From the Desk of Aaron Lohmeyer

MacPhail’s Project Amplify Aims to Reach New Students

MacPhail Center for Music is the largest community music school in the nation with programs serving the entire state of Minnesota.  I recently had a chance to sit down with Rachel Hickman (Online School Partnerships Manager), Ben Bussey (Partnership Development Representative), and Liz Winslow (Director of School Partnerships) to discuss programs at MacPhail expanding the reach of music education.  A new project focuses on serving students historically marginalized by the curriculum.  Much of this work is supported through the grant funded initiative, Project Amplify…and is offered at no cost to schools.

 

Link to Project Amplify: https://www.macphail.org/music-education-project-amplify/

 

Aaron:

Could you just start with explaining what being the largest community music school in the nation means—what do you do?

 

Ben: 

MacPhail serves over 15,000 students a year, so it can be a little hard to understand all its parts.  The heart of MacPhail as people previously understood it was the lesson program. Today MacPhail has programming for all ages, backgrounds and abilities. We’ve done a lot with early childhood music, down to 6 weeks ; some really amazing things with music therapy programming, and choirs for adults and seniors with Alzheimer’s and different disabilities; our department, the School Partnerships department, coordinates instructors to support and supplement teachers who are already in their buildings…helping out with whatever it is that they want to do.

 

Sometimes people hear that and might think that we are trying to replace them, but that’s not at all our goal.  We’re there to make sure teachers are able to do what they want to do with their students; that we can give teachers options to try new things.

 

Aaron:

Yeah, I think that last point is really important to highlight because as you are trying to…well, “Amplify,” or highlight new programs, some may think a new program of any kind poses a threat to the program that they are already providing.  Of course, it’s not that, it’s just an effort to reach more students.  I think what Project Amplify can be is an opportunity to provide teacher training while simultaneously teaching students.

 

Could you paint a picture as to what a partnership might look like at the school and how the teacher might be involved so that they are learning at the same time?

 

Rachel: 

Yeah, I have two examples for Online School Partnerships that Ben also helped set up.  Both schools are teaching an Electronic Music Course and wanted to collaborate with us.  Our teaching artist is going into the classroom and working with the students about once a week, but also working with the teacher every other week to keep them a chapter ahead of their class as a form of professional development.  This professional development has been completely subsidized by generous grants to MacPhail for both Online Partnerships and Project Amplify.

 

Liz: 

Project Amplify really grew out of the fact that we have some incredible educators here, but how many of them  had any training on turning a soundboard on? (laughter). Because I didn’t!  Lights and sound and mics—that’s just the basics of running a concert today.  Even much less on working with my students who are on FruityLoops (now FL Studio)…students who would come down during their lunch because they liked the silence of the practice rooms and they were asking for more music help.  All I could give them was guidance on form and some basics of musicality, but I could do nothing for the bigger picture of what they were creating.  We’re just trying to help fill that gap.  

 

In some ways it feels a little reactionary.  In a perfect world, we would really start to reconsider how we train music educators.  I think the need is there and there are very few places that are actually training folks how to do it.

 

Aaron:

I agree 100%.  So with Project Amplify, I see that there are two major prongs to that.  Could you explain the two main areas you are focusing on?

 

Liz:

The Global Music Initiative (GMI) and Electronic Music Recording Arts (EMRA) are two MacPhail departments that heavily intersect with Project Amplify.  EMRA is led by Michael Cain, and he is just a fabulous faculty member who has crafted a team with all different areas of expertise from production, to DJing, to turntablism.  They’ve created resources for music educators to incorporate these modalities in their classroom, which are linked on the Project Amplify website. They are their own department at MacPhail, so a student could sign up for lessons in those areas, just like they could sign up for violin lessons.  

 

GMI is headed by Christopher Rochester, and that involves modern ensembles, jazz, and an artist in residence program to give artists other than those performing the Western classical canon the opportunity to build a project in Minnesota. In collaboration with GMI and EMRA, Project Amplify  is bringing opportunities for schools at no cost. 

 

Aaron:

So you just said something very quickly, and that was “no cost.”  So, let’s talk about costs.  Really, what is no cost?  Does the teacher need to secure any funding from the school?

 

Liz: 

Zero. It is really no cost, the grant funding for Project Amplify’s artists in residence truly makes this no cost to schools.  The teacher just needs to fill out the form and we do the rest. The resources for incorporating EMRA into the classroom linked on the website are completely free.

 

Aaron:

Wow.  So are most of these programs afterschool or actually during the school day?

 

Liz: 

Most are during the school day with a class of the teacher’s choosing.  

 

Aaron:

Do you have any stories or examples where one of these partnerships wound up influencing the teacher’s curriculum after it was over?

 

Liz: 

Last year one of our GMI artists in residence, Dr. Soojin Lee, worked with all of the students at 3 of the 4 elementary schools in Austin, MN – where we have another MacPhail site—and she wrote a curriculum including some folk songs, created videos for teachers to do some of the preparatory work with the students, then she went down to meet with every single music class, taught them in person, and then performed with them in their Spring concert.  And so now, those teachers are coming back to us and saying “That was great, how do we do more?” Soojin built a curriculum that the teachers can use again, but also passed on ideas for other approaches that the teachers will make their own while they consider other ways to routinely bring culture-bearers into their classrooms.

 

Aaron:

So, what is the geographical reach of these partnerships?

 

Ben:

The online partnership program is statewide since its inception in 2011.  

 

Aaron:

Could you back up and perhaps explain how the idea for Project Amplify started?

 

Ben:

I think it stems from the overall concept that every kid should be able to learn about the music they care about in school; and that we as music teachers should have the resources to help facilitate that learning. I think it was also created as a way to disseminate ideas among the adults about how to serve communities historically marginalized by the curriculum. We’re aiming to help MacPhail become an even better resource in partnership with K-12 teachers throughout Minnesota by developing these relevant, culturally centered programs.

 

Liz:

It started with interest in our Online Partnership program which provided lessons on, say, oboe, for more rural students.  We just decided to expand the idea of access to students who may not be currently served by the curriculum.

 

Rachel: 

Yeah, I’d just say that all of what Ben and Liz just said really gets at what a community school is—it’s an organization that just tries to really dial into the community, asking people in the community how they want to be supported, what they need to be supported.  That’s really why MacPhail and Project Amplify do so many different things, because there are just a lot of different needs among our multifaceted communities.

 

Liz:

Yeah, well, I taught at Richfield and I talked to Roque (Roque Diaz, Senior Director of DEI), saying I needed this stuff, but just never followed up—because it’s just too much work, right?! (Laughter). I’m right down the road from MacPhail, and Roque says all this cool stuff is going to happen, but I just didn’t have the capacity.  My inbox was full enough.  Knowing that is just a teacher’s reality, what we are trying to do is to completely cover the scheduling, money, planning, all the barriers out of the way.  We make it as simple as possible for both our artists and our teachers.

 

Aaron:

Right—we’ve been saying these experiences with artists and culture bearers are ‘best practices’ for years, but what have we really done to make it realistic for teachers?  This program seems to really seek a path for best practices.

 

Liz:

Exactly.  Think of all the considerations—as a band director I’m thinking: 1. First, I have to find these people, 2. Are they authentic culture bearers? 3. Do they even know how to work with kids? 4. I have to figure out how to pay them, 5. I have to justify it to my boosters and principal…you know just all the things.  MacPhail is just trying to eliminate all of that.

 

To the other part of your question—it is almost always music teachers that reach out.  Almost never administration. 

 

Rachel:

Well, I remember leaving college with all these grand ideas, but I had not yet been humbled by the system I had to work in.  So I taught middle school choir at a school where everyone was required to take a music class.  Choir was a place for a lot of students who just didn’t want any music class at all.  So it was literally called by some at the school, “the dumping grounds.”  So I would design projects to reach these students, and I would have just loved someone from EMRA (Electronic Music Recording Arts) show me how to make a project for these kids that don’t want to be here—so that they can do something that they care about.  For me, part of the problem was the restriction of the schedule—I couldn’t teach a different class, I had to work with the choir classroom I was given.  Sometimes it’s even higher up than your building admin, sometimes it’s the school board that just says this is what all students will get—that all students will choose between band, orchestra, and choir.  So, “sorry you have nine classes and you’re .75.”  The given restrictions of the job made it so that I couldn’t add in other things.  So I tried to sneak it into a class that existed.  But I think the conversation needs to be that teachers want these things.

 

Aaron:

Yeah, great point.

 

Ben: 

We need to be able to not just advocate for our programs on your behalf, but to help teachers learn how to advocate for yourselves.  I’ve become a big Ethan Hein fan, author of Electronic Music School, and he has a chapter on how to talk to your administrator to promote a new music course to meet your curriculum goals in different ways.

 

I’ll add that during the pandemic we had teachers who were more flexible.  They created things that better fit within the constraints of online teaching, to make music teaching & learning as good as it could be.  They made sure they could do those new things well * helped maintain their sense of community with students.  Now, those are the programs with more students on the other side of the pandemic.

 

Aaron:

I believe it.

 

Ben: 

They haven’t lost students.  They just figured out new ways to attract and engage.  I think it really puts the writing on the wall that if we’re not figuring out new ways as a big, statewide music teacher team to meet kids where they are at, we’re not going to have jobs.

 

Aaron, Liz, and Rachel:

(Big head nods all around)

 

Ben: 

And that’s the part of the reality we now face in music education, we need to continue to adapt our programming to make sure that we’re not just advocating for the 20% of kids that we already have access to.

 

Aaron:

Absolutely.  You make an additional point that I believe is worth highlighting.  That is—it’s not just teachers who change programming, but teachers who invest in their own education to be informed.  It’s about the new and doing the new well.

 

Ben: 

Yeah, we have a teaching artist, James Castañeda, who has this immensely popular ukulele class.  He’s just really good at it.  The kids sing and play, learn how to write chords, and quickly get into writing their own songs…he’s able to get kids past just Perform—into Create and Respond too – so fast. While I see & hear about so many challenges especially our 6-12 instrumental colleagues face, there’s also incredible opportunity to find lots of cool new stuff for kids and to work towards engaging every student.

 

Aaron:

And not just our Create-Perform-Respond standards, but something else too.  I saw on the back of an Essential Elements band book the invitation for students to Play, Record, and Share.  To me, that showed me that our field is just changing to reach students who want to create their own thing and share with their peers.  That’s really a different model than what we’ve been working with.  We need to equip students to create something they are proud of to share through the new performance space of the digital landscape—social media.  It’s the new concert hall.

 

Ben:

It’s definitely what we are trying to push the ball towards with this new project.

 

Aaron:

Well, you all are doing so much right now for filling gaps—not just providing good ideas, but taking a strategic approach for meaningful change.  You are making it happen in the schools while being an open partner to teachers.  Thank you.