versations, about two months in, I started asking, ‘well who is your affiliate in NJ?’ He told me he didn’t have an affiliate in NJ. Well, given all the ways we are interacting now, it seems like maybe we should consider being your affiliate. We talked about it and the process that was involved in putting in the application and everything had to go through their Board and be vetted. But it really all started with that webinar and a meeting of like minds through that process and it grew very organically from there.
JW: Yes,I agree. Dennis, one way I describe it is the NFHS in the music world is we are the largest national organization that you’ve never heard about. We are involved in a whole lot of things that no one really knows because it all kind of works in the background. As Bob has pointed out, the pandemic really changed a lot of these things for us because now we are able to reach out in more areas to be more collaborative in areas where we might not have been before.
Is Arts Ed NJ going to be the first arts organization under the umbrella of NFHS? JW: No. In our association we have multiple different kinds
of members. The NFHS is a national reflection of the member- ship that it built. As members we have athletic only associations, we have our activities associations which are athletics and artistic groups in one association, which is how it is in South Dakota which is where I’m from. There are about 25 or 26 states where that is the case. Texas is a good example. There are others like Georgia which has athletics with speech and theater, but doesn’t oversee music in Georgia. West Virginia oversees athletics and music, but doesn’t oversee speech and theater. With Arts Ed NJ , they are a music only affiliate for us, which is great because they have a focus and will bring a whole different kind of energy to the NFHS. So they are not the first artistic one, but are prob- ably the first that’s not an MEA or another association. However, with all the stuff you are doing to bring in the contests and festi- vals it’s a really natural fit for us to be connected with Arts Ed NJ. BM: We are also working with our Speech and Debate folks and the other theater organizations to make sure that the work they do we can connect them to the Federation and to new op- portunities. Connecting them to opportunities that they weren’t even aware of like some of the awards that are available for some of the different areas of theater, speech, debate and music. Some of our folks were not aware so how can we engage them into the process, and how can we make sure that they can benefit from the affiliation as well. We look at it as ‘how do we utilize the relationship to benefit all of arts education and all of the other organizations that are part of our membership?’ JW: That’s a good point because Arts Ed NJ isn’t just music,
TEMPO
it’s all the arts. BM: We have the Theater Associations, we have the Dance
Associations, Speech and Debate and a lot of them are also tied into our Governor’s Awards. There are a number of things that we are considering but we are at the very beginning of the af- filiation and getting a full understanding of all the benefits that membership provides.
What are the potential benefits of the affiliation? JW: I think that one of the biggest things that the NFHS
provides our member organizations is the ability to network and the ability to do professional development at the state organi- zational level. Hopefully Bob has experienced this as we have begun our journey, we have monthly calls with all the Directors of Music from all across the country at the state level. We have the same for Speech, Debate and Theater. We also have a Perform- ing Arts Conference every Fall, we write the national Speech and Debate topic that is debated on policy debate every year, we have a plethora of professional development opportunities that is open for all member organizations. We have a tier 1 and tier 2 creden- tialing component for music and it all comes with continuing education units. For resources for state associations, we help out with copyright compliance issues which are very complex and changing all the time. We have a gold standard for educational copyright compliance for teachers, but that also includes state as- sociation administrators, Principals, coaches, and Directors. As we dig deeper, we have an awards program that highlights music teachers, speech teachers, Heart of the Arts awards. All of them have tiers as well which goes from state, section level and na- tional level awards. We also have section meetings. We divide the country into eight sections. All the members in that section get together and talk about all the things going on in their particular geographic area of the country. We are working on other projects about what things will look like when we get back to school, and other projects that are in the moment. Those kinds of projects come up a lot. Having those types of resources that our members share with our other members is invaluable. BM: “I would say an example of that is our Solo and En-
semble Festival. We would have never been able to pull this off, or even to be aware of the ideas if we were not involved in these conversations back in the Spring and Summer. Because I was there as people were talking about what they were doing and how they were doing it, and at the same time getting information that more and more regional and all state performing opportunities were being taken off the table here in NJ, that then begged the question, ‘is there something we could do?’ Because we were in those conversations and I understood what was going on with the copyright side with allowing people to do virtual events, and
28 MAY 2021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64
