Music in our Schools

Many opportunities for the American Choral Directors Association await us individually, as well as an association, in this New Year as we engage in the process of creative collaboration.

Collaboration is significantly different than its sister processes of mediation, arbitration, negotiation, compromise, or co-existence, in the fact that collaboration actually creates something new. And while we hold solidly to the ACDA foundation of a “finer performance of a finer choral literature”, we have the ongoing challenge of translating this mission into contemporary culture. Collaboration can help us do this.

One of the many exciting possibilities that lie in front of us this year is the opportunity of collaboration with the National Association for Music Education (NAfME, formerly MENC). I have enjoyed conversations on several occasions in the last few months with the leadership of NAfME, and I am excited for ACDA as we proactively work with this important and influential association. This Wednesday I will participate for the first time on behalf of ACDA in NAfME's initiative, The Music Education Policy Roundtable.

Let me say that my excitement regarding collaboration with NAfME does not diminish my enthusiasm for any other ACDA collaboration. We are stronger as a result of our association with sister organizations in other guilds, and with those that have a different focus that ours. However, NAfME touches emerging musicians in ways that cut to the core of our mission as an association. Specifically, our music teachers are on the front line with our youngest of musicians in our educational system.

As we move further into collaboration, consider the benefits:

• Collaboration provides an "insurance policy" against the threat and possibility of fatigue or retreat as we face the ups and downs of the creative process. When we collaborate, we spread the risk, which encourages us to take more chances.

• Collaboration may widen the scope of intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation derives from what you personally enjoy in a task. By collaborating, extrinsic motivation joins with intrinsic motivation, providing ongoing insurance against the fragile state of our individual desires.
• Collaboration bolsters unstable self-discipline because we become attached and responsible to the other collaborator as well as the focus of the work and mission.
• Collaboration lessens the loneliness of creative work and reduces the fears of going against field norms, which are and can be the sclerosis of any group or organization.

As ACDA collaborates with NAfME, we maximize the energies both organizations bring to a project. In this level of creative collaboration, each partner's love for the work and for the shared goal moderate the inherent difficulties that can challenge collaborative efforts.

I will have more to say in coming months regarding our emerging collaborations, but for the moment, I encourage ACDA members to work proactively to support the National Association for Music Education initiative in March, 2012, MUSIC IN OUR SCHOOLS MONTH. Advocacy takes place on many fronts, and advocates for music education need to learn to speak to our many different audiences, each having a key contribution to make. March is a good month to get involved and contribute in some way to ensure that our nationa's students have access to a comprehensive, sequential music education taught by exemplary music educators.