Return to Caracas #3

After we had finished quizzing the team from the Executive Director's Office, they asked us what our impressions were of El Sistema after three weeks of observing and engaging with the program. Unfortunately I didn't record what I said but it was probably something about teacher training considering that it was my particular obsession at the time. Or maybe praxis...

Ricki: The positive environment - always open to help each other, not to laugh at each other.

Tatjana: There is a need for more integration of Venezuelan music in the program - for example arranging their own music in the nucleo or producing national editions by Fundamusical to that can be made digitally available.

Aubree: The teachers specifically working on bringing passion out of children.

Beverly: The constant innovation and openness to new methods of teaching - teachers often in situations when they need to think outside the box e.g. teaching different levels and instruments.

Frosty: The passion for music creates the motivation to work hard - This is diminished when they are told they can’t do something or teachers overly focus on posture for example. Instead teachers empower students and encourage a relationship with instruments. She was also impressed with Argenis, the director of the Merida Youth Choir training members of choir to conduct.

Hana: Struck by the loud, fast, almost aggressive sound in beginner playing, whereas the more advanced students are more refined and sensitive in their musical expression.

Eriel: The students simply love playing with others, and the social, family experience at the nucleo becomes a huge part of their life. Talent is not a factor or a working concept as teachers believe all can achieve but need to be supported differently.

Roderigo: The students are almost addicted to achievement, and realise that with support you can constantly achieve and seek the challenge of the next step.

Return to Caracas #2

Back at the Centre for Social Action we met up with members of Eduardo Mendez’s team. The Executive Director’s office develops curriculum and music projects. We met with four members of management who are preparing a strategy for developing higher education, and evaluation and assessment in El Sistema. Those we talked to included the Head co-ordinator of projects undertaken by the Executive Director’s office, a statistician and an economist. One of them also was a violinist in the Simon Bolivar. They are part of work groups focusing on updating sequential repertoire and creating new academies and conservatories. Ironically their goal is the systemisation of El Sistema’s programming. They intend to equip a new generation of researchers who will continue to expand and develop the program.

Data Collection

The main objective of this project is to measure the impact of the El Sistema program in Venezuela. They started measuring in 2006/7 but a system wasn’t put in place to organise the data. This has been a very expensive process, there is 39 years’ worth of programming to consider! There have been previous external data collection and evaluations including one compiled by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2007. They also mentioned research published in 2006 (by Jose Fuerte) and also a cost-benefit analysis (a different report to the IDB analysis) showing that the program gives $1.36 back for every $1 invested.

Their aims are:

1) To measure the social and individual impact of the program on children, parents, teachers, and administrative staff through various indicators including self-esteem, psychology, hygiene and health.

2) To record the socio-economic status of children’s families.

The pilot process is expected to finish in 2015: the first study will take place in 4 nucleos, assessment tools and a schedule will be established, and then it will be reproduced on a national level in 2018 with the aim that data collection will be continued. They will be able to see the impact on the development of students after consistent analysis. The data collection process will include questioning all children of all ages and their parents (e.g. income and education background), measuring cognitive skills and reasoning, causal impact, social and individual impact. The research team will be in each nucleo for two weeks collecting data of the current students.

The team mentioned some of the problems that they are facing: Determining what should be the baselines that are they looking for, the lack of internet access in many areas to digitally process data, and how to differentiate the impact of El Sistema from other social programs the students may participate in.

University Institute of Music Studies

The evaluation process will also be designed to inform what will be needed when students reach higher education, so the children selected for the pilot assessment will be those who have experienced as many aspects of the program as possible. The data will be used to create a curriculum to support the existing programs. A higher education institute was created by Dr Abreu in the ‘80s, but it is now that a huge development is under way to use the institute to fill in the gaps in the program.

The team mentioned that other higher education providers in Venezuela are not completely coherent with the philosophy of El Sistema programming. They do however work with the Simon Bolivar Conservatory which is already well established in delivering performance studies, but they wish to use the El Sistema institute to extend educational offerings to students. In this way, they are not so concerned about providing more performance opportunities, concerts, tours, master-classes, etc.

They did mention, however, that there has been some controversy in taking students away from other universities, but there are few universities in Venezuela that offer music studies in further education. Students end up choosing other disciplines although this does have the outcome of graduates having the opportunity to work in other areas and then return to El Sistema with a wider skills base. Providing more opportunities for gaining a Higher Education qualification legitimises a musical career and the music industry, and prevents the brain drain of students going abroad. By having complimentary tracks in teaching and performance students are able to take their own direction in their studies and career choice.

One aspect that appealed to me is the interdisciplinary nature of the courses they wish to offer. They describe the pilot program of music theory, history and composition courses as being holistic and integrated and the curriculum design will aim to present everything as part of the same learning. Perhaps they will link these studies with El Sistema favourites Tchaikovsky’s 4^th and Shostakovich’s 10^th symphonies – the passion for the music is already there having experienced it, and therefore the motivation to learn about them from different angles.

Teacher Training

This is one crucial aspect of programming that doesn’t formally exist yet in El Sistema. The team is working on three strategies to rectify this.

1) Certify teachers who already work in the dynamic of El Sistema, who have been trained by following the example of others in the nucleo and by years of experience. It is hoped that these teachers will be more motivated to continue teaching with the recognition of their skills. Given the huge development of the program that is needed in the next few years under the Simon Bolivar project, there is a huge demand for teachers and they require certification. They have already tried to certify their teachers through other institutions, but now the program needs to be able to certify their own teachers in order to achieve the goals of the project.

2) Develop a teacher training program to compliment the experience gained in the nucleo. This program will address weaknesses and gaps such as assessment and evaluation, teaching methodologies and knowledge, but will not necessarily be completely theoretical. They aim to offer elective courses so students can pick and chose those that are relevant, and to remove the preconception that everyone should teach how they themselves learnt, by introducing new pedagogical methods. The courses will also try to cater for all the musical interests that are reflected in the program, from orchestras and choirs to symphonic rock bands and special needs programming. Their vision is to attract international students to their Inter-American Teacher Training Facility, where the quality of teacher training offered matches the level of performance training that creates the professional musicians of the Simon Bolivar Orchestra.

3) El Sistema has pioneered methods of teaching music to Special Needs students. There is a need for research into the teaching methodologies being used along with collecting teacher and student profiles to assess the program. They intend to gather what is already happening and make it accessible to others, with a view to eventually establishing a national Teacher Training Centre specifically for Special Needs.

Curriculum development

Sequential repertoire documents were created for standardising repertoire in 2010 which has been an important baseline for orchestras and choirs in every nucleo. It is used as a non-mandatory guideline, but the evolution of the program has surpassed the repertoire standards, and expectations are changing constantly as many students are playing repertoire from the next level up. They plan to update these documents to reflect the reality of student progress, whilst not voiding achievements of previous students. In addition they aim to analyse the progress of the new generation of students to inform future curriculum developments.

We wondered whether the program might lose something of its essence in this systemisation and institutionalisation. The team replied by saying that as they have been brought up in El Sistema, it would be hard for them to develop a different approach to music education. These developments that will be based on research and evaluation of what students need will inevitably change our perconceptions of music education at the higher level.

Return to Caracas #1

Our beloved tequenos at the Tamanaco Hotel, Caracas

We returned to Caracas for our final week in Venezuela. We were hoping to meet with members of El Sistema senior management, members of the team responsible for research, evaluation, and formulating a plan for a new higher education institution, whilst also visiting the Simon Bolivar Conservatory. Unfortunately, as it was the week of municipal elections, the nucleos and the conservatory were closed (luckily we didn’t miss out as much as the last class of Fellows when Chavez died).

There are 250 staff (all Venezuelan) working at the head office of the Foundacion which runs El Sistema. We were able to meet with three out of the five members of senior management – Eduardo Mendez (Executive Director ), Valdemar Rodriguez (Deputy Executive Director) and, to our great delight, Dr. Abreu (Founding Director).

l to r: Tony Woodcock, Dr. Abreu, Leslie Wu Foley, Eduardo Mendez

First was the unassuming and utterly inspiring Eduardo Mendez. Eduardo grew up as a violinist in El Sistema, and is now head of the administration and management side of the program. He is one of the few who receives a lot of personal time and assistance from Dr. Abreu. For the first time we made our way to the buildings of the Fundamusical. He talked to us for about an hour, giving us more of an overview of the program and its goals rather than the details of how each nucleo operates that we had been concerned with so far doing our visits. Out of his discussion came three main themes of how he sees El Sistema: a different methodology, breaking boundaries and the importance of the El Sistema family.

A different, but not necessarily better methodology

Eduardo echoed many voices we heard that emphasised that El Sistema is not a musical ‘miracle’ but a result of many people working hard to serve the students together. He asked us to imagine how many teachers/hours/instruments would be needed to teach every child in the nucleo in the traditional Western methodology; “We would still be working on generation one!”

It was interesting to hear his summary of how El Sistema works: The program is based on collective teaching where private lessons do happen. This makes the process of teaching simpler but more time-consuming – students obviously progress more in four months with four hours of teaching a day than they would in one year. Teachers surround the students all the time, so they can feel that they are getting better every day and progressing quicker. In addition they are not getting bad habits at home that have to be dealt with, the students are motivated by participating in concerts on Saturdays and they experience the pride of their parents seeing them in uniform and receiving applause for their work. He also talked about taking advantage of the pace at which children can learn when they are young – he pointed out how a nine month old can learn how to use an IPad, and how that potential can lead to a performance of 7-12 year olds in the National Children’s Orchestra in Salzburg! (Eduardo was 17 when he played Mahler 1 to audition for the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, now it is used for preparation for National Children’s Orchestra.)

“We achieve precise, clear and direct objectives, using passion, motivation and methodology.” His challenge is to break down this passion and joy to the ground and make it work like a business, so that they can be as efficient as possible with the resources they have, serve as many children as possible and continue to serve the community with up to five concerts a week (in Caracas).

El Sistema applies and replicates its own methodology to facilitate the growth of the program and see more children served, but he pointed out the different motivations behind this to the way that Europe, North America and Asia see the nurturing of musicians; the major difference being the dual focus of community-building as well as the development of young musicians.

“We are here to provide opportunities for everyone, students and the audience who will become your allies for funds and networks. Communities are then built surrounding a common objective. Our objective is not to produce professional musicians, but our goals are to serve the needs of children and youth through music. We seek to get the most amount of children in the project – this is when we are helping to create a new human being. We still have a lot to learn as a community builder but all skills can be applied to help others. We are creating a new concept or ecology. The challenge is convincing the world that it is not better but different. A great example is that the very traditional New England Conservatory wants you to be here!”

Breaking barriers

Another striking feature of El Sistema is the focus on pushing boundaries – the sheer amount of students involved, the number of concerts occurring every week, the inclusion we have seen in the Special Needs programming and above all the expectations of what the students are capable of. The best example of this is the 1500 El Sistema students performing at the Salzburg Festival for three weeks; five programs of non-professionals performing as professionals at the highest level possible, and all the tickets were sold out six months before.

Of course the Simon Bolivar project will be continuing the massive expansion of the program, and Eduardo is instrumental in decisions determining how many more children are added to the program each month and in which city, the taking over of schools and community spaces, and expanding existing nucleos (although on our visits many seem to be already at bursting point with long waiting lists!)

El Sistema is now breaking the boundaries of the Venezuelan borders and inspiring many programs globally. Eduardo remarked that in 1975 Dr. Abreu told his students that their orchestra would take over the country with music and the world will look to Venezuela and want to imitate you. This prophecy is coming true, and following in this quasi-religious perspective, Eduardo stated that the work will be finished when all countries can do this work.

The Family

The sense of responsibility for the students and their well-being was a very common theme from the teachers and El Sistema leaders; “The program is the closest thing children have to family, they call the nucleo director or teacher when something is wrong”. In this way, strong emotional connections are created and the students become an integral part of El Sistema and how it functions: “they identify themselves with the program as they achieve results, human results and feel transformed as they enter the orchestra or nucleo – the principle objective of all this.”

Finally, Eduardo’s message to the Sistema Fellows – “You are part of the network, our achievements you should take and build on and vice versa; we are a group. This is free and you should feel part of the El Sistema family. Transmit this to all you will work with. Always believe in what you saw in Venezuela.”

 

Merida #3

Fe Y Alegria

Fe y Alegria (Hope and Joy) school is in a stunning location up in the mountains outside Merida. There are 500 children in this nucleo in a relatively poor area, and this nucleo is a rare example in El Sistema of an in-school program, in this case at a Catholic school (kindergarten until 6^th grade). The wife of Jésus Perez is the director here. She explained that the students come from different socio-economic backgrounds, and that it is a cheap and accessible school for families in the mountains.

Currently, every student participates in music lessons once a week which includes two hours of private lessons and choir in the morning, two hours of ensembles and orchestra in the afternoon. In addition there are music theory classes. There is a core group of teachers which is supported by additional staff in the afternoon.

There was a similar project in the area at another Catholic boarding school, run by a nun who is a friend of Dr. Abreu. She asked for the program to be set up at the school, but it only existed for five years before being moved to Fe Y Alegria. Other clubs and distractions lead to low student retention and interest. It was not often that we heard of a failed nucleo in our visit to Venezuela. There are still opportunities to participate in music activities at the school as "El Sistema doesn’t ever close its doors on students". They were at the old school for two years without instruments - teaching choir, music theory and sharing twelve recorders! It has been  six months only since the move to the new site, which provides more space and offers less additional activities.

We could hear students practicing constantly whilst we were talking during the school morning break. It turned out that they were preparing for an audition that day to perform in an upcoming presentation. Auditions had to be held as there weren't enough instruments for everyone to participate. They were also going to starting the children’s and youth choir that very day. Again we heard the Merida Maxim of 'listening and experiencing before theory' as they talked about setting up the new project at the school. 

We enjoyed taking a tour of the school and engaged some classes in the orchestra song Tatjana had taught us, whilst for the younger kids we performed Tucheze Tanzania!

 

El Sistema Fellows 2014 Graduation 16th May

The graduation of the 2014 cohort of El Sistema Fellows took place at the New England Conservatory on 16th May. The ceremony also heralded the transition between the end of the Fellowship Program to the Sistema Fellows Resource Center (see previous posts). It was a great way to end a fabulous year: we were able to celebrate the bonds and friendships we had formed by sharing tributes to each other and a multitude of in-jokes.

Read the write-up of the event on the TED Prize blog:

http://blog.tedprize.com/how-50-music-teachers-are-creating-5000-musician-citizens-across-the-us-thanks-to-a-ted-prize-wish/




 

Merida #2

 The system of orchestras within the Merida nucleo

Paper Orchestra – At this nucleo, teachers are responsible for making the instruments, they sing and imitate playing with the students and also demonstrate how to care of the instruments. They again emphasised the approach of 'Play first than read'! As with Suzuki's philosophy of music learning, they compared the process to first knowing how to speak, then read and write language.

Pre-Infantil – After six months of learning on an instrument, the children start in a beginners orchestra. Typically they spend 1 hour 30 mins each day rehearsing, and start a new orchestra with more complex repertoire each year. There is the creation of new beginners orchestra every school year (we saw many orchestras who have been playing for six months as we visited halfway through the academic year).

Infantil - In these rehearsals we were able to observe the role of sectional tutors in a full rehearsal: standing and pacing around the players of their section they mimic bowings, count aloud, help to maintain tempo, remind the children of technical details, relay & explain instructions from the conductor, tune & fix instruments, keep discipline and silence. The focus of all of this constant advice was the main principle of learning to play together – speed, expression, rhythms, etc.

Juvenil - The youth orchestra rehearsal was an incredible experience. The force of the sound of was as overwhelming as the orchestras in the nucleos in Caracas that we had visited. I decided to borrow a violin to experience being a part of one of these youth orchestras (it had been ten years since I had played the violin in an orchestra). The choice of repertoire was not kind to me, the 4th movement of Shostakovich's 5th Symphony 4th movt and Silvestre Revueltas' piece Sensemaya with rhythms that are almost impossible to sightread. The conductor of the Infantil orchestra, Joel Perez, came to my aid and sat down next to me at the back of the second violins section. The support that I saw being given to the children at the previous rehearsal, was now being given to me. Especially in the Revueltas piece that I was not familiar with, Joel counted aloud, sang the rhythms of the percussion section that I would soon join in with, and helped me to negotiate some terrible photocopied scores with pages missing! I found myself watching the bowing of the players in front of me, trying to keep up rather than feeling confident enough to watch the conductor - I was out of my comfort zone musically again. I think I managed about half the notes required of me, but I gained a sense of what it must feel like for a lot of the students who are being constantly challenged in this learning environment.

I was interested in the progression of the students through the different levels of the orchestra. My own experience has involved a more rigid system - we think more of progress on the scale of the individual e.g. this musician has reached a certain technical level and is ready to audition for the next orchestra up. Instead, in many nucleos they follow the progress of the group of children and make the call as to whether the group is ready to tackle more advanced repertoire, thus keeping the community of students together as much as possible. They simply change the title of the orchestra from Children to Youth.

It seems that the change in repertoire tackled is the most defining element of the identity of the new orchestra, for example the children know that if they are starting to learn Tchaikovsky's 4th and Shostakovich's 10th symphonies that they are at the next level. There are auditions as well, for the players at the first stand for example. They evaluate the players every week and change the section leaders every six months. There were auditions for the chance to go to Salzburg and for orchestras in Caracas. Many students were preparing for auditions when we were there - an El Sistema favourite, the 4^th movement of Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony was chosen as audition material, a piece of popular shared repertoire that everyone wants to participate in.

As I have mentioned before, the orchestral repertoire used is unified throughout the nucleos, so students have a clear idea of what level they are working at according to what pieces they are rehearsing. Also they have seen their peers and those before them model playing the same pieces and the community is familiar with them. How much of this approach is strategic or needs-based according to the resources available? Do students (and teachers) find the same repertoire being repeated each year and for each ensemble ultimately uninspiring? How much of the repertoire involves flexibility to community interests? Again it also seems that there is a problem in retaining students from the Pre-Infantil orchestra onwards, otherwise there would be an immense amount of students in the Juvenil orchestra if a new cohort is formed every year.

 

 

Kirstein & Amelia Combrink 31st May 2014

A short break away from blogging and a name change...