The Unresolved Chord: Music Education and COVID-19 in Rural Communities
A muppet mural and a few inspirational posters adorned the cement walls of the first music room Thomas Odell ever walked in at Worcester Central School in central New York. It was in the annex building; kids would bundle up in their coats and gloves to go see Mrs. Hamway for 38 minutes and learn about dulcimers and boomwhackers and the C chord scales. Though Odell knew the basics of music education from his father, the community he created from what he learned in that freezing classroom carried him far past the city limits of Worcester.
The Worcester Central School Building Project in 2009 and 2010 marked the demise of the annexed music classrooms and other studio spaces. Photo Courtesy of Kim McIntyre.
A lot has changed since then. The annex is now a parking lot and the new (and improved) music room has fancier equipment and less blankets to keep out the cold. But unfortunately, the trouble facing music education in rural New York is far from over. Financial constraints and COVID-19 restrictions have buried local bands and chorus classrooms in a heavy cloud of grief that can’t be broken with a Sondheim four-part medley or Journey marching band arrangement.
This past year fell a few notes too flat.
When COVID-19 put a rest on choral concerts and band rehearsals, it was only supposed to be for a short period of time. (A fermata, if you will.) But 2020 has come and gone and high school band and chorus is still no closer to returning to the stage.
“Chorus gave me a community that I didn't realize I had until I left,” said Worcester Central alumna Olivia Armao (‘18). She was not only involved in chorus and an a-capella group, but also played bass clarinet in the marching band and did the annual musical. “It felt more like a home than just school, and I would have been so much worse off without those classes. Music made me somebody.”
Though Armao no longer studies music professionally, she does attribute the program at Worcester for keeping her focused and motivated throughout high school.
“Chorus gave me a community that I didn’t realize I had until I left. Music made me somebody. ”
Unfortunately, the new reality involves much less singing in the rain and more drums in disinfectant spray. From the guidelines put on educators that change almost daily to the shift in training where music education students are now asked to learn invaluable skills via Zoom classes, musicians-in-the-making are losing out on their passion for the arts.
“All the kids' regular day-to-day interactions that you would normally get in the hallways, they're just gone. Vanished,” said third-year music performance student at the College of St. Rose, Thomas Odell. He recently found out that along with 23 other programs on campus, his major will be dissolved once all current students are graduated.
“Many of the programs have declining or historically low enrollment,” reads an official announcement from the College. “Other degree or certificate programs were eliminated because the cost to maintain them was higher than the revenue generated by enrollment.” According to the announcement, the funds reduced will equal about $5.97 million in revenue for the College.
The College of St. Rose had one of few music education and performance schools in New York State and is located in Albany, NY.
Odell made it very clear that he was frustrated with the budget cuts on both college and K-12 schools. “KEEP MUSIC IN OUR FUCKING SCHOOLS, you hear that?” He passionately screamed at one point in our many conversations. That frustration is echoed in the sentiments of both new and experienced teachers in the profession.
“If your administration makes you feel like your department is important, then you feel great,” said Lyz Mortati, K-12 music educator at Worcester Central. “You want to produce a product that your district will be proud of. But what's the point if I put out a video? If I don't, no one's gonna care and that sucks.”
But students like Odell don’t just wake up one day and choose to be a musician. It starts at a young age, with teachers like Mortati, who bring out that passion for music. And the love affair begins for some when they pick up an instrument in middle school band for the first time.
Fifth and Sixth Grade Students sit quietly and listen to a guest speaker, Jacob Campbell, via Zoom in the new music classroom. Photo Courtesy of Worcester Central School.
“I definitely didn’t know what I was in for, but seeing everyone march in the Memorial Day parades made me want to be a part of the woodwind section,” said Armao. She picked up the clarinet to start, but quickly found her place as the only bass clarinet in the marching band.
And it may be that most kids in the high school band and chorus never go on to play sold-out performances or score leading roles in Broadway shows, but arts are important in schools nonetheless. A 2020 study of arts in public education concluded that “highly engaged instrumental music students were, on average, academically over one year ahead of their peers.” These results were independent of race, cultural background, or socio-economic status.
Here’s the kicker. Without high-school music programs, some students may never get that “spark” of passion to become an educator or musician. Those beaten instruments might be the first thing that a kid realizes they are excited about in school.
“If I didn’t have chorus and band I literally would have been delinquent,” recounted Armao. “I would have given up or I would have been depressed as f*ck. Like, I don't even know how those kids are even getting through it.”
Part I: High School
Malena Fisher has been playing guitar since she was four years old. She quickly became involved in piano and choir soon after and picked up her trumpet in fifth grade for middle-school band. Throughout her experience at Worcester with the music department and educators like Mr. Odell, Hamway, and now Mortati, Fisher is gearing up to become a music educator in the future.
“Every day, the answer is ‘no sorry, we can’t [let the students sing without masks if socially distanced]’ but they managed to put together a soccer season.”
“It always just seemed natural to me.” said Fisher. “Band and chorus are the highlights of my day, and marching again makes it almost feel normal.” The school has recently been allowed to practice marching band outside and socially distanced, and has improved morale in the junior and high school band.
“All of it just sucks,” continued Fisher. “We can’t sing in our voice groups and it feels like we are working with no end goal. It isn’t like we can have a concert for chorus right now.”
Other students reflect Fisher’s sentiment. They are tired of feeling like they are singing alone, and want something to work towards. With restrictions easing across the state, it can be hard for teachers like Mortati to find comfort in a post-pandemic world.
It's so hard to get any kind of product out of this, and people need to see that,” exclaimed a frustrated Mortati. “I keep asking the administration if anything has changed [on restrictions] saying ‘Can you let me know if something changes? Can you double check and see if maybe they can take their masks off if they're 12 feet apart?’ And everyday the answer is ‘no sorry, we can't’ but they managed to put together a soccer season.”
This is a common factor across upstate school districts, where soccer and softball seasons are going on as planned with shorter practices and physical distancing precautions. Some local venues are even practicing wrestling, which is a high-impact sport with prolonged physical contact with another human being. According to the NY Youth Wrestling website, there was just a tournament on April 24 in Utica.
And even Worcester Central School students have participated in a soccer season and now a limited softball season with masked and distanced games and practices.
“Everyone is talking about that for sports and says that kids need to play sports for their mental health,” said Armao. “How come you don’t have the same respect for music? These kids NEED music, they are going to kill themselves.”
Even with regards to younger children in the same school building, mandates across the board are loosened for K-6 students according to Mortati’s experience.
It makes it hard to look at the little kids who still get to have music class pretty much normal except that they have to stay a little further apart and have masks on and then teach at the high school level and be like, sorry, this is what you get.” said Mortati. She put together a video for the christmas “concert” and had the accompanist come in to pre-record, but is not planning to do the same for spring.
Students at Worcester Central School have long been given the opportunity to participate in All-County events for top-scoring musicians in the area. In lieu of auditions and a concert this year, accepted students were posted to the school’s Facebook page. There was no virtual event to honor those who were chosen.
“All-County was like a key part of my experience in high school,” said Armao. “Without these little positive things that kids experience in their time like that positive reinforcement, What the fuck else do they have?”
Part II: College
In speaking to college students and educators, there is a similar lack of engagement and regulation in postsecondary education. Odell reiterated that this online form of learning with music and music theory was one of the reasons he decided to take the semester off.
“It's all recorded and recording a concert is incredibly hard,” said Odell. “You don't have that interaction with your audience, you don't have a lot of that fun. And in the case of ensembles forget about it! There's orchestras, bands or even like a string trio you can't manage it. You’d have to be separated the whole time and nothing would be in sync.”
Though Odell has found solace in his temporary position as a school teacher for his time off, other students are powering through in an isolated semester. Salvatore Salvaggio, a 66-year-old retired music director living in Oneonta, NY currently teaching adjunct courses at SUNY Oneonta. Salvaggio teaches classical guitar, and even taught Malena Fisher in her early years of training.
“The whole spiritual thing is very important in education. I’m helping to feed the spirit of the student; the soul.”
He teaches up to 14 or 16 students in a class, but has not noticed much of a difference in motivation in the students, especially those that are specializing in music or instrumentation.
“So, there is written feedback that is advantageous to give people in an individual studio type teaching situation that I think the computer isn’t good at,” said Salvaggio.
It's like looking at a piece of art, you know, when they actually get involved in working with [the music],” he continued. “You understand how it works better, and how this goes to your hands which goes to this string which goes to this chord. The whole spiritual thing is very important in education.”
SUNY Oneonta offers two majors: Music and Music Industry, as well as five minors in Audio Arts Production, Jazz Studies, Music Literature, Music Performance, and Music Theory. It does not offer a Music Education track.
“Any of the arts, music and performance, exercise the whole gymnasium of your brain,” concluded Salvaggio. “I'm helping feed the spirit of the student; the soul.”
In Upstate NY, the majority of music educators venture to SUNY Potsdam and the Crane School of Music. Other popular universities offering a music education program include University of Rochester, New York University, SUNY Fredonia, Ithaca College, and Nazareth College.
Of these schools, only a few encouraged in-person learning and extracurricular music activities for the Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 semesters.
Part III: Music Educators and Beyond - Teaching the next generation
With this lack of regulation and communication from both the state and local administration when it comes to music education and the arts in rural high schools, it can be difficult to want to stay in the profession.
“There was a part of me that was like ‘fuck this dude’ like I'm done [teaching] but then in the long run Worcester is not an isolated part of the country that has a pandemic,” said Lyz Mortati. “This is everywhere. It's not like I'm gonna go to another school district and all of a sudden be able to have a normal chorus again. Part of me wants to feel better about that because it's not that I'm a bad teacher, and everybody has the exact same feelings as me but that doesn't make it any easier to not believe that you're a failure as a teacher.”
Mortati has only been out of school for a year and entered the teaching profession in Worcester. She has dealt with many situations regarding lack of respect and listening in the classroom, and notices that students are much more misbehaved in a larger setting such as an auditorium or gym.
“That's something that you deal with like your first year anyway,” said Mortati. “Especially since I'm 24. But it's even harder when I'm basically doing things like jumping jacks and cartwheels to get them to do anything and they're looking at me with a blank stare.”
This lack of respect for educators in general is a common theme throughout the pandemic, but has highlighted a major difference between music educators and those who teach typical subjects.
“Choir teachers see a type of growth that literally nobody else sees,” recounted Armao. “I don't think that anybody understands that. Miss Hamway literally gave me standards to live by, and like, what to expect of myself and I never had another teacher do that. Music teachers see you at all points in your life, they see you when you're sick, they see you when you don't know something, they see you when you're super proud of yourself.”
Olivia Armao and Shyana Fisher (author) posing for a picture with instruments in high school marching band at Worcester Central. Armao graduated in 2018 and Fisher graduated in 2017.
Odell and Fisher both echoed this feeling. They credited the Worcester music department for much of their growing up and learning about life and the importance of instruments and song in their lives.
“These are the teachers that care the most, and they are getting praised and paid the least. ”
Even though the influence of music education is studied and reported on constantly, schools often focus their attention on sports and other areas of academia. State aid to Worcester Central School decreased $78,093 from the 2019-2020 school year to the current year. Girls and Boys soccer and softball/baseball teams have all recently received new uniforms.
The Worcester Central School Marching Band has placed in the top 5 scorers during the Sherburne Pageant of Bands competition for overall parade performance and concert band consistently over the past 15 years. This pageant has not gone on since 2019, and will be fully virtual for the 2021 year.
“There's BEAUTIFUL PRISTINE trophies on top of these cases of broken instruments, and it's such a metaphor for the shitty f*cking things that the music department goes through.” said Armao.
Even the general atmosphere in the school is much different than pre-COVID because students are as burnt out and tired as the teachers.
“It's been hard to get excited about anything because everything is so different,” said Odell. “And the kids don’t want to learn, so that is really frustrating for all of the teachers in the school.”
As for how kids will fare after the pandemic? That remains to be seen. Maybe they can go back to normalcy without lingering effects on their mental health and learning styles. But more likely than not it will be a battle to get students back on track, especially when it comes to music and the arts.
Odell and Armao have both seen a loss in respect for teachers throughout the pandemic, and a lack of motivation and empathy. Fisher even talked about an instance where students left band class to go hang out in the senior hallway.
“These are the teachers that care the most, and they are being praised and paid the least,” said Armao.
And even if students get back on track, what about the teachers and their mental health? How many actually want to stay in the profession after a year like this one?
“There was a part of me that was like ‘fuck this dude’ like I'm done [teaching] but then in the long run Worcester is not an isolated part of the country that has a pandemic. This is everywhere,” said Mortati. “It's not like I'm gonna go to another school district and all of a sudden be able to have a normal chorus again. Part of me wants to feel better about that because it's not that I'm a bad teacher, and everybody has the exact same feelings as me but that doesn't make it any easier to not believe that you're a failure as a teacher.”
With restrictions easing all across the country, it is looking like teaching music in-person might be a possibility again come Fall 2021. But what that will look like remains to be seen.
As of 2023, all music education and music performance majors will be graduated and the program will cease to exist at the College of St. Rose.
Worcester Central School hopes to participate in a version of the Memorial Day parade on Monday, May 31.
“If you cut money and you cut budgets and you cut programs, and you cut access and you burn out the teachers, you are losing this web; this community that spans far beyond the grade school years,” said Armao. “Every day I am reminded of the impact that that place and that department has had on me.”