Ep 81 | The Arts: Extra or Essential?

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There is grit and rigor that happens in rehearsal. And when you hold uh kids to high standards, high performance standards in the arts, you teach valuable lessons in responsibility, teamwork, accountability, competence, empathy, and so many other things that beyond the school academic classroom can be hard to find. And these soft skills beyond a grade on a report card are what carry us through the rest of our lives.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambi County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. When we think about growing confident kids, we think of sports, academic achievement, even making friends. But what about children's chorus? My next guest is the artistic and executive director at Pensacola Children's Chorus, where the Sing to Succeed program is striving to eliminate the barriers of affordability and transportation for low-income and at-risk youth in Escambia County. And today he's going to share why arts are the unsung heroes of holistic success. More than a mission statement, conducting voices and connecting community, Alex Gartner. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Thank you for having us up a little word play you did there.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I'm glad you appreciated it. Unsung. I would have been very disappointed if it had gone unrecognized. But let's let's kick things off with some myth busting, because a lot of parents see being involved in a musical program as kind of extra, not essential, like a bonus activity, maybe even like a reward for good behavior, but definitely not a means to any end other than like it's nice. So, but you disagree. So how so?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I do disagree. And I think if we look back to the pandemic, it gives us a little bit of an insight as to how important the arts are in our lives. When we were all stuck at home, what did we want to do? We wanted to watch Netflix, we wanted to listen to music. All of a sudden, all of the arts were so much more essential in our lives. And now that we're back in our normal society, I think it's really important to point out that like sports and like other activities, there's some really great benefits to arts programs. From the outside looking in, though, the easiest thing you can see is, oh, well, we're just going to perform. I'm going to go watch my kid at a concert. I'm going to go, I'm going to go sing in a choir, and I'm going to sing my favorite music or music that I don't like, and that happens too. But what we miss from from that perspective is that there's so much learning that's happening week after week. There is grit and rigor that happens in rehearsal. And when you hold uh kids to high standards, high performance standards in the arts, you teach valuable lessons in responsibility, teamwork, accountability, competence, empathy, and so many other things that beyond the school academic classroom can be hard to find. And these soft skills beyond a grade on a report card are what carry us through the rest of our lives. So the arts are, in my opinion, very essential.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I don't think I would have considered empathy as a benefit outside of the academic circle. Like I could definitely see teamwork, responsibility, but explain empathy. How have you seen that show up in your kids?

SPEAKER_00 3:39

So it's it's a unique skill to choir, I will, I, I'll venture to say, because unlike, you know, instrumental music, we're singing words and they're coming from various sources, whether it be poetry, whether it be living writers, historical figures. And in order to convey emotion and to convey the meaning of a text, we have to be able to interact with it and kind of put ourselves in that person's shoes. This is really essential for like multicultural music. When we're singing in a style that's not innate to ourselves, we have to learn how to do that authentically. That takes a good teacher, but it really takes commitment on behalf of the singer to really put themselves out there and consider something radically different than what they know in their day-to-day lives.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Okay. Well, that's really fascinating because I recently attended a choral performance in Santa Rosa County with Mr. Miller, whom you know. And most of the songs were in a different language or from a different culture. Many of them were in or in Yoruba, a West African language. And I don't think I ever made the connection watching the kids sing that, oh, they really put themselves in the shoes of what this language is trying to convey. In my ignorance, I was just thinking, oh, they learned how to memorize words that are different.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Well, and that's definitely like a common misconception from the audience perspective. We have to, as teachers, we have to be able to bring the audience into that learning process. There's like you said, the aeroba music, though. I mean, I've taught some of that music before. And there's some really interesting cultural and societal things that we don't get to experience. Um, those people have this innate sense of connection to the earth and and all the natural things that are around us. And they have these wonderful connections that sort of we in our Western central lives can't even fathom. So to explore it really helps us broaden our worldview and get a better appreciation for people who are different than us.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

We're not known for our robust environmental ethics.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

This isn't a political podcast. We won't go there.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

We won't go there. You really seem to embody the the purpose and the mission behind this part of the arts. And before sing to succeed, you were actually with the Cincinnati Youth Choir. Is that right? What impact has choir made on you personally?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Oh goodness. Um, I've been singing since I was like, I don't know, since I could talk, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Me high to a grasshopper, as they say here in the South. Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

So I was in quiet, like I was just singing pervasively throughout my life. I played sports too. You know, I did all I did all the things, but music still kind of stuck with me. And I had the privilege of having some really incredible teachers who invested in me and saw my potential and gave me learning opportunities, gave me leadership opportunities. And for a while I was going to be an architect, and that just didn't resonate with me. I it was like kind of my my safety, which is a hilarious safety job to have. But then ultimately one day I woke up, I said, I think I want to teach music. I wasn't really ever into the performance side. I enjoy performing, but I knew that as a career and growing up, I wanted to give the same opportunities that I had to other children so that they could have the stage and have the platform to use music to their benefit and to make them incredible people.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

How did you benefit from it?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Oh gosh. So, like I kind of talked about, the the environment that music and specifically choir creates, it's it's a community that is hard to replicate in any other space. A lot of times people will liken a choir to or any musical ensemble to a sports team. And there are a lot of similarities to that, but there's a difference. The key difference that I've seen is that apart from the group mentality, there is a high degree of individual accountability and responsibility because not everybody has like a specific role. Everybody has the same role. So everybody has to be performing at the highest level because we're all working collectively together to accomplish the exact same goal. I'm not playing offense, I'm not playing defense. I'm doing the exact same thing. There's a lot of studies about research studies about the benefits of singing specifically, but music in general. And it's just, it's really fascinating to see how how just the psychology of being in a room of other musicians and performing together just really has these incredible health benefits and these incredible educational benefits. I won't want to bore anybody with them because there are a lot of stats about it and I love statistics. I didn't memorize any of them for today. I can only speak anecdotally about what we hear from our singers and our parents, but the impact is more than anyone might expect.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

I could see where the team impact that's different from a sports environment is you cannot say that's not my job.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Right. Right. You can't. And you can't say it's not a win or lose environment. You're not competing against anybody but your best version of yourself. There's no tournament. There are certainly competitions that you can enter in. You know, that's really big in the marching band world. But at the end of the day, all you're competing with is your potential. And so the more you raise the bar, the more you work hard. That's a lesson that transcends music, that transcends sports, that transcends school, that happens in every facet of our lives. The more we set the bar higher for ourselves and learn how to achieve it, we grow as people.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

I could see it as something that would complement a sports because, you know, I tend to think of it as like you're either a sports person or you're a band person. In my high school. Exactly. But I think about the, you said the physiological benefits. And I hadn't thought about the physiological uh benefits of being in uh a choir. But you, you know, I've read studies that when you hum or you sing, it resonates within your body and creates good psychological effects and the releases of happy chemicals that are slightly different than when you are winning at something, which is usually dopamine. But when you are with a group, that's a lot of serotonin oxytocin. Yeah. So I could see them as being a whole package of benefits.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

There are also a lot of study out there, like almost 15 years of study now, that says that participating in a musical ensemble makes you a better citizen. Being in a musical ensemble promotes democratic qualities. People who sing are more likely to vote. People who sing are more likely to get involved in their local government, people who sing are more likely to get involved in their local community, because musical ensembles are these little microcosms of that. And so people see the benefits that they are experiencing in their own groups and they're like, I want the rest of my life to look like this. And so they start getting involved and it makes a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Wow, that's so cool. I I want to talk about the program Sing to Succeed, specifically, because it's special. Unlike other Ascambia Children's Trust grants recipients, you opted out of creating a separate program. What was the motivation behind that?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah. So we are a recipient of, we're a partner with the Escambia Children's Trust to provide tuition-free membership into our program at the Pensacola Children's Course. And we opted to do that because we have a lot of data on our current singers that our current program that is tuition-based is working. Like over 95% of our 250 singers report that we are a place of belonging, that we are a place where they feel like they can make friends, where they can be their truest versions of themselves so they they understand where the bar is set and they can meet expectations and exceed expectations. And 98% of their parents and caregivers agree that our program has made a positive difference in their life. So logic says, why will we go and create something completely different when we what we already have is working? And that's definitely something unique among the children's trust programs. We're not the only one that's doing that. And it's not necessarily better or worse. That was just the path that we chose. And we just completed our first round of surveying of our children's trust singers, and the data reflects the same as our regular kids. They are, they they feel like they belong. And that's and they feel like the that the children's chorus is making a measurable and noticeable difference in their lives.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

And do you feel like that's something that wouldn't be as strongly reported if it was a separate program that the kids were separated from all of the other kids?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I think it would be different because they're, especially amongst the target population, the Children's Trust is really looking to impact the lives of the children in our community who are suffering some from some of life's toughest circumstances. And by putting all of them in a room separately from the rest of our kids, they don't have the opportunity to see what life can be like. That they they wouldn't be able to make friends with people who don't go to the same school as them. And by not having that sort of uh integrated community, I don't think we would be seeing the same benefits. So we're really proud of what we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Who's eligible to participate?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Any singer in grades one through 12, any not necessarily singer, you don't have to be a great singer to be a part of our program. We're an educational program. We know how to teach that. But any child in grades one through 12 who has a desire to sing and perform can be a part of it. There's an eligibility criteria that's really short that's on our website for the children's trust, but there's no eligibility criteria to join. And if tuition-free isn't the route that we can go, our programs are as little as $15 a month.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Oh, wow. That's really and they run all year long.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

They are adjacent to the school year. So we started back like right after Labor Day, and then we'll end the first couple weeks in May.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

So there's no summer programs or or spring.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

We have camps in the summer. So yeah, there's all sorts of ways to stay involved throughout the year. It's a really great program.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Wow. That's amazing. Okay, so how many students do you accept? Is there a cap?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

The Children's Trust has, I think we're capped at like 65 for the first year. And we the we just got renewed for funding for year two. So very excited about that. That happened yesterday. Oh wow. Thank you. And by the end of year three, it's over a hundred singers that can be a part of that specific program.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Oh, okay. So right now it's 65, but by the end of 2025, up to 105. How many participants did you have in Sing to Succeed this past year?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

25 for the first semester. We're doing our big recruitment campaign for your semester number two. So we're hoping to double that at least.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

What's the best way that you have found to reach the kids for the Sing to Succeed program? And I'm asking that both because I'm curious, but also because maybe parents listening to this might be able to help spread out.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Sure, sure. We really benefit, we we value our relationships with our teachers and our administrators in East Canby County Public Schools. We've been working with a lot of them kind of in our target service area to get the word out to families. A flyer should be sent home, hopefully any day now, to families in the 3205 and 3201 um target zip codes. Um and then we also do just kind of some some blasting mailers, but word of mouth we've proven is the most beneficial. Our singers are the best advocates for our program because they're the ones benefiting from it. And they can speak to their friends in ways that adults can't. So we just do our best to get the word out and hope the community will advocate for us too.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

So does the program include transportation? It's an after-school.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

It is an after-school program. We do have transportation solutions. Unfortunately, their transportation for after-school programs is a huge issue that our community is facing, especially if they're not based at a school. And I just I don't believe there's enough funding in the world to build that yet. I think, well, that's a whole other podcast and a whole other soapbox of mine. But we do have transportation solutions. We do coordinate carpools and we have gas gift card incentives, all sorts of things that our staff are willing to work with families to make sure that if their kid wants to be there, we'll make sure they get there.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

For parents who maybe don't know the difference between, oh, let's say an alto and a soprano, right? Um, what's that experience like for the kid to be in to sing to succeed? Like, what's the difference between, you know, a solo and a performance and rehearsal or rehearsal? We hear these words.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

These buzzwords, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

And, you know, as a parent, you might think like, okay, what do I show up for?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Sure. This is one of the challenges for some for a family who's not experienced like a musical ensemble before. It seems silly. Like, why do I have to show up week after week? Like it feels like it's the same thing. We show up, we sing, we leave. But nothing is the same week after week. Rehearsal is kind of like the the it's the time where all these skills, the benefits of music are built. Performance seems to be like that's the pinnacle moment. It's like the flashy thing, everything's nice and polished, everything looks good. And if you're in our program, we're singing, we're dancing, we're costumes, we're lights, we're sound, we're way too much.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Team too much.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

I did not know that. That is so much to coordinate.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

So much.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

I guess you've got to have a sound and a light person that's showing up to all of the rehearsals, right? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

We've got we've got a great team that makes it all happen, and our program is very unique. We're the only program like it in from what my research shows, like the world. But the performances are so entertaining, and parents get so excited about them, and the audiences love them, but it's hard to remember that that is just a moment in time. The the work happens in rehearsal, the showing up week after week after week. And sometimes you don't want to show up. I get it. Sometimes I don't want to show up because I'm a human being and I'm tired on occasion, or I've got other life things going on. It's like, you know, I just I don't want to be here right now. But then I show up and I'm like, oh, wait, this is my community. Even as the teacher, as the director, this is my community. These kids are my kids. And what we build together in those rehearsals is something really special. And if you miss it, you've missed it and you can't get it back. And so that's a hard lesson to learn. But it's not unlike any other sports team where you don't show up for the third practice, you don't get to play. We don't really have that rule because our performances are so far between. But the act of showing up and participating is where the benefits lie.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Because as you pointed out earlier, it's not like, well, that's not my job. Like I was the soccer goalie. If there is a more, you know, solo way to be a part of a sports team. It's like, tell me or you're an introvert without telling me you're an introvert. You know, if you say I was a soccer goalie. So, you know, I practice separate from the team. So their performance, although it impacted my activity during a game, it there was a still a little bit of a separation there. But as you pointed out, it with the the the group, it's if you've got five kids that are consistently not showing up or showing up late, then it impacts how the whole group sounds. And it can't be pointed out. Oh, it's because those five in the front row, you can tell that they're the ones throwing everyone off. It doesn't appear that way. It looks like the whole group's thrown off.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Right, right. There are no small parts in the arts. Everybody is an equal player, which is a hard environment to find truly these days. And like I said, you know, when, and this is how we communicate, you know, when people say, Oh, well, my kid's talented, I can practice, we'll practice on our own. Like you, you have you've missed the mark. Because while you may able be able to learn your own part on your own, that's true, I could do that too. I'm not in the room to listen to my singers. I'm not in the room learning how to blend my voice. I'm not here for the learning and the education. Learning the notes and rhythms is just bare minimum. And performance is so much more than that. And being a part of a group is so much more than that. And that's, like I said, that's where all of these wonderful benefits, learning responsibility, teamwork, accountability, confidence, empathy, you can't learn them on your own. You have to be together.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

That's a really good point. You can't learn those on your own.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

And there's no textbook for it. I mean, there is, but you won't find that experiential learning unless you're working together.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Well, you're talking about the difference between learning a thing and being able to repeat it and having that intrinsic motivation to be what you're learning.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Isn't that something that once we get out of, you know, high school or college, you know, no longer do I just have to take a test to prove that I know what I'm doing? You actually have to prove it day in and day out, every single day.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

I mean, I've never had to prove calculus to be fair, but those other things. Those other things. How have you seen the kids prove that intrinsic absorption of all of the skills that you listed off?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

You know, just this weekend, we had our our big um holiday performance called Christmas on the Coast. And there was a singer who has been with our program for a couple years, but has been like really low, quiet, hardly singing ever. We sometimes question why he was there because he didn't seem to enjoy it. He was hardly singing. We could hardly tell his mouth was open. And multiple people pointed out to me, said, Have you checked this guy out this week? And I was like, No, I haven't. Let me let me start paying attention. And I watched him backstage help other kids learn something that they were messing up. I saw him rallying kids that were younger than him to like get on stage and to have a great time. I was like, Who who are you? I actually just wrote him a little note last night to send to his parents and to him because that was not something I didn't know that it would just that what we have was gonna work. I didn't know that I was hoping that maybe he would catch on. And it did, and it's working. And it was just so heartwarming to see to see him just like confidently shine. It was it was it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Wow. That's and what's so amazing about that is that's not something that parents will ever see or the people sitting in the chairs at a performance will ever know about, but it's something that that kid will feel forever and everyone who's around him apparently will feel forever. Absolutely. That's how it's showing up in his interactions with others. That's really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

It was so great.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, before we close, is there anything else that you want parents to know about Sing to Succeed?

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Sing to Succeed, you know, we've talked about it a little bit. It's a really great opportunity for Scamie County youth to be a part of a really incredible program. But I'd rather take this time to advocate for support of the arts in Scamie County public schools. Arts get a bad rep in public ed, especially when come when funding cycles come around. And I hope our conversation may have inspired some folks to realize that we do need quality programs in our schools because Sing to Succeed is wonderful, but it's not going to be, even despite breaking down all the barriers for tuition and transportation, it's just not going to be accessible to everybody. But it should be accessible in their schools. And if we don't have powerful advocates in our parents and in our caregivers fighting to recruit and maintain quality teachers, to maintain and increase funding for necessary supplies, music, instruments, whatnot, and invest in teachers' professional development, we can't rely on the community programs to carry arts in our communities. We have to have our school partners as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Well, you're raising them up, if nothing else.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Well, I we tried.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Thank you. This was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

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