Musical Adventures in a COVID World
When I was in third grade, my family and I experienced a flash flood during a weeklong hike into Havasupai Canyon (a branch of the Grand Canyon). Although I know my parents were deeply concerned for our safety, I still remember it as one of the grandest adventures of my life! This is how I feel about Covid. Even though Covid has been life-threatening and disruptive, this time has felt like a big adventure in my musical world!
The first COVID spring of 2020 was excruciating, with a huge learning curve focused on creating virtual musical experiences for students while simultaneously mastering the necessary technology. Eventually, however, I learned to enjoy the creative process and successfully collaborated with fellow teachers to piece together virtual performances for Medieval Morning and Songs and Tales of the Sea. That this was possible through the wonders of technology strikes me as hilarious, since I’ve always been something of a troglodyte in the technology department! As the exhaustion of 2020 set in, as summer arrived, I found myself energized looking forward to the fall, as I had so many ideas for virtual music-making and Zoom music classes. I was ready to go! However, fate turned things upside down yet again.
Music Teacher Patty Clark conducts an outdoor music class for first graders in the fall of 2020.
Whereas in the spring we were all forced to the cutting edge of technology, in the fall of 2020 I had nearly the opposite experience of a second learning curve that did not involve technology at all! Rather, I became an itinerant music teacher, with a rolling cart, moving from classroom to classroom or holding class in assigned outdoor spaces. In fact, from September through December, approximately 75% of my classes were held outside!
One of my favorite fall 2020 memories was of standing under a tent with the pre-K class during a downpour, reading a book about a rainstorm, as students added rain sound effects with shakers. At the exact moment I stepped out from under the tent, a HUGE pool of water from the tent roof unceremoniously dumped on my head, totally drenching me and my layers of clothes. Definitely a high point for the students!
To be honest, though, teaching outside was not my biggest challenge, but rather teaching music without singing. Singing indoors was deemed unsafe, and outdoors, we had to be greatly distanced which made it at best, impractical, and at worst, impossible, to sing. I found myself saying words no music teacher should ever have to utter: “Please don’t sing…it’s not safe.”
I will admit that for the first couple weeks of school I was at a loss as to how to conduct music without singing, but eventually, I found ways to fill my students’ world with song, such as clapping, moving, or chanting along to recordings, or learning sign language to express the music. Playing the recorder safely presented a special challenge, however, and the third grade students probably clocked more outdoor time for this reason! Students stood outside in rows with their recorders, distanced by 12 feet, while I stood up on a hill barking out musical ‘orders’ through my headset microphone. (I often wonder whether I ought to go door to door and apologize to neighbors for weeks of students learning“Hot Cross Buns”.)
Fourth grade students perform Songs and Tales of the Sea on the playground in the spring of 2021.
Since the outdoors had often been our classroom, it seemed only natural to hold performances outside, as well. The most surprising of all performances was the fourth grade Songs and Tales of the Sea. We initially struggled with the logistics of coordinating singing, movement, and speaking in an outdoor space, until we discovered the perfect performance venue in the play structure. Not only did the structure provide enough space for distancing (singing), its shape was easily reimagined as a ship, and we now have a new permanent home for this performance.
Returning to GUS for the 2021-2022 school year has been exciting for a variety of reasons.
First of all, I have found that the resourcefulness and flexibility I developed during COVID has encouraged me to reimagine my music curriculum this year. One example of this is a world music component I incorporated into the first and second grade curriculum. Students have encountered Chinese traditional music, Indian classical music, American bluegrass music, Armenian folk music, American Hip Hop music, and Iraqi folk music. They have “met” multiple artist/performers from cultures different than their own, and they have enjoyed singing, moving, or playing along to these incredibly diverse musics. The beauty of this addition to the curriculum has been “meeting” (virtually through videos and audios) and appreciating musicians as people first before hearing and experiencing their music.
Fifth grade students visit The Great Animal Orchestra at the Peabody Essex Museum in the spring of 2022.
Another example of reimagining curriculum relates to the pre-COVID tradition of fourth and fifth graders attending a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance. While this field trip has not been possible, The Great Animal Orchestra exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem offered students the opportunity for a different kind of music listening, in which they focused on the amazing sounds of nature. It also generated a fifth grade unit of listening to music inspired by nature, making our own nature recordings on the GUS nature trail, and creating musical responses to those nature recordings, a natural tie-in to the class theme of the land.
Although there have been a multitude of educational and musical challenges brought about by COVID times, I also recognize how the experience has stretched me as a musician and educator. Forced to step outside of my comfort zone and do music and teaching in new and different ways, I have relished the experience, and I look forward to new musical adventures!