Orchestra as a Vehicle for Social Change: Providing Opportunities and Teaching Perseverance


There are few things more beautiful than watching a child receive his or her first opportunity to play an instrument. Today at my lab school, the fourth grade orchestra students came to the orchestra cottage for their first lesson. At the start of the lesson, I told them, “Today, you will meet your violin.” The looks of anticipation, excitement, and joy were contagious as students opened their cases for the first time. One student exclaimed, “My violin is so beautiful!”


Unfortunately for the majority of students in the United States, they will never have the opportunity to meet their first instrument. Orchestra programs are offered in fewer than 20% of public schools in the United States (Hamann, Gillespie, & Bergonzi, 2002) and the majority of these programs are located in affluent schools (Elpus & Abril, 2011).


Because


opportunities to learn to play a string instrument in the public schools are limited, access to string instruction is not equitable. Schools located in less affluent areas have fewer resources, directly affecting the type of opportunities offered to the students in attendance (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Costa-Giomi & Chappell, 2007; Kozol, 2005). If music education is truly for all children, then changes need to be made that encourage teachers to work with underserved populations in every area of music education.


Working successfully with underserved populations requires increased awareness of a number of variables, primarily the impact of lower income, fewer resources, English as a second language, and single parent homes. Families with lower incomes tend to be more transient and students frequently move from one school district to another.


Frequent relocation


impacts student attendance and parental involvement. The characteristics listed above are also common characteristics for students who are considered “at risk.” At-risk students are any students who, on the basis of a variety of risk factors, are unlikely to graduate from high school and unlikely to become contributing members of society (Slavin, 1989; Taylor, Barry, & Walls, 1997).


When working with students who are potentially at-risk, emphasizing the connection between hard work and success is essential. One common characteristic of at-risk students is an inappropriate association between cause and effect relationships. Internal locus of control, or the belief that one has control over the events in one’s own life, is an important factor in developing perseverance skills and independence. As teachers we want our students to understand the following associations: when you do good things, good things happen to you; and when you do bad things, bad things happen to you (Madsen & Madsen, 1998). For example, if I study, I will get a good grade. However, this relationship is not well established in a young person’s life when cause and effect events are unstructured and seemingly random. For instance, my mom worked hard, but we were evicted from our apartment anyway and now we have nowhere to live. Or, I behaved in class, worked hard, was respectful of my teachers, but was punished at home by an abusive guardian. Establishing the correct associations between work and reward allows students to become independent and successful. If I study, I will get a good grade. If I practice, I will play the violin better.


Students, with an external locus of control, those who feel that they do not have control over their life events, may give up easily in the face of a challenge. It is our job as educators to encourage perseverance in all of our students, even those who seem to lack motivation.


At-risk is defined by the following risk factors: low socio-economic status, single parent homes, overage for current peer group, poor attendance, little parental involvement, and educational minority (Kaufman, Bradbury, & Owings, 1992; Shaklee & Biedler, 1992). All classrooms and populations of students include students who are at-risk (Metz, 1993). However, the number of students who experience one or more of these risk factors is higher in lower income families (Kominski, Jamieson, & Martinez, 2001). This reality presents additional challenges for both students and teachers that must be overcome.


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Orchestra is one context through which the correct associations of cause and effect can be taught. Systematic practice generally produces a tangible positive result in the performance of the student that both teacher and student can observe. When instruction is sequenced well, the relationship between practicing/rehearsing a passage can be heard and felt almost immediately. In a beginning lesson context, improvements in performance can occur over a short period of time. Achieving small target goals accompanied with positive reinforcement assists the students in realizing how quickly they are capable of improvement. Once students realize that focusing their attention, practicing (or working), and persevering on a given task all relate to progress, they begin to realize that they have some control over their own accomplishments. As a university professor who trains undergraduate music education students to be orchestra teachers, I decided to embark on a journey to increase access to string instruction to students regardless of socio-economic status. To that end, I collaborated with an area elementary school, our local symphony orchestra, and the university to create an elementary string program


By Rebecca MacLeod Editor’s Note: This article appears as one of a series written especially for Ala Breve by experts in the field of music education.


in a Title I school. The following is an account of the experiences that the elementary students had during the first year of the partnership.


The


primary goal of the project was to provide instrumental music instruction to underserved students, who otherwise may not ever be exposed to a string instrument. The secondary goal was to improve the elementary students’ awareness of the impact of consistent work on their own achievement.


The Beginning String Program


Interested fourth grade students enrolled at an area Title I school were presented with a permission slip to take home to their guardian and instructed that if they wished to participate in the orchestra program, the permission slip must be returned to the principal by the end of the first week of school. During the first year of the program, fourteen students completed this task successfully and were enrolled in the orchestra program. The orchestra class included eleven violinists, one violist, and two cellists.


The


instrumentation decision was made based on the size and type of instruments that had been donated for the project.


The class met twice a weekly, for 40 minutes each meeting, during the school day for an entire school year.


For their personal safety and to


mitigate loss, left, or damage, students were not permitted to take the instruments home to practice for safety reasons.


Therefore, all


instruction and practice was completed within the class period. Students received a total of 60 group lessons over the course of the school year. Although one of the goals of the project was to help students associate hard work with success, we did not explicitly share that goal with the students. Rather, we consciously designed our instruction to include clear target goals, small sequential steps towards each goal, with positive reinforcement occurring immediately when progress was made (Duke, 2009). We also structured simple perseverance tasks for the students. For example, students were instructed to practice one to two measures of music without the teacher’s assistance, and were initially given two minutes of in-class time to work on achieving the identified goal. Students were then rewarded for working towards the goal consistently during the two minutes without giving up, rather than being rewarded for accomplishing the goal itself. We hoped that this would teach the students to work towards a goal even if they were not immediately successful.


Fourth Grade Student Reflections The following are excerpts from letters that the


October/November 2014


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