%20and%20the%20Brain_ArtsAndCognition_Compl.pdf
     
    I haven’t had time to peruse the whole thing, but I’m wondering if one of their findings is along these lines: Kids who participate in musical groups experience success, and they develop learning strategies which directly transfer to success in other arenas (academic and life).
    • As they prepare for a concert, they learn the value of practice, self-discipline, and dedication to a goal. They learn not only that they can succeed at something rather challenging, they learn how to succeed.
    • The fact that they do so in a very public arena reinforces their experience, as they get lots of feedback from outside the group (audience, teachers, peers, family…).
    • They also learn the value of collaboration, and develop the trust and respect that goes along with that.
    • The fact that the director and fellow singers have high expectations of them further drives the "Success Engine."
     
     

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