2018-2019 Nancy B. Jefferson Residency
Nancy B. Jefferson: Champion for equal rights and equal access
Nancy B. Jefferson Alternative School provides high quality educational programming to meet the diverse educational and social/emotional needs of court-detained youths. We strive to balance and coordinate our educational focus with the goals and objectives of the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center, Cook County Juvenile Court system and Chicago Public Schools.
OPPORTUNITIES
In planning conversations with Nancy B. Jefferson teachers and administration, we identified the residency as an opportunity to:
Give students arts programming without an existing dedicated music or arts curriculum
Strengthen student’s understanding of core curricular topics
Provide participants opportunities to experience agency and self efficacy
Reach all youth within the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center
Create a residency program that is flexible enough to produce a satisfying artistic performance and account for a transient participant population
QUESTIONS EXPLORED
How can music be composed without the use of traditional notation?
What are the different parts of a musical composition and how can they be manipulated to make a complete work?
How does music allow for us to share our emotions, feelings, and experiences?
How can Deep Listening be used to translate everyday sounds into music?
THE OBJECTIVES
Students will learn how to communicate and associate their social and emotional feelings with music and non-traditional notation.
Students will participate in Deep Listening exercises to increase their awareness of their environment and how they can use their peers to make sound to achieve their artistic visions.
Give students opportunities to process trauma outside of the traditional therapeutic environment
Provide students with the opportunity to experience agency and empowerment
Provide opportunities to cultivate their creative voice
THE PROCESS
Fifth House Ensemble ran two concurrent residency programs at Nancy B. Jefferson for the first time in the 2020-2021 following a break in programming due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital programming opportunities became available for the first time in September with a few important changes to our normal process. First, the students were participating in e-learning from their pods, or living quarters, at the detention center. There was also a limit of one computer per pod so students were not participating individually but rather, as an entire class at once. The first of our residency programs was a continuous three week cycle that allowed 5HE teaching artists to work with two different pods per week and introduce Deep Listening and mindfulness activities. This three week cycle would be offered to every pod at JTDC (including medical isolation pods) to, for the first time ever, allow all youth in the building to interact with Fifth House Ensemble programming in the same season. Using the 3-week program as a sort of litmus test, pods that showed a particular interest or desire to continue with more activities were chosen to participate in a more typical 8-week cycle that explored richer Deep Listening and mindfulness concepts and tied Deep Listening to the curriculum surrounding the importance of community building and exploring questions such as, “how much of our past is necessary to keep alive and visible in our present?” and “How are we best served, as a community- by focusing on what we are proud of, and working to erase the worst parts of our history so as to avoid present day discomfort and harm, or by looking at everything, always, no matter how difficult?”
THE FINAL PROJECT
As part of their final project for this residency, students created their own text scores inspired by themes from their core curricular subjects. Because of security in digital formats, live performances took the shape of Deep Listening jam sessions where student composers were able to introduce their text score compositions, perform them with peers, support staff, teachers, and Fifth House Ensemble musicians that included time for all parties to reflect on the experience through journaling.
THE IMPACT
Introducing Deep Listening concepts, so many of which have elements of vulnerability, to students at NBJ in a virtual setting has been a unique challenge. Typically when in person at NBJ, Fifth House TAs can help to ease classrooms into activities and help students 1-on-1 with particular activities, if necessary. With teaching virtually at NBJ, the entire class is on one screen and it is very easy for students to move farther away from the camera once they begin to feel uncomfortable or if they are not interested in participating for the day. In performing the score, "Old Sound, New Sound, Borrowed Sound, Blue", with a class joined by Google Meet, we had a student decide that it would be funny to have his sound that represented the color blue to be the actual word "blue". Instead of a moment where TAs could've rolled our eyes at someone trying to elicit a negative response, we took the ball and ran with it and started echoing the student's idea. This turned into a wonderful moment where students were suddenly surprised that they were heard and other individuals in the room started shouting out more colors to see if they would be heard and echoed by the TAs. It was a great moment where the classroom came together and worked towards a common goal and was able to express themselves in the moment and respond to their space.
“[In this activity] I went to heaven and I was able to see my brother again.”
“[When participating in Deep Listening] I focus on all the sounds from the day I was arrested. I like remembering it so that I don’t make the same mistakes.”
THE NUMBERS
Dates: September 11, 2020 - June 18, 2021
Total Number of Visits: 93
Total Participants: 200
Race and Ethnicities Present:
Black: 80%
Hispanic: 18%
White: 2%
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS
“Gifts of Resonance” - Blog post by Herine Coetzee Koschak
Fifth House Ensemble’s educational programs and research initiatives are supported in part by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, the Albert Pick Jr. Fund, Chamber Music America, the Farny R. Wurlitzer Fund, and by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.