I have started looking at the story of Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts (SaPa)as a story in three parts, which I shall creatively refer to normal, the new normal and what now?. The last few years have taught us to be flexible and responsive increasingly than anything else, and that to requite our weightier to our students, we need to constantly unlearn, relearn, and upskill.
The Normal
As a musician and music educator, Ive unchangingly felt that in person learning is hair-trigger expressly when working with young children. At SaPa, scrutinizingly all our students (age 1.5 to and up) have attended regular classes at our centre(s), except for a handful of students who lived in the US or Europe and would learn online but spend summers at SaPa. Weve taken unconfined superintendency to diamond our centres, not as a place where transactions occur, come learn go, but increasingly withal the lines of your favourite aunt and uncles house. A place where youd like to come, have a unconfined time, see your friends, eat snacks, maybe finish a project or homework, and plan grand adventures. Its not uncommon for SaPa to wilt a childs polity centre, a place where they find and build their tribes, their interests, and of course, they music and career pathways.
With this wholly immersive experience, weve had toddlers come in and watch their older siblings learn, titillating and learning long surpassing formal lessons begin. Weve had kids enroll for a vocal class, and later be found moreover playing the mridangam considering the matriculation in the next room looked like a lot of fun. Some days, weve had teacher training, BA classes and student sessions all happening simultaneously, with Bach emanating from the piano room, Dikshitar kritis from the vocal room and rousing African folk songs from the terrace auditorium. This has led to an organic, inter disciplinarity which could never have been forced. Seeing a veena maker one day, a kora player the next and an opera singer the third has unliable young musicians to develop their own musical identities without snooping for what genre or style they must stick too. As a result, weve got fantastic Carnatic violinists who can moreover write Top 40 pop songs, and Western classical pianists who sing Carnatic vocal with conviction. Weve got a group of four girls who started learning (Carnatic vocal) together at age 3, and now, 8 years later, between them weve got four Carnatic vocalists, three Western trendy vocalists, three pianists, two violinists, two ukulele players, a guitar player, and four songwriters.
Through our in-schools music program, SaPa in Schools, as well, weve placed a very strong accent on in-person learning, with a SaPa certified educator in the classroom. Music Educators not only have to be spanking-new musicians, but they must moreover be empathetic, kind, communicative, energetic, and willing to learn the pedagogy. Eye contact, whirligig time, demonstrations, interactions, all of these play a hair-trigger role not only in learning music, but in overall minutiae of a child. At SaPa, were trying to create the next generation of musicians, but at SaPa in Schools, we are trying to use polity music to create the next generation of global citizens with social emotional sensation and 21st century skills.
Weve tried to build a meaningful ecosystem for music education as part of school curriculum, which includes teacher training, methodology, curriculum and learning materials (books, audio, and video), and assessments. Over the years, weve built this very involved program into something that reaches thirty thousand children in schools every day.
The New Normal
Ill be honest here; we never saw it coming. In early 2020, our focus was on finishing the wonk year, conducting assessments in schools, having workshops with musicians in schools, distributing certificates, and planning teacher training over the holidays. We had no idea that something that started circulating as a joke in very poor taste well-nigh eating bats would gravity us to stop, reexamine everything we believed and completely transpiration the way we perceive and implement music education.
When schools indicated they were latter early as a precautionary measure, most children prestigious the idea of a longer summer holiday and unfurled discussing which summer camps they wanted to attend. When we were confronted with this reality, plane though we thought it would be very temporary, we went into overdrive, trying to see what we could do.
The main question we asked ourselves is, how do we make online something other than a Plan B for when classes cant be in person? With this uncertainty and the stress that everyone is facing, how can music provide solace, an outlet and community?
Our very small but incredibly sunny Operations and Administrative Team worked round the clock to bring everything online and managed to have things ready to go in one weekend. We evaluated variegated online video conferencing solutions, trained teachers (many of whom were not familiar with online classes) and made materials misogynist online. We moreover had some serious limitations to consider teachers couldnt physically correct posture or technique online, and students couldnt unmute and sing or play together. Not everyone had good unbearable internet connections, and online sustentation spans are not comparable with offline ones.
When schools restarted online, we were ready for that too variegated schools had variegated platforms zoom, teams, google meet, Webex, and we had to be ready to work on all these platforms. Textbooks werent sent out, so material had to be made misogynist online. We built our own Learning Management System to house materials and indulge students to learn increasingly effectively. We designed simple yet engaging musical games for students to play online, to reinforce the concepts, they learnt in class. We had teachers recording videos on their phones in their homes and sharing them for training. We encouraged students to etch and produce their own music, collaborating with classmates and friends in real time but variegated locations.
This new normal found a well-appointed rhythm, and weve heard from many students and their parents that music was something that helped them get through the toughest times. We moreover saw enrolments for online classes from eighteen territories virtually the world, so our students became increasingly diverse.
As things slowly got better, we began looking at opening physical centres again, and trying to decide what our new New Normal would squint like. Would it make sense to go when to the way we were, or move forward with some sort of weightier practices approach?
What Now?
We still finger that there is some magic when teachers and students are together in the same physical space. Theres no denying that. However, there is moreover magic in stuff worldly-wise to etch a song with a friend thats far away.
As we unshut our centres, we gloat the joy of a physical community, but we moreover want to preserve what weve learnt over the last two years. Hybrid models seem like they are here to stay. The other day, as I walked through our towers and saw toddlers and their parents bonding over song, serious young musicians playing with focused concentration, educators in training practicing in front of mirrors and tweens giggling in the waiting zone while composing a song on an iPad, I realized that whatever comes our way, the music will unchangingly be safe.
