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The teaching artists collaborate with the classroom teacher to integrate arts learning with other academic subjects, and students learn to identify and courageously express their inner voices.
Marnie Mosiman, an actor, arts educator and soprano with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, created Voices Within in collaboration with LA composers and lyricists Bernardo Solano, Penka Kouneva, David O, and Doug Cooney. Starting 12 years ago in fifth and sixth grade classrooms, the program expanded in 2010 to the new Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts within walking distance of Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA.
How Does It Work?
Three Voices Within teaching artists (a composer, a lyricist, and a singer) work closely with teachers and administrators at participating schools, creating a safe environment that encourages collaboration and creative risk-taking among the students.
The elementary school curriculum is aligned with the California VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) Standards and introduces key ideas such as pitch, rhythm, melody, and lyrics and how to apply these concepts into songwriting. Through a guided, collaborative process, students explore a subject, share their ideas and feelings about it, write a lyric that expresses their group ideas, establish a rhythm for the lyric, find a pattern of pitches that emphasizes the important words and feelings, refine the resulting melody, and then—ultimately—perform the song.
Students work in teams with their peers, and teams are paired with corresponding teams from a partner classroom or school. Each class writes six songs during the 10-week residency. Song topics are chosen by the classroom teachers and the artistic team from the classroom curriculum that students are studying.
“What is good about collaborating is you can put everyone’s ideas together. You wouldn’t just want one idea. You would want them all!” -5th grade student at Mount Washington Elementary School in LA
In 2011, at Mount Washington Elementary School, high in the LA hills, two classrooms of fifth graders (with a few fourth graders thrown in) created a series of songs based on mathematical concepts. And not just any math concepts, but challenging ones—chaos theory, tessellations, algebra, geometry, topology, and the Fibonacci Sequence.
“Giving [students] their own voice, their own songs to sing [has] made [them] enthusiastic singers and communicators,” Mosiman told a reporter for the Highland Park/Mount Washington Patch newspaper, “and helps to create a collaborative environment in the classroom that teachers have said lasts the rest of the year.” [Read the full article.]
One Mount Washington student, reflecting on the experience, wrote, “What is good about collaborating is you can put everyone’s ideas together. You wouldn’t just want one idea. You would want them all!”
At the high school, the goal is more ambitious to keep with their level of maturity. In 2011-12 some 80 high school students worked in teams to create the oratorio, The Legend of Kaguya, based on a 10th Century Japanese folktale about the life of a mysterious girl discovered inside a glowing bamboo plant.
With guidance from Mosiman, composers David O and Christy Crowl, and writer/lyricist Corey Madden, the students completed the 50-minute work in 18 weeks—a feat even seasoned professional composers would be hard-pressed to accomplish. The students performed the work in February 2012 with vocal support from members of the LA Master Chorale Chamber Singers.
What Are the Essential Elements?
Students don’t audition to participate in Voices Within. The program is delivered in ordinary, typically underserved classrooms where most students have had little or no exposure to choral music.
“I love the idea of using the arts to teach regular kids, not auditioned kids, not just kids already identified as special,” said Mosiman. “That’s what our program is about.”
Unlike other programs where local composers write songs based on student poems or essays, Voices Within involves students in every aspect of creating a musical work.
“When I give my elevator speech about this program,” Mosiman says, “I can see people’s brains churning with, ‘How does that work?’ I know it’s hard to believe the kids actually write the songs, especially when you hear the sophistication of the ideas—but they do.”
A key to the students’ success, Mosiman says, is learning how to collaborate well. Students are encouraged to live by these simple rules:
• Behave as if your team is made up of your best friends.
• Listen actively. Look at your partners and acknowledge what they are saying to you.
• Share your ideas and feelings strongly and clearly.
• Be brave!
• Just say yes!
The program benefits from seasoned teaching artists who know how to motivate young people. “You see the students who are having trouble in school being able to contribute,” said composer Christy Crowl. “Their teachers are often floored by their participation. That’s why programs like this are so important. It allows kids to be successful on a project that doesn’t have any bearing on a grade, on who their friends are, or what class they are in."
How Is the Program Funded?
The LA Master Choral allocates $250,000 of its annual $3.5 million budget to education programs. It costs approximately $106,000 a year to operate the Voices Within program in eight schools.
The Times Mirror Foundation provided initial funding to launch the program in 2000. Individual donations and grants have supported it since.
“These days, many funders have turned to programs that supply basic needs, which is understandable, but the benefits of this program continue to show up in so many ways for years to come.” -Marnie Mosiman, artistic director, Voices Within
The California Arts Council's Artists-in-School Program and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs provided grants to support the program in the high school for the performing arts.
How Does the Program Measure Its Effectiveness?
All participants in the program—including students, school teachers, and teaching artists—provide written evaluations of their experience.
The participating schools also use a pre-post test to track the students’ development of key musical skills and knowledge.
The main proof of effectiveness for funders is the creation of the final product. “When you can hand a funder an oratorio and show video footage of the performance, that is persuasive,” Andrew Brown, director of operations for the LA Master Chorale, said.
The program has also created a body of work. Since 2001, the program in the elementary school has worked with some 25,000 children who have created over 300 original songs. Two hour-long oratorios have been added to the choral repertoire.
What Are the Challenges?
The program is complicated and requires teaching artists who know when to step in and when to step back to allow the students to work through their frustrations in the creative process.
“It is such an open way of working,” said Lesili Beard, education programs manager for the LA Master Chorale. “I think, as adults, we would be challenged to do what we are asking students to do.”
Getting students of various ages, maturity levels, and musical experiences to work well together can be a challenge, too, Beard said.
Sustaining funding for the program is also challenging. “These days, many funders have turned to programs that supply basic needs, which is understandable,” Mosiman said, “but the benefits of this program continue to show up in so many ways for years to come.”
The funders who have been loyal supporters “have a passion for the arts, and have stories of their own from childhood about how something like this changed their entire attitude. They want to pay it forward.”
Parental support has also been on the increase. “They see their own kids become more confident, more thoughtful through this process,” says Mosiman.
What Has LA Master Chorale Learned?
Make sure that teachers and administrators are enthusiastic about the program. The program assesses schools’ level of interest through a comprehensive interview process. “We are working in the second largest school district in the country,” Brown said. “Lots of people are doing arts programs. If teachers and administrators are not into it, it will be hard to bring the kids along.”
Build on what you’ve started. Voices Within has chosen to focus in on a smaller group of schools, often returning year after year. The continuity builds relationships and buy-in from classroom teachers and helps embed the program in the school.
Work hard to build a schedule that works well for the classroom teachers and the teaching artists. “With all their obligations in regard to testing, teachers are concerned about giving up classroom time,” Brown said. “We work to make sure that is not a stressor for them.”
Can Other Choruses Do Something Like This?
Pulling off a program of this complexity is a big commitment. “It has taken us 12 years to fine-tune a curriculum that works,” Mosiman said. “We could share that and help a chorus implement it, but it does require training to get it up and running.”
One essential element—which may not be available in all parts of the country—is access to working composers who enjoy working with young people.
