It was a rare, rainy day in San Diego, and even rarer in that I had the day off, away from the classroom. My teaching partner, Mary Hoke, a physics teacher, and I, a humanities teacher, were tasked to plan a project for the following Spring semester for our ninth-grade team. As new teachers to the profession, and to project based learning, we were struggling to land on a solid idea that would fit High Tech High’s expectations. It had to check all of the boxes: depth of physics and humanities content, rigorous academic experiences, a product students and staff would be proud of, and an emphasis on collaboration between peers and the community. Through conversation we noticed we shared a passion for music. Mary was a huge fan of concerts and seeing live music and I have been playing in bands since middle school. We came up with the idea of planning and putting on a music festival. We looked at each other, paused, then simultaneously said, “Naaahhh.”

We halfheartedly landed on the idea of building remote-controlled (RC) cars, which fit nicely with physics, and I would teach history through the lens of transportation. We came back to school before the end of the day to pitch the idea to our director, Dr. Kaleb Rashad. He was not as excited as we had hoped and told us to keep brainstorming ideas. Somewhat defeated, we both went over to a mentor of ours, Brian Delgado. He is a veteran High Tech High (HTH) math and physics teacher who has facilitated really awesome outdoor experiences with students that were truly transformative.

When we pitched the RC car idea, he asked, “are you passionate about RC cars?”

We shook our heads with eyes wide.

“So what are you passionate about? What do you really want to do?”

“We want to put on a music festival that is planned and run by students, and we want them to perform in bands at the festival.”

Brian grinned from ear to ear and declared, “That sounds amazing!”

We went back to our director and pitched him the music festival idea and his reaction was night and day from the RC car idea. When the excitement we had for this idea was matched by our colleague and director, we knew that this is what we were meant to do.

Community Partners:

We knew we were going to need support to help students materialize this idea and so we followed a tip to talk to Juli Ruff, a ninth-grade humanities teacher who had facilitated a music project in the past. She was gracious enough to send us over her materials and project calendar to help give us a foundation for the project. Juli’s project focused more on building instruments in physics class and learning about world music and its cultural impact on humanities. I loved the thought and organization that went into their plans. As I studied them, I realized the scope of their project was broader than what we were going for. We really wanted to focus on learning to play instruments and putting on a festival, and studying Juli’s plans brought our own priorities into focus. Juli also provided us with an invaluable connection: the community partnership she had made with a music school named Recreation Music Center (RMC), which happened to be a five minute walk from our campus.

We reached out that same day to see to what extent, if any, they were able to support us in our vision. To my surprise, their response was warm, and excited. We met with them at their space and they agreed to give weekly lessons to all 50 of our students: half of the team on Mondays, and the other half on Fridays. They also agreed to provide us with a portable stage for our music festival if we allowed them to advertise their music school. Mary and I had no problem with this, seeing as they were not asking for any money to teach our students to play their instruments AND more importantly how to play in a band.

OK, support in teaching music? Check. Now, where would this festival take place? Mary and I looked for all ages venues in San Diego that might be able to host it and my mind went directly to the Che Cafe, a historic all ages venue located on the campus of UC San Diego. Founded in 1980, Che Cafe is a co-op that has featured bands including Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana, and which embodies the ethos of shared endeavor that we were trying to cultivate with this project. I sent an email explaining the purpose of our project and asked if we could book a music festival there in May or June. It turned out that the person in charge of booking the Che was a student teacher at High Tech High Media Arts. What serendipity! He graciously gave us a list of dates that would work for him and we booked a Saturday in May. He was only able to book us for a couple of hours in the afternoon and so we knew that it could not be a possible location for the actual festival, since we needed at least a four hour window for set up, performances, and tear down, but it would give the students an experience and authentic dress rehearsal before the final festival.

So our plan to have the festival at the Che Cafe fell through, which meant we were knee-deep in planning a music festival without a venue. Mary and I felt like Wayne and Garth trying to plan Waynestock. This was all before the semester started. About a month into the project, after students interviewed for their festival roles, they suggested that we reach out to the head honchos in Liberty Station, the residential and commercial development surrounding HTH, to hold the festival on the field right outside our school building. This was indeed a learning moment to let the students lead and take ownership over their own festival. The commission said yes, and we had ourselves a venue.

Academic Content:

The main reason for not following our gut in the first place to do a music festival was the question of academic content. I felt that playing music and being in a band would not be academically rigorous enough. I decided to take a look at Juli Ruffs’ plans again and saw she was able to touch on World History and music by introducing students to musical artists from around the world. One artist caught my eye: The Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars. This was a band made up of refugees that fled a war torn Sierra Leone, only to find themselves making music for themselves and their fellow refugees at their camp. Juli had also coupled the story of the All-Stars with Ishmael Beah’s raw account of his experience as a child soldier in A Long Way Gone. This was the spark and essential question I needed to help authentically incorporate World History and English to this music project: how is music a form of rehumanization?.

From here I diverged from Juli’s original plans that had students explore different countries’ music around the world. I instead decided to dive deeply into the history of Sierra Leone, and more broadly how European encroachment had affected the surrounding territories, even after their occupation. Driving questions started swirling in my head: Why was Sierra Leone, along with the rest of the African continent, so sought after by Europeans? How did they manage to colonize this country? How is music helping the experience of the Refugee All-Stars and other traumatized people? What makes music rehumanizing?

We dove deep into Beah’s A Long Way Gone and why the war was happening in the first place.

After watching the documentary on the Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars, the students had the same questions: why was there a war in the first place? Why does Africa have this single story of political instability? We investigated the history and cultural diversity of Africa and students wrote songs in order to rehumanize those lost in history and those still affected by imperialism and war. The songs were accompanied by annotations that provided more background on the lyrics they wrote.

Launching the Project:

One of the best pieces of advice I have received about launching a project is to have the students start by “doing the thing.” Whether it is building rockets, putting on a play, or learning how to perform music, there is always a way to introduce students to that thing from day one in a low-stakes manner that gets students warmed up and feeling safe to make mistakes.

In my case, I thought I was doing a low-stakes version of the project by having students write and perform song by the end of the day about one of the following:

1. a historical event that shook them
2. a detailed description of a personal relationship they have with a friend or family member
3. something they are struggling with in or outside of school

What was I thinking?? These topics are WAY too vulnerable to be the basis of songs they need to write, let alone perform them in front of their whole team of 60 students. In my second iteration of this project, I had kids write songs about food. That was much better.

That same week Mary and I gave the students a survey (see Figure 1) to see what genres of music they liked and which instruments they were interested in learning in order to assign them to bands for the festival.

Figure 1: Band Survey

Mary and I stayed after school that day to review the results and started grouping students. I have to say, a critical component to the success of grouping kids in this project was having taught them the previous semester. I knew which groupings might cause the most growth based on existing relationships, so that was our number one priority, with genre and instrument choice becoming second and third priorities. We really wanted the students to be in a band with at least one person they were comfortable with while making sure they were in a band with students they would not normally talk to.

From there we had students attend RMC once a week to learn the basics of their instrument for a few weeks before starting the band practices where they would learn to play as a unit. We created a schedule that allowed each band two practices a week, one at RMC and one at school (see Table 1. Note: the confusing words in period four are the names of the students’ bands).

Table 1: Class and Rehearsal Schedule

The “Dips”:

As beautiful as the project turned out, it had its fair share of challenges. For one, the use of instruments and equipment was difficult to manage. This equipment was a mix of the school’s, students, and my own personal guitars and amp. 55 students are a lot and we as teachers cannot be everywhere all at once. There was some minor damage done to drums and amps, but luckily nothing major. In my second iteration of this project I devoted a whole lesson to handling the equipment.

On the same note of management, early on in the project it was not uncommon to walk into a practice room and find students gossiping, joking around, or even motionless and silent. The lack of supervision made it difficult to have students stay on task consistently through their practice time. At the time, it was frustrating. How did they not understand that their practice time is precious? I had conversations with certain students in order to make it real for them that the ability to practice as a complete ensemble should be taken seriously since there is very little time for it and they were accountable for other people’s time as well. These conversations were not always productive. Looking back, however, I see that the time they had to fool around and talk naturally allowed them to bond. I think of my own experiences with band practice and talking and joking is an inevitable part of the process.

On the festival planning side of the project there was a major issue with communication. Students were coming directly to Mary and me with questions and concerns. We realized very quickly that this was not sustainable. If we wanted to have this be a student-planned and run exhibition then we needed to support them in relying on each other instead of us. We then created a chain of communication that you can see below. This guide truly helped the students feel self-sufficient and able to execute the festival planning (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: “Who Should I Ask First?” Guide

Exhibition(s):

Our first run-through took place at the Che Cafe. It was a Saturday afternoon and nerves were running high as students started to arrive, dressed to the nines, for their first live performance as a band. Family and friends were in tow. The order of bands was already planned. One by one, each band performed and left the stage with the biggest smiles I had seen all semester. The love they received was overwhelming and it proved that they are indeed capable of moving a crowd. There were nerves all day leading up to their performance but the students showed up and left parents and participants wide-eyed. The authenticity of playing in a historic venue like the Che truly ramped up the experience for students and participants alike. It was a celebration and it told students that they were ready for the big festival.

Images from the Che Cafe show:

There were two weeks in between the Che performance and the Off Beat music festival taking place in Liberty Station. We used the Che performance as an opportunity to reflect and self-critique in order to improve the performance for Off Beat.

The day of the music festival was chaotic and beautiful all at the same time. There was a lot to set up: stages, booths where student clubs and student work were going to be displayed, music equipment, etc. All hands were on deck. Students set up the bill so that our student bands were alternating with the other guest bands that were performing as well. The festival started at 4 p.m. and the crowd grew over time. Students were enjoying the show, they were singing and playing their hearts out; it was a true celebration of learning. Mary and I had received so many astonished glances from parents and teachers. How could these kids learn to play and perform in the span of four months? It was a sense of pride I had not felt before as a teacher. For the first time I felt the work was meaningful to not only me, but these young humans. They all stepped outside of their comfort zone and delivered an amazing experience. I felt like I had finally unlocked project-based learning. In past projects I had planned with my brain, assuming what I thought everyone around me wanted a project to be. For the first time, I followed my heart, and it proved to me that I should have been following it all along.

Reflection:

1. Logistics align if you are passionate about the project you are planning. “If you build it, they will come,” is so true when you start with your passion and interests and then plan for feasibility. I was so excited to get in contact with musicians, teach students music theory, history and performance, and express my passion to them. I would not be having fun reaching out to a car dealership if we had done the RC products.
2. I can easily say it was the most authentic collaborative experience I had facilitated to date and so far. In a band, you can’t play your group members’ instruments for them. Everyone has to come prepared to play and improve in unison. It allowed the high flyers to let go of control in a group project and pushed students who normally take a backseat in group projects to take ownership of their work.
3. Relationships that were created through playing music were the strongest I’ve yet to see. Having a shared, novel experience allowed students who had never talked before to become great friends and acquaintances. The shared experience of being in a band truly fostered empathy among students.
4. I cannot express how powerful a role community partners make in a project. RMC, Juli Ruff, and local musicians who participated, such as Fuzzy Rankins, were a godsend and the project would not nearly be as powerful without them.
5. Looking back now, in my hesitation to do this project I had fallen victim to one of the largest lies in education: the arts are not academic.
6. Music is transformational: a student who had spoken no more than five words to me or anyone in the first semester ended up singing in front of 100 people at the music festival. It nearly brought me to tears seeing her come out of her shell and allowing herself to be who she is. I am very thankful for this experience, as it proved how transformational projects can be for students.