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A Spectacular Student Musical Showcase

December 13, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

“I was floored. I was so proud of him.”
Liretta Krayse, grandmother of Elijah Pretlow

http://arts4learningva.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Ave-Maria-solo-compressed.mp4

Just about anyone would be floored watching their shy grandson stand up in front of an audience and sing so beautifully. But there’s more to the story than that.

Liretta Krayse and her grandson Elijah Pretlow

Elijah, who lives with his grandmother in Norfolk, is on the autism spectrum and suffers from Crohn’s disease. He’s largely homebound, and Liretta says they’ve struggled to find activities to keep him entertained. She says Elijah, who’s in sixth grade, loved the music classes, which ran this fall at the Portsmouth YMCA. Families of Autistic Children in Tidewater (FACT) has partnered with Arts for Learning’s professional teaching artists for the three-year Arts Adventures residency, funded by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation.

Teaching artist Cindy Aitken

Arts for Learning’s Cindy Aitken led the classes. She’s worked as a teacher for decades using drama, music, and movement to engage students and was honored as A4L’s Teaching Artist of the Year in 2011. This was the first time she worked exclusively with students with autism, and she called their growth during the residency “fantastic.”

“Most students didn’t even want to sing at first. They didn’t recognize that voice is an instrument, or that clapping their hands, tapping their hands on their legs, all are instruments. We did use actual instruments as well, but I taught them that they’re able to create their own music at any time of the day and in any place, really. By the end, we had a soloist, we had all the students singing, we had all the students participating with tambourines. It was just really exciting to see the growth.”

From the early sessions to the time Elijah became that soloist was a gradual process. Like most of the students in the program, he was quite shy initially and didn’t talk much. But one day, Cindy mentioned what a smooth voice he had when he spoke and said she’d love to hear him sing.

“And he said, ‘Oh no, no. I don’t sing.’  And his grandmother said, ‘Well, you sing around the house,’ and he said, ‘I don’t sing around other people.’

Cindy had a clever response that made sense to Elijah.

“‘I said, that’s okay. I’m not really a person. I’m just a teacher, that doesn’t really count, right?’ And he goes, ‘Well, that’s kind of true.’ And I said, ‘I’m kind of like your grandmother.’ ‘Well, that’s kind of true.’ ‘And I said, repeat a line for me.’ So I sang something like, ‘hey, hey, how are you?’ Something not intimidating. And he turned around and sang, ‘Hey, hey, how are you?’ And I said, ‘Oh my golly, you really have a voice.’”

At that point, Cindy told Elijah she’d like to work with him on his voice whenever he felt comfortable. Sometimes he’d want to, and other times he wouldn’t. “I just didn’t ever push. It was completely up to him,” Cindy says.

Around the halfway point of the residency, when Cindy walked into the gym where classes were held, Elijah jumped up and sang, “Hi, Miss Cindy!”

“There was something very opera-like the way he sung it. And I said, ‘Oh my golly, Elijah, that was fantastic. You have such an opera voice—I can’t believe it.’ And he started laughing and smiling, and the way he did it, it sounded like Ave Maria, like that kind of smooth flow to it.”

From there, Cindy gave Elijah an arrangement of Ave Maria to practice at home. She became concerned when he missed class for several weeks and discovered his family was having transportation issues. She picked up Elijah and his grandmother to take them to class, and while riding in the car, he was “singing up a storm.”

“That was the catalyst that helped him feel comfortable singing in front of his peers. And then once he practiced singing in front of his peers, he felt comfortable singing in front of others.”

The evening of the showcase, his grandmother wasn’t sure he’d go through with it.

“When the program began, he was like, ‘No way. I’m not getting out there,’” Liretta says. “And then, bam, he’s singing! It was so loud and clear, and he sang some of the other songs, too. I was just so proud of him.”

Elijah Pretlow wasn’t the only student who made his family members proud that evening. In fact, there was another Elijah who participated in the residency too and made his family proud at the showcase event, as did all the other students who “performed and informed” what they had learned over the course of the twelve weeks.

“That showcase was completely written and performed by them… it was all student driven, which I really loved,” Cindy says. “It was wonderful!”

The Arts Adventure residency is completely free for participating students. Scheduled for the fall of 2023, the third year of the Arts Adventures residency will focus on visual art. It will again be open to middle and high school students with autism, as they explore different types of visual art, practice new life skills, and learn with their peers in a supportive environment. We look forward to another wonderful year in our partnership with FACT!

Filed Under: ArtsED for Exceptional Students, News, Program Spotlight Tagged With: Arts Adventures, Arts Ed, arts education, FACT, music education, musical showcase, students with autism

The Arts, Education, and Society: An Interview with Drew Lusher, A4L’s New Artist and Programming Manager

November 2, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

You have a music background, right? When did your engagement with music begin?

In high school, Drew played the lead in the school’s production of South Pacific.

I was fortunate to grow up in an environment surrounded by music. My mother had a vast record collection, my favorite of which was an album of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos – I loved the blasting of the baroque horns through the stereo.

But in terms of making music, that really began in the fourth grade – the year I started playing trombone and singing in the school chorus and the year my grandparents first brought me to a concert by our local symphony orchestra (The Syracuse Symphony). I was immediately enamored with the soundscape of the live orchestra and the energy of the conductor. From then I was asking for CDs of Beethoven and Mahler (while my friends wanted CDs of Eminem and Britney Spears).

Of course, I was also fortunate to have amazing music educators who fostered my relationship with the arts.

Drew with his high school chorus teacher, who remains an important mentor.

So there really wasn’t a singular experience that sparked my relationship with music, I was blessed with an environment that fostered those early experiences.

You grew up surrounded by opportunities to study and perform. How did that connect to your later experiences?

By the time I graduated high school, I understood that participation in the arts was a collective activity. I was fully aware of the ability for these opportunities to bring people together. I realized that shared experiences build community. That was powerful for a young person, shifting my understanding of that cliché on how music transforms the world.  Well, the pitches and rhythm don’t actually change the world, it’s the ability of music and musical experiences to bring people together, unifying diverse individuals and perspectives into a single experience that helps change the world. That’s powerful and that’s what’s driven me since.

Singing with the Westminster Choir at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

After high school you then went to college – how did those experiences change your understanding of the ability of music to bring people together?

My time at Westminster Choir College provided me with the framework for better understanding the ways that music brings people together. While there I had amazing opportunities – recording Grammy nominated albums, performing in the Spoleto Festival every May, singing with Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli in Central Park, and performing with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center.

But it was the work with my education professors – one, in particular – that gave me the language and a critical understanding of society, economic and symbolic capital, and education. I specifically remember sitting on stage at Carnegie Hall during a performance with Gustavo Dudamel and I stared out at the audience, who were all dressed in tuxedos and had probably gone to fancy dinners before paying several hundred dollars per ticket. It occurred to me that there’s more to music than this elite, gilded hall. That’s when I really became animated about teaching.

After graduating from college, you taught for two years as the choir director at Grafton High School in York County. How was that experience for you?

Conducting his advanced choir class at Grafton High School.

When I began teaching it was important to me to not only emphasize the technical aspects of music-making, but also the emotional, the ways in which making music together could transform perspectives and inform experiences. That transformation goes both ways – for the teacher, as well. I was fortunate to have a group of African American male students who transformed my views of the social role of education.

They’re the ones who really got me looking at the connection between education and society. They were the ones who opened my eyes about the systemic disadvantages that come with being a member of a marginalized community.

I’m forever grateful to them for being open and honest with me about their experiences because it really solidified the importance of education in society. So, it’s kind of been like a triangle for me, trying to incorporate the arts, education, society and how those pieces fit together and the power therein of when they do fit together.

You say that your “whole focus changed” after you left York County and went to Germany to further your studies and see more of the world. Why is that? (Drew received a master’s degree in conducting from the Hanns Eisler Hochschule für Musik in Berlin.)

In Germany, they emphasize music as something very sacred; it’s quasi-religious. So, the expectation is that we are there to serve the music as though it were a deity itself, and I fundamentally disagree with that. I think that music and the arts are there to serve us and they’re a means of connecting with real living human beings today, and so my time in Germany was a transitional period. I came back to the United States with this renewed purpose but also wanting to ask more questions and deeper questions.

Conducting for a German Radio national broadcast in 2018.

I can pinpoint the exact weekend when I decided to give up any dream of being a conductor or a fully devoted professional musician. I was invited to conduct in the south of Germany, in a town called Marktoberdorf – famous for its choir competition. I was staying in this old monastery that has been converted to a music center and there was this choir from Argentina that I was conducting. It was a great experience, but I brought with me a book by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and I was just so enraptured by his ideas on knowledge and society that I realized, as I was sitting in this modernized monastic cell, that my heart was in a different place.

I just wanted to sit and read and enjoy the sunshine coming into my window. It was springtime and I could smell the freshness of the earth outside and I was more focused on that and the ideas of the book than on actually conducting the ensemble.

I just knew that I was closing a door and I was doing that intentionally, shifting to something else.

Is that when you returned to Virginia?

Yes, I finished my master’s degree and the work that I was involved with in Germany before returning to Virginia. I became the vocal music teacher at Old Donation School in Virginia Beach and enrolled in a master’s degree program at UVA, studying Educational Psychology. The work I was doing in the classroom reflected the themes I was exploring in my studies.

At the Jefferson Memorial.

At this time I also became a researcher for the university’s Institute of Democracy, tasked with compiling data on the national landscape of democracy centers at institutions of higher education. I began to reflect on the idea of democracy, particularly what democracy means for different people and how communities of different experiences and perspectives engage with democracy. This matched exactly what I did every day as a chorus teacher – it was my responsibility to facilitate dialogue and engagement among all of the students, ensuring that each student contributed their voice to our collective mission.

When conducting an ensemble, there are layers of interpretation – there’s the interpretation I create myself, the interpretation the collective ensemble creates, and the interpretation that individuals bring based on their own life. The beauty of the music experience comes from negotiating those interpretations so that our performance represents what we want to communicate both as individuals and as a collective. That is what democracy is, the negotiating between individual and collective identities to ensure authentic representation.

So what prompted you to leave teaching and join Arts for Learning?

I’ve begun to think more broadly about arts engagement. While I loved teaching and loved the students, I would like to utilize my ideas and my experiences to help foster collaboration between organizations and communities to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to contribute their voice and reflect on their perspectives and the perspectives of others through high-quality arts engagement.

As I’ve been investigating the social sphere and the social role of the arts, it’s clear that students are sometimes not presented opportunities in an equal way. And so, it’s up to organizations – like Arts for Learning – to fill those gaps for disadvantaged and marginalized communities where the arts are a powerful means of helping students achieve but also to feel represented and to represent themselves.

What are your goals with Arts for Learning?

In working with the existing artists on our roster, in recruiting new artists, and in developing programming, I want to make sure Arts for Learning is engaging students in ways that are appropriate for 21st century learners. The experiences we offer students should be 21st century experiences—so thinking about what is relevant to our students today, what is relevant about technology in terms of the way we consume the arts, and what are the relevant values we-as-a-society want to promote.

If you’re thinking about only using music and musical experiences to prepare kids to sit quietly at the symphony, that’s doing a disservice to the power of the arts today and the ways that the arts can connect, educate, and inspire today’s young students. Students are willing to be engaged and willing to create, but they want experiences that authentically engage and authentically reflect them.

Visiting Scotland this summer.
Drew and his partner, Kevin, in England this summer.
Singing at York Cathedral.

(An active member of the community, Drew sings in the Virginia Chorale and works as the staff bass at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and at Ohef Sholom Temple. Drew lives with his partner, Kevin, in Norfolk.)

Discussing music with the conductor of the Virginia Chorale, Chuck Woodward.

I’ve got to ask – you grew up in Syracuse, went to college in New Jersey, and then lived in Germany – why settle in Virginia?

Well, in the fifth grade I had to do a presentation on Thomas Jefferson. Through my research for that project, I developed this idyllic, picturesque idea of Virginia, this view of rolling hills and Colonial Williamsburg and Monticello, and so I’ve just had this fascination since then. I feel a lot of pride when I tell people I live in Virginia. It feels like an accomplishment of mine, which seems kind of silly, but I love it. In three hours, I can be in D.C., in two hours I can be at Jefferson’s Monticello, in twenty minutes I can be at the beach, and every day I hear the fighter jets and see the aircraft carriers – what’s not love? I feel like I’ve come home.

A hobby of Drew’s is collecting and reading biographies of complex historical characters. Last year he started reading a biography of every U.S. president chronologically and is currently up to Jimmy Carter. Sourcing books is part of the fun–Drew had to look all over stores in Washington, D.C. just to find a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes!

Filed Under: Arts Integration, ArtsEd, News, Staff Spotlight Tagged With: Arts Ed, arts education, Drew Lusher, music education

Creative Music Expression

September 28, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

Arts Adventures: Music Expression and Exploration has kicked off in Portsmouth in the second year of a three-year partnership with Families of Autistic Children in Tidewater (FACT). The twice-weekly residency is designed for middle and high school students with autism to explore music, practice new skills, and learn with their peers in a supportive environment.

Teaching artist Cindy Aitken is leading the residency, guiding students in different activities such as playing circle games with rhythmic sticks.

Funding for Arts Adventures comes from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. The focus of the first year was dance and creative movement, with the residency held in Virginia Beach. The featured art form in the third year will be visual art, with plans for it to be held in Norfolk. There’s no charge for students to participate.

“We’re delighted to partner with FACT because the population they serve overlaps with a group of students that we prioritize with our programming,” says Chris Everly, CEO of Arts for Learning. As part of our mission to inspire and engage, Arts for Learning works to reach underserved students, including those with intellectual or physical disabilities.

The Music Expression residency concludes in mid-December with a special “perform and inform” event for family and friends.

Support our efforts by donating here—because all students deserve access to quality arts education!

Filed Under: ArtsEd, ArtsED for Exceptional Students, News, Program Spotlight Tagged With: music, music education, students with autism

A Program that Makes a Real Impact

March 18, 2022 By Cindy Sherwood

A Churchland student named Legend gets fitted for a violin during his first lesson.

After two years of being shut down because of the pandemic, Strings Impact is up and running again in Portsmouth Public Schools!

We’re celebrating a successful kickoff of this long-running residency that introduces fourth, fifth, and sixth graders to playing the violin, with instruments provided by the schools.

The program is taking place after-school at Churchland, Lakeview, and Simonsdale Elementary Schools, with students taking one 90-minute lesson a week for twelve weeks. At the end of the residency, each set of students will show off what they’ve learned in a special concert for family and friends.

Tina Culver, a fulltime music teacher at Churchland Elementary School, is the A4L teaching artist for the Churchland Strings Impact residency. Although she didn’t grow up in Portsmouth, she says the opportunity to learn the violin changed the course of her life.

“I had such a wonderful experience from the moment I started playing the violin in the fifth grade—I just hit the ground running, and I was involved in all different kinds of music programs within my community, orchestras, went on to the governor’s school, then went on to college and eventually took that up as a major.

If there hadn’t had been programs like this available for me,  my childhood would have been so much different.”

That’s why Tina feels so strongly about programs like this that expose underserved students to quality arts education. “For Portsmouth, I feel it’s important to be a part of the program because a lot of those kids are not normally getting access to classical music or to string instruments,” she says. And by having her as a teacher, students “see someone who looks like themselves, someone who’s young, someone who’s positive and energetic, and someone who tries to make it fun and interesting.”

John Jenkins is the teaching artist for the Lakeview and Simonsdale Elementary residencies. He works as a band teacher at Manor High School in Portsmouth. Altogether, 52 students are participating in the three residencies, with a waiting list of 14 students at Churchland. The enthusiasm is high among all the students—one girl writes that she may want to be a professional violinist when she grows up!

Strings Impact began about 17 years ago after starting at Westhaven Elementary School in Portsmouth. It has rotated among different schools since then.

We want to thank the E.C. Wareheim Foundation and Portsmouth Public Schools for underwriting the Strings Impact program!

Simonsdale Elementary School principal Tammy King attends the first session of the residency.

Do you want to support arts education for students who may not otherwise experience it? You can make your tax-deductible gift by clicking here.

Filed Under: News, Program Spotlight Tagged With: arts education, music education, Portsmouth Public Schools, Strings Impact

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Main Office

Arts for Learning
420 North Center Drive
Suite 239
Norfolk, Virginia 23502
Phone: 757-466-7555
Fax: 757-455-9859

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Arts for Learning Style)

No, we’re not talking about this year’s Best Picture winner (although we DID love it!) We’re talking about springtime at Arts for Learning where we have so much going on—new residencies, workshops, public performances, and more for students from Pre-K to 12th grade! Residencies Strings Impact: Fourth through sixth graders at three elementary schools in […]

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