Arts Learning

1. At the Journeys High School in St Paul, there was previously no music arts programming in vocal or instrumental music. This project offered a viable music (songwriting, composition) learning opportunity to students with emotional and behavioral issues, engaging them in their education experience, while cultivating a passion for learning and an appreciation of the arts. 2. Because this project was executed under the umbrella of The Lab at Journeys, there was ample opportunity for constant evaluation and reevaluation of the effectiveness of the project. Mary Tinucchi, the Lab director and her staff provided Courtney with several methods and tools for ongoing evaluation. -Courtney ?lled out a form every time she worked with a student that the Lab uses for all mentorship type interactions with students. The form asks for four reporting aspects; what was planned, what actually happened, what trouble shooting ideas have arisen, what will happen next time. Courtney submitted the completed forms to the staff social worker at the Lab, Theresa Pease, who reviewed the progress of each student with Courtney on a regular basis. -Courtney attended weekly staff meetings of the Lab and the Journeys High School where there were opportunities to discuss each student’s daily progress and often Courtney’s work with the student was brought up as a barometer of the student’s general level of engagement for the week. -Courtney had ongoing discussions with staff teachers and social workers regarding her own impact on individual students. -Also, the professional musicians brought in to work with Courtney, Rob Genadek, Tommy Barbarella and Jeff Bailey, were all able to evaluate and provide feedback as to the quality of the arts education that was taking place as they visited the school or met students at the recording studio. The students’ pieces of writing were used as tools to gauge the success of the arts instruction in terms of language and writing development. The recordings themselves served as an evaluation tool in that they marked the culmination of a great deal of work and effort on behalf of the students and the teaching artist. Additional metrics on student attendance and engagement forthcoming: By bringing in a professional musician who is also a licensed teacher we aimed to provide access to songwriting and musical development while strengthening the students’ engagement with all curricula. Our hope was that arts programming could provide the magic backdoor access to a student’s inner abilities that have not yet been tapped in conventional educational situations, thus providing students with new glimpses of their potential as scholars and as contributing citizens. Courtney's background as a classroom teacher was invaluable. Without it, the project would have been difficult. Primary composition lessons were difficult with some students, but an approach from the perspective of songwriting and lyricism yielded better results. 2: 1. The outcome achieved is primarily that High School students at Journeys, a public school for extremely high-risk teens who are perpetually teetering between life on the streets and life in prison, were able to engage in musical collaboration of both an artistic and therapeutic nature with adult music artists yielding a.) a recording that they could be proud of, b.) an increase in their level of engagement with their educational future and c.) a better way of understanding their own emotional behavior. 2. The obvious measure of evaluation in this project was the number of students who were able to complete recordings. By examining shifting enrollment figures at Journeys and noting how many pieces of writing and recordings were made by students working with Courtney, a conclusion about the program’s success can be drawn. The final writings and recordings stand as evidence that students who had an interest did work hard and follow through and succeed at songwriting and recording with the help of an adult teaching artist. 3. For Courtney, there were real and perceived barriers regarding the acceptance of not only her project in the school but her own presence in the school as well. The feeling of having to be open and willing to interact is a constant when one is attempting to assimilate into a community. Add, then, that the community is one where differences of socioeconomics and race are touch-points for misunderstanding and one can easily feel that genuine acceptance may not be achievable. For the students, there were barriers of trust. Sometimes the students took weeks of being mean and disrespectful before they’d finally decide to get serious and begin work. There were also barriers of prior knowledge and cultural identification. Many students hadn’t previously been exposed to music above and beyond their current playlist, music from different cultures, different countries and different times in history. There were enormous barriers of the systems and lack of systems that the students were governed by leading, above all, to high percentages of absenteeism. Transportation, health, suspension due to behavior issues, criminal offenses, etc. Outside the school, there was a great deal of doubt regarding the feasibility of working productively in music with students of this profile. Aligning with partner teachers to strengthen acceptance of artist - Mary Tinucchi and Glo Adjusting timelines to contend with absenteeism - Recording Engineer + Musicians Adjusting curriculum to focus on student’s emotional development and openness - Teaching artist + The Lab Staff Courtney was given the opportunity by Mary Tinucchi to participate as a guest teacher in the ongoing Poetry Pathway lead by Glo, a fellow teacher, during school time several days per week. We worked closely with Glo, who was deeply trusted and admired by the students, to help give the project and Courtney a better image with the students. Glo’s encouragement helped push many students to increase their level of engagement with the program. To counter absenteeism, we were able to call upon the generosity of our recording artist and fellow musicians to accommodate additional recording sessions. The greatest difficulty was teaching the structures of original song composition. Through our struggles with this barrier, however, we learned that the process was beneficial in helping the students take comfort and pride in generating innovative song ideas and sharing their thoughts, emotions and frustrations through their writing. We succeeded in this because we were able to provide caring and attentive adults to be there throughout the process.