the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants in do not reflect those of b m c or the town of belmont b m community conversations i'm your host roger coulton one thing that belmont is justifiably proud to have is the arts education we provide to our kids now my high school just seems year after year to churn out award winning vocal groups and instrumental ensembles but it's not just the high school just last weekend if you happen to go to the channel middle schools production of an you are likely to walk away wondering how do they do that with th through th graders so that's what we're going to talk about today how do they do that and how can we ensure that belmont will be able to keep doing that in the future so for today's show we're going to talk with our to ask door in our to is the curriculum director of this will and performing arts from the belmont public schools are joe welcome and thanks those things that are that are being taught in the classroom when they're actually in the middle of the k to twelve visual art exhibit is up at the belmont gallery of art right now so if folks want to go check that out it's on the rd floor of the home or building down the town hall and that involves artwork from all all schools all grade levels and the teachers and students have worked really hard to get that up there and that'll be up through next friday june nd and if you simply walk into the hype well and walk down the students do their best to make their make artwork of vibrant part of each school so if you go to the cherry middle school you'll see artwork right when you walk in and same in all the elementary schools now you're the curriculum director for now my public schools which means that people to like me tend to talk about the high school sure but you're a system wide you're your k through twelve and the curriculum director does what it's a good question everyone ask that question now so so it's a really multifaceted role that it kind of covers everything from in its most you know in the truest sense the direction of the curriculum so guiding the conversations that teachers have about what it is exactly we're going to teach students in our classrooms and that can be from a very small level you know less and less and level but also from a grade to grade level what what will we do a grade three grade four  it's the coordination of all the events and performances it's teacher evaluation and supervision and all and hiring and everything that bad falls under the umbrella of the visual performing arts department well and one thing i hope to take away from today is a conversation starting in the elementary schools you're going through high school grades i think people do tend to talk about the high well i think it's easy to do because the high school is where you'll see the most performances and student artwork certainly is most prevalent at that level are prevalent in the community but certainly we couldn't do what we do at the high school level if we didn't have a really strong elementary school foundation so that when by the time students get to the middle school they have a a really great level of skill and an artistry and those teachers do great work so by the time they get to the high school really the high school teachers are really having a lot of fun with the students by the time they have there because they are so skilled and so far ahead of their in their artistic development i can't start anywhere today other than with any sense in any way it's just last weekend that the general school is did it come off as you wanted it to come off oh yeah i thought it was fantastic i mean any time you can get i think there were about one hundred i would guess about one hundred and twenty five students involved in the production i don't really know off the top my head but it was can i stop you there for a min it's when i was struck by him and i went to see and you have saturday you guys are great supporters of our of our performance or graeme but it wasn't just the actors and wide range sure so if you're doing everything by time by the time the curtain goes up on opening night it is almost nearly student run i would say the only the only adults that really have anything to do with the actual performance would be school so those students started rehearsing i think about the end of january and i think their early rehearsal schedule was probably once or twice a week maybe three times a week as as they got rolling and then certainly by you know the week or two before the show they were they were after school every day until seventy eight o'clock at night sometimes so it's a long it's a long process for the kids and the teachers that are involved in it you know you ask how does how does it happen and it's really not it's not magic it's just a lot of hours of rehearsal and preparation and work and you know blood sweat and tears as they say but a lot of work goes into it and there was the director i'm trying to think of the people that got as was the director of and it was her st year working with us at the middle school and there's the choreographer choreographer is monica friend her and she's health teacher at the middle school and she's been our choreographer for the show for gosh i don't i can't buy i think at least five school directed the pit orchestra and which was a tall task for him this year because like you mentioned it was mostly th and th graders and so as a professional musician myself i will get calls to play you know broadway shows and things like that and they're not written for th graders to play those those parts are really challenging so being able to pull it off with mostly student orchestra is really amazing and he was also responsible for teaching the song you know for the singers to sing the songs and helping them with their parts it was quite a challenging show and we can't leave out the career of course and i don't remember the name of the gentleman so leon died or so the art of like he does basically everything at the middle school he's involved in just about everything that goes on it's generally he kind of spearheaded the tech crew the sound of the lights and you know just it him with middle school kids a lot of it is just kind of like herding cats sometimes just kind of getting them all going in the right direction but the kids at channel you are so great that once you get them once you show them what needs to be done and how to do it they're really an incredible group of kids to work with you know sometimes it seems people like me and  i don't know why i say people like me but sometimes folks want to say well what's the educational significance of any is there a year the curriculum yeah i think there are an educational  mean yes one hundred percent yes i think that for for many kids and i'll just speak for myself as a student you know when i was in middle school and high school i would say that many kids learn more by participating in something like a middle school play or high school musical than they will anywhere else not just in terms of their musical artistic you know acting development but just in terms of work ethic and responsibility and you know the kid all those kids that are on the tech crew all had a specific job that they had to do and if they didn't do it correctly or well it could lead to catastrophe on stage if you're not its member you don't even see all those moving pieces but it's a huge learning experience for those kids i couldn't do the lights and sound and i could either yeah i couldn't either so the middle school we started talking about any because that just happened sure but the fact is that it doesn't start you mentioned this earlier doesn't start with and it starts yeah in the elementary school sure so we we do have a th and th grade theater workshop of the middle school to for the younger students and that feeds hopefully feeds and you know all of the kids that participate in that and have a good experience will as th and th graders go on to participate in the musical let's talk about you talk about music your cation in particular you know you start in the a grade that they hatch yeah it's an amazing journey and that as a teacher when you see that when you actually see you know those those little guys show up in rd th grade and then you see them in th grade at the hatch shell is pretty pretty spectacular so from the educators perspective let's walk through elementary middle and high school sure because i can't i can't imagine it's simply the kids get better i mean you're teaching different things who are you certainly teaching different things but you know one of the things that we talk a lot about not just in belmont but just in just in education in general is a growth mindset it's the sort of buzzword in education now which basically means you know i like to scan to simplify things down to the  core and what i what i take away from the term growth mindset is that if you spend affective effort over time and practice and practice and practice that over time anybody can get better at anything right that's what we try to teach our kids is that your ability is not innate right it's not as if someone who is in all state level french horn player it's not like they just picked up the french horn and could magically make beautiful music come out they spend hours and hours and hours practicing and sure it'll come easier to some or to come faster to some than others but what we try to teach kids is that any way that it's hard it's really hard and it's hard work but that anyone can do it with effective effort and practice over time so i mean a lot of it is that sort of teaching model that when a student picks up an instrument grade four or five and that we have really great teachers working with them and and giving them great fundamental instruction but also showing them how to practice skills that if they keep doing that year after year after year after year you see then you see what you see at the high school level where they're performing at really an exceptional level and you've made it change reason to change their votes next year next year right they explain the change know yeah so so we one thing that we've noticed and i think that this is you know to steal your term for someone like you who showed up to a high school concert it's hard to imagine why we want to change anything right because you see the you see the productions and hear the band and of course the orchestra and everything to you is fantastic right why why you are going to mess with this but when we look at the number of students that are starting and really we're talking about instrumental music so orchestra and  band the number of students that start at her beginning level which up until this year has been rd grade and th grade and then we look at the retention rate over those st few years and then how that turns out by the time they get to high school we feel that our retention rate for for a program that is really as good as ours is that our retention rate is is too low that there are not enough students are meeting success early on in the program that allows them to sustain their participation so so kids if i can interrupt so kids pick up an instrument and they put it down pretty quick and they get it down too quickly or they put it down altogether so what you're saying by the time they get to the high school is about conservatively it's about twelve percent of the kids who started out in rd or th grade and you're seeing the best twelve percent which is why the results are you know when you go to your performance it's really great because those are the best t welve percent who made it so what we'd like to do is see that pool expand because really as much as we care about the performance right we want our concerts to be great we want the band and orchestra and chorus to sound spectacular and earn gold medals and all those these things are they are important to us we really believe that long term participation in music and particularly in instrumental music has incredible benefits for students not just academically but social emotional benefits and just in terms of their their ability to work together to collaborate and their ability to they become empathetic human beings right from making art together that this is a this is a hugely important  skill that they don't gain by trying an instrument for a year and then giving up because they feel like they stink at it right so we really want them to we want to promote more long term participation by more students because if you look at our high school or kids for example and you see them in rehearsal you see them then when you see them in their chemistry classes or else they're going after that these are kids that are doing really well and so we would like to see more kids in that pool in that cohort of students and  and certainly we don't expect that one hundred percent of the th graders who signed up for a string instrument are going to make it to high school orchestra and more than twelve percent more than twelve percent and what we don't want is to see kids pick up an instrument in th grade and then decide by january of that year that they're no good at it you know we you know when a th grader decides to quit orchestra after five years of study or six years of study at that point they can kind of make an educated decision about yes that's for them but a th grader who picks up an instrument and is super excited in september when we watch them give us donna in january it's kind of heartbreaking for us and i don't think they're i don't think it's i don't think they've had we haven't been putting them in we haven't been giving them the best opportunity to be successful in our opinion so we've made some changes and consolidated staff and we're going to make we're making some huge huge huge improvements to the th grade program that should hopefully lead to more students staying in the program longer term now when one word i haven't heard you mention in there is money it's not a budget you know it's an education isn't it it's not and it's actually costing us more money to be honest i mean we were were  adding point for f t e to the instrumental music program in order to make these changes so i think that you know it's easy to look at it as you know while you're eliminating grade three strings in your eliminating grade for band and and so that must mean that we're cutting the budget back but we're actually not so we're so we are sort of i guess consolidating is the best way i can explain it so instead of you know we're trying to make the best use of our existing staff and make sure that we can provide really high level high level instructional model at all however many grade levels we can and the way that we've we're approaching it is to just kind of push everything back and make sure that we're doing th and th grade every high level one thing i'm confused about is how does saturday morning alison yeah yeah yeah participated in saturday morning music how does saturday morning music fit in with with his current model in the in the future model yeah or just with the school sure that's a good question so it's so saturday morning music school is sort of it is under the umbrella of the belmont public school is a ban on public schools it's i guess i would liken it to like an after school extra extra curricular program except that a run saturday mornings saturday school i believe i was i wasn't here thirty five years ago one of the gang you'd have to ask john mcloughlin about it but those kind of programs are intended to be supplemental right because you you look at what you're offering in school and say well we're only giving these kids a thirty minute lesson during the school day so what can we do to enhance that right and back in the day they decided that saturday school was the way to do it and it's been hugely successful and it's been quite honestly one of the main factors that the music program has been able to reach the level it has been because what we've been offering in the school has been pretty inadequate especially when you compare it to what's happening in other school districts so that unfortunately has also contributed over time to our lower retention rates because what we see is that kids who go to saturday school typically will do better in the program and stay in the program longer words kids who don't go to saturday school for whatever reason maybe they have other obligations on saturdays or they play soccer or maybe their families just like to spend time together so everybody whatever reason that it's harder for them to to meet with success so we've worked really hard over the past several years trying to figure out what we can do especially at the grade five level because that's really kind of the sweet spot of where that where you know there can kind of learn to play their instruments well enough to get them in an ensemble setting and they really start to feel good about it from a developmental yeah yeah and also just i mean that age level in general ten year olds one thousand and eleven year olds is really kind of a great age they're bigger they're physically bigger so they can handle the instruments a little bit better than they could as rd and th graders so we really want to try to improve that model so that so that we are i guess less reliant on saturday school to be the meat of the program which it kind of has been over the last decades  and now go back to a scenario where if you're a student you can you should be able to participate in your music program just during the school day and still be successful and then we can continue to offer saturday school as an enrichment supplemental program for students who are looking for something something a little bit more and that's really the goal for it moving forward and to close the door on saturday morning which i'm calling has to retire some day right some day i hope yeah i hope not i'm john mcclellan's last day for sure but you know we life will go on you know and we are we are taking steps with our staffing and with our curriculum development and you know the thing is like there you know there is a movie that came out a few years ago called waiting for superman right as an education movie and was about you know these are kind of superhero teachers and john mcloughlin is is a super hero teacher right and what our job is a my job as a curriculum director is to figure out ok how can we institutionalize a lot of this work so it doesn't revolve around a person correct so that we don't need you know i get emotional a lot of times thinking about the amount of hours and work john has put into the music program here in belmont it's astounding the amount of hours he puts in and all of the teachers do quite honestly but we've got to find ways to sort of protect to the institution of our music program so that when we're hiring a new teacher it's not you know expected that you're going to do i mean no one is going to especially to us in belmont we're never going to feel like someone is going to come in and  step right into john's shoes you know and filled out a void so we've got up because it will be a team effort i guess is one of the i want to refer back to a conversation that you and i had a couple years ago this conversation was probably more significant to me than but i was really struck because i was talking to you we were musing about how when people do when kids do instrumental music in particular they actually get better at science reading comprehension and it effects their academic progress and one of the points you made back to me was we shouldn't put music education on we shouldn't put the  just i feel like any study of the arts has has merit for art's sake right so painting is really it's if you are studying painting to become a painter that that has merit and has value it also makes  you i always just use the word empathetic it makes you more empathetic human being and able to see the world in different ways because you're observing things and finding ways to represent your thoughts and the thoughts of others through this visual medium right theatre is a great example of this where you are physically stepping into the shoes of another human being so you are saying words that don't belong to you and yes and conveying feelings that don't belong to you but having having to do it you know in a realistic way and that's a really hard thing to do but it's a really valuable thing if you think just think about the discourse we have in this country about with disagreements on any side of any issue right and the ability for a young person to be able to put themselves inside the mind of someone else and sort of feel their feelings and communicate them is hugely valuable and musicians too is that you know a lot of is this trying to represent a feeling or an idea through you know  line on your flute and having to you know on any instrument or to sing to sing a song in another language right that conveys some sort of feelings or thoughts and it's just a different kind of thinking and a different kind of mindset and i think it creates a different a special kind of person you know if you've had that experience i think when you meet adults who have grown up in some sort of and with some kind of an arts background there  know usually those are the best conversations you have the right most productive conversation you have i know i'm biased when i say that but certainly there are other academic benefits and there's i won't quote the brain research because i'm the i'm certainly not a an expert on neurobiology but there's a lot of brain science out there that draws connections between studying a musical instrument and a grey matter in your brain and neural pathways and things that are developed at a very young age that through again through sustain practice on that instrument develops a lot of important academic and intellectual skills and to me it's i've actually written about this in the citizen how that there is a danger in assuming that school everything in school or everything academically is work right i write i play french horn here you know for years decades and  it was fun yes it is fun right there is an element there's an intrinsic value of doing something fun in school is what's funny is i don't i never thought this way until i had school age children of my own so i have a nd grader and  kindergartener now at the butler school and i probably shouldn't say this publicly but i feel that like i feel like my my number one priority for them is i want them to come home having i want them to be safe right i want to know my kids are safe at school and i certainly feel that way here i want to know they've had a good day i want to know they had some fun with their friends and with their teachers and at that level at the elementary level i just want them to love school right because they're i understand all of the importance of the academic material that they're getting in nd grade in kindergarten but really what's important to me is that they come and they love school and they can't wait to go back the next day because that's the habit that's going to make them successful you know if they feel that way all through their i mean imagine you had eleven th twelve graders who couldn't wait to go to school you know and for the kids that we see in the arts really it is there for many of them it's their arts participant participation in theater music and visual art and then to same for athletics for a lot of kids like that's the hook for them that makes school worth getting up at six thirty in the morning for you know that's interesting because i recently did a series of t v broadcasts and we're rata time here we're  anderson on from the high school quiz search team and i asked them how they dealt with the stress that was the additional stress imposed on them by their activities in addition to all their a lot of it is that the actual activity that they're doing right in the next right x or size is great for you for stress relief and music and art are really great outlets but it's also the social piece of it too that i'm sure the athletes when they're around their teammates that's probably the most fun that they have that day and i and i would assure you that the theater and music in our kids feel the same way about the cohort of kids that they're that they're with and that they're around that's great thanks ardo we're out of time an ramped it up we've been talking with our no as a doran who is the curriculum director for the visual and performing arts and i do when i would knowledge that we gave the visual arts completely short well go check out the can access community conversations by going to belmont media dot org and looking for the b m c podcast network you can also access the community conversations by going to i t and searching for the b m see pod cast network you've been listening to community conversations i'm your host roger coulton thank you i'll talk to you again in two weeks