MuzArt World Foundation – K-12 music programs, K-12 art programs, K-12 classes, music, arts, STEM grants

Success Is Not An Accident

MuzArt World Foundation — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 22:48:10 +0000

Success Is Not An Accident

By Dana C. Lamb

This week was the epitome of reward and exhaustion. It was “the week” in the school year – testing week. And, right after that, my production of Little Mermaid Jr. with its massive cast opened and closed their shows. This week redefined “showtime” and all things serious. These two weeks were a true test of performance on numerous levels. There was a high level of emotional investment that required the very best of everything that my students and I had to give. It was a week when my cognitive processing and neurological function refused to play nice in the sandbox after the 18th hour of work. It was a week when my blood type was Starbucks venti affogato turbo caffeine. It was a week of rising to the challenge, raising the bar, going for it and firing on all cylinders, and the exhales that followed. It was, quite frankly, a week.

Let’s start with the testing. If you are not an educator, you probably have no idea what goes into testing procedures. Children are tested for up to a week on Reading, Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies. Teachers are trained on how to administer the test, the adherence of procedures, are sworn to the oath of integrity, and are paired with other teachers so that the test is valid and reliable. Prior to this week, students are taught how to correctly fill in bubbles and how to negotiate a multiple-choice testing environment. We stress the importance of not talking, being prepared, getting enough rest, eating well, good (or perfect) attendance and not being tardy. We then temper that with the encouragement to do their best, quell their wide-eyed fears, monitor that they are in the right section of their test booklet, and then we praise them for a job well-done. Everything is closely monitored, guarded, and secure, and then we sit and wait for the results.

But there is more to this that you don’t see, and that is the heart of the child. They have come up to me and whispered, “Ms. Lamb, do you think I will pass?” Being so careful with their tender worries, I answer it simply with “I know you are so very smart and will do your absolute best.” I am asked if it will hold them back and if they won’t get to go on with their friends. I am asked if it means they will be punished at home if they do not do well. Even the youngest children ask if it will keep them from getting into college if they do not do well. The importance of this one test is not lost on so many children, and therefore many of them are anxious about possibly failing, even those who would never have a snowball’s chance of missing the mark. It is performance anxiety in its highest academic form.

But let’s balance this with what it’s like when our musical was going up. Like the test, we have practiced for months prior to the big event. Like the testing, they either know it or they don’t. The children question whether or not they will fail, and what to do if they forget lines, choreography, or the music. They rehearse at recess and in their cars as they are driven home. Some teachers have even reported seeing students doing the choreography with their feet while they are reading quietly at their desk. They gather their costumes, watch youtube tutorials on stage makeup, and rehearse their songs just one last time in front of a mirror, making sure that they are smiling and that they are maintaining good posture. And just as quickly as it began, it was over and the curtain closed on almost 800 people in attendance, and all ninety of those kids were exhausted, but deliriously proud.

As I write this blog, I need to preface this by stating that I am not the least bit opposed to standardized testing. I think it is absolutely vital to get a school, regional, state, and national snapshot of student performance. We have to measure their achievement in order to maintain or improve our educational system. It is a right, good, and prudent thing create benchmarks for our public education system and to hold both teachers and students to a level of expectation. The only thing I take issue with is the emphasis that is placed on one test as it relates to our worth as students, teachers, and school systems. Just as we are so much more than the information on our driver’s license, our schools and the people in them will always be so much more than one score. It’s a matter of balanced perspective and it’s one that we simply must maintain.

With the idea of balanced perspective, let’s consider these important questions as it pertains to standardized testing and putting on a musical. Which experience do you think best affirms a student’s success? Which experience do you think will be permanently ingrained in a child’s memory? Which experience affirms them more as an individual contributing to a collective environment and their community? From the child’s perspective, which experience is more rigorous and relevant as it relates to determination, hard work, achievement, and what success feels like? Do you think they will be more likely to remember the song they sang or the score they earned? Which experience is more likely to shape and define them as they grow? In twenty years, which experience will matter more?

Success is never an accident. Therefore, I write all of this to reiterate, once again, why I believe that music in the schools is so vital and must be preserved. Quite frankly, I am growing tired of this debate because we should never debate anything that is clearly in the best interest of American school children. Furthermore, the litmus test of what is best for children should no longer be defined by whether or not something is tested.
Instead, children need every single possible opportunity that we can give them to define, plan, and achieve success. How can we expect students to be successful adults if they have not had ample opportunity to practice it on a number of levels in their schools? Our schools are one of the most ideal places to discover strengths and weaknesses, to make the mistakes in the shadow of caring educational professionals who will teach them how to succeed. How can we expect them to discover their talents if we do not provide opportunities for them to discover it for themselves? How would tomorrow’s innovator in medicine or technology, tomorrow’s next composer, or tomorrow’s next leader ever grab hold of their potential if the possibility were never offered to them?

It should never be a question of whether or not music is in schools. We need to change this mindset that somehow the arts are a luxury. While music is not a tested subject, to say that music education is invaluable is an indefensible posture and it is not one that I swallow easily. I have seen where music is the only tether between a child on the brink and their participation in any education. I have seen where music becomes the safe place for the child who can stay one extra hour after school before they return to their precarious life beyond the school walls. I have seen music affirm students who will never be the smartest, the prettiest, the most athletic, or the teacher’s trusted darling. Through music, I have seen children shatter their labels of learning deficiencies, diagnoses, and self-imposed beliefs. Because of music, I have seen the differences that divide children beyond my stage fade like the houselights when they are on my stage. I have seen children remain on the center stage for one moment longer than they should have during their curtain call because it is perhaps the only time in recent memory that they were affirmed for their presence and their contribution. It is not just my job, but my lifework and highest responsibility to make sure that every child knows that they matter and that their success matters.

While we teach, whatever we teach, whomever we teach, the one thing that remains clear is that success is never an accident. And the process of achievement comes with mistakes, but it also comes with affirmation and high fives. At the core, it’s not about the standardized test versus music education or which is more important because that will take a massive paradigm shift in the public education mindset, and one I hope to see before I die. What it comes down to is that every student learns that success is not an accident and that success comes in countless forms. For if every child acquaints themselves with success in our classrooms, what could they do when it’s really showtime?

The Benefits of Music Education,

MuzArt World Foundation — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 22:43:03 +0000

The Benefits of Music Education,

By Laura Lewis Brown

Whether your child is the next Beyonce or more likely to sing her solos in the shower, she is bound to benefit from some form of music education. Research shows that learning the do-re-mis can help children excel in ways beyond the basic ABCs.

More Than Just Music
Research has found that learning music facilitates learning other subjects and enhances skills that children inevitably use in other areas. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving is really bringing a very serious benefit to children as they progress into more formal learning,” says Mary Luehrisen, executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation, a not-for-profit association that promotes the benefits of making music.

Making music involves more than the voice or fingers playing an instrument; a child learning about music has to tap into multiple skill sets, often simultaneously. For instance, people use their ears and eyes, as well as large and small muscles, says Kenneth Guilmartin, cofounder of Music Together, an early childhood music development program for infants through kindergarteners that involves parents or caregivers in the classes.

“Music learning supports all learning. Not that Mozart makes you smarter, but it’s a very integrating, stimulating pastime or activity,” Guilmartin says.

Language Development
“When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage,” says Luehrisen. While children come into the world ready to decode sounds and words, music education helps enhance those natural abilities. “Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development,” she says. But Luehrisen adds that those inborn capacities need to be “reinforced, practiced, celebrated,” which can be done at home or in a more formal music education setting.

According to the Children’s Music Workshop, the effect of music education on language development can be seen in the brain. “Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain’s circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds,” the group claims.

This relationship between music and language development is also socially advantageous to young children. “The development of language over time tends to enhance parts of the brain that help process music,” says Dr. Kyle Pruett, clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a practicing musician. “Language competence is at the root of social competence. Musical experience strengthens the capacity to be verbally competent.”

Increased IQ
A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade.

Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits not seen in the music-only group.

The Brain Works Harder
Research indicates the brain of a musician, even a young one, works differently than that of a nonmusician. “There’s some good neuroscience research that children involved in music have larger growth of neural activity than people not in music training. When you’re a musician and you’re playing an instrument, you have to be using more of your brain,” says Dr. Eric Rasmussen, chair of the Early Childhood Music Department at the Peabody Preparatory of The Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches a specialized music curriculum for children aged two months to nine years.

In fact, a study led by Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College, and Gottfried Schlaug, professor of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, found changes in the brain images of children who underwent 15 months of weekly music instruction and practice. The students in the study who received music instruction had improved sound discrimination and fine motor tasks, and brain imaging showed changes to the networks in the brain associated with those abilities, according to the Dana Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports brain research.

Spatial-Temporal Skills
Research has also found a causal link between music and spatial intelligence, which means that understanding music can help children visualize various elements that should go together, like they would do when solving a math problem.

“We have some pretty good data that music instruction does reliably improve spatial-temporal skills in children over time,” explains Pruett, who helped found the Performing Arts Medicine Association. These skills come into play in solving multistep problems one would encounter in architecture, engineering, math, art, gaming, and especially working with computers.

Improved Test Scores
A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test.

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences: “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. “Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency,” Pruett says. “People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.”

Being Musical
Music can improve your child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher.

“It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you,” Pruett says. “Music makes your kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.”
While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

“There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake,” Rasmussen says. “The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music,” he adds. “Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.”