FieldTrip

Remember back in elementary school where “Field Trips” were all the rage?

It turns out that classes still take field trips in college.

Today, I went with my secondary music education methods class to Detroit.  The goal was to catch a glimpse at what urban schools “look” like, especially because none of us grew up in urban areas and all of our school placements have been in relatively affluent areas.  For instance, I’m teaching about once a week right now in Saline, MI.  The new high school building is almost 5 years old, still looks brand new, and is nicer than any country club I’ve ever seen.  Less than 5% of Saline’s population live in poverty.

Now, going to Detroit wasn’t the first time I had ever been to inner-city schools.  In high school, I helped out with a classroom in Pontiac at a school that served students with special needs and English language learners, so this trip wasn’t a complete shock…

The thing with Detroit Public Schools and Music Education is that they have special magnet schools for the arts, performing arts, or gifted students, and they throw a lot of money for music programs at those schools.  Some of those schools get great resources, great instruments, and really nice facilities, while other schools just barely make it and fund raise for a lot of things.  However, this leaves a LOT of schools with either struggling music programs or no music program at all.  And just because it’s a school for the performing arts doesn’t even mean you have any job security.  A few years ago, they cut the band director position at a middle school for the performing arts (one that had a world-renowned band program, I might add).

The first school we visited was a K-8 magnet school for gifted students.  The majority of the students weren’t from the surrounding neighborhood, and the teacher told us that a lot of the students weren’t even from Detroit.  In order to get into the school, you had to apply and pass a standardized test (yes, even for kindergarten).  While it didn’t cost anything extra to attend this school, the students who did attend were all from wealthier families.  We sat in on a strings class.  Some students own their own instruments, which is great, but other than that the school had little to no money for music.  The school had a really great lessons program set up with a local university, so a lot of students got either free or discounted lessons for string instruments (no brass, woodwind, or percussion though), so the orchestras were all pretty good.  The space they met in had zero humidity in it, though, which is TERRIBLE for string instruments.  As I was tuning a violin, the bridge popped off!  It seemed pretty normal to the students and the teacher, though, so it probably happens a lot.

Onto the afternoon, and we visited Southeastern High School, which is one of two neighborhood high schools that service the south side of Detroit.  And by neighborhood, I mean that the students who went there took no test to get in, they didn’t apply, they just lived in that schools zone.  Needless to say, there wasn’t much of a music program there, but it was growing.  The teacher we met is in her second year at that school, and when she took over the only thing the school offered in terms of band was marching band (all year long).   She changed that, and took the students to festival.  However, because most of the students she saw weren’t students who went to middle schools with music programs, they couldn’t read music, they didn’t know how to play instruments coming into school, and so she had 9th grade beginning band.  Those of us who come from suburban settings probably don’t understand this…band begins in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade depending on where you come from.  If you don’t start when band begins, then you probably won’t ever be in band.  However, and I’ve heard this from every teacher I’ve met so far who has taught in urban settings, you have to offer beginning band classes at all levels.  A lot of times, students don’t even want to take band, they just get put in the class because gym is already full.

So last year, she took a band to play for comments only at festival.  This year, she took a band to play for a rating, and they got a 2 (or B, essentially).  Most of the time, the comments are the most valuable, but because of their rating, they also earned medals.  This weekend, she has three students playing at the State Solo and Ensemble festival.  These students have only been playing their instruments for 2 years now, and they are going to meet a lot of students who have been playing for a lot longer and who are taking private lessons and all of that.  I got a chance to give some comments to a pretty talented trumpet player as he as putting the finishing touches on his solo.  We got to meet a few of this teacher’s non-music students, who gave us all the advice that we can’t let them run over us.  They will push us and test us to figure out how far we will let them go, and if they sense that they can run us down, they will.  But seriously, this is not an urban school issue…that’s called classroom management.  Good advice, though, and those particular students weren’t afraid to give us straight answers.  They knew they weren’t being treated fairly by the school district, either.  They knew their building sucked and that they didn’t have as many resources as other people.  They knew when they had teachers who didn’t care about them and didn’t respect them.  But every single one of them said they wanted to do something with their future, and I really hope that through the next few years of high school, they don’t get that mindset beat out of them.

I’ve had some interest in doing urban school work, and I was really looking forward to this trip.  I walked away even more passionate about the idea.  I don’t really want to be th “white person” who comes in to fix the broken system, but at the same time it is real that a lot of these school don’t have a lot to work with.  They need lots of great teachers to make up for whatever is lacking anywhere else.  I always knew that I wanted to “change the world,” and I think God may want me to do it in urban schools.  But I’m still not sure about anything in terms of the future.  I have two years to go until I graduate…which a long time in which a lot can happen and directions can change completely.  So we’ll see, but overall, it was a really great (and exhausting) day.