Advocacy in the Era of Covid-19 - Dennis Argul

Dennis Argul dennisargul@gmail.com

For this month’s contribution in Advocacy, I interviewed Mr. Bob Morrison, Founder/CEO at Quadrant Research and Arts Ed NJ, who has been the spearhead of all the efforts in the area of Arts Education and Advocacy for the State of NJ and his diligence led to the preparation of the ‘September Ready - Fall 2020 Guidance for Arts Education.’

DA: Bob, we know that Advocacy for the arts is a touch enough job in an everyday ‘normal’ life…what makes it even tougher in these ‘Covid’ days where we find ourselves?

BM: Advocacy under normal circumstances is really not that difficult. It’s a discipline that has to be developed. It’s like a muscle and if you use the muscle it gets stronger and you can use it in more ways. If you ignore it, it shrivels up, so then when you go to use it, you go ‘hey what happened to my muscle?’ Well, you haven’t been using it, so it weakened. Advocacy is the same way. I talk in terms of advocacy being not something you do, but something you are. It becomes embedded as to how you operate under normal circumstances, as opposed to ‘teach, teach, teach, ok now advocacy’ while you are teaching you are being an advocate. While you are communicating with your peers and administrator you are also advocating for your program. So, the more you’re exercising that process in educating people about what it is you are doing in your program, how your program is impacting students, how it’s contributing to the school community, how it’s contributing to the broader community, the better you become.

What makes now challenging as it relates to advocacy, is that there’s so many unknowns. As a result of that, new information is coming up every day that challenges whatever current sets of assumptions are that people have, like whether or not we can have our kinds of programs. It makes it a little more difficult because for our programs to be held successfully we have to have certain things put in place. Some of the things we have control over, like mitigation strategies. We also have to get information on things that we don’t necessarily have total control over, like if I’m a choir teacher teaching in a small room, with no windows and poor ventilation, ‘what can be done to make that space inhabitable for a vocal program?’ The answer to that question is probably, ‘nothing.’ There may not be anything that you can do to that space, so then that leads to the next question, ‘if that space won’t work, then where can the choir go?’ Can we go to the auditorium, can we go outside? So, there are things you as a music educator will have control over, and there will be things you will need help with. Being able to go to your Supervisor, your Principal, your Superintendent and say, ‘yes, we can have this program, but we need your help to have an appropriate environment for us to be able to successfully do this.’ It’s a different kind of advocacy. In this instance your using advocacy to ensuring proper conditions for you to be able to run your program. I think those are new challenges for our educators. First to be informed on what are the mitigation strategies, then what are the ones you have control over and can address, and finally what are the ones you cannot necessarily control and need help with. Then, be willing to ask for the help.

DA: Bob, what advice can you share for those music educators who are perhaps a little less self-motivated with their individual advocacy and they may not have an arts leader in their district? What are the possible steps those educators can take in their schools/districts to advocate for their programs and students?

BM: I think it’s always best to advocate for your program using supporting information, data, and facts. Use the documentation that we’ve put out. The September Ready report is full of information on how to provide instruction in the variety of scenarios that may play out for us: in school with restrictions, a hybrid model, and completely remote. Also,

take a look at the memos we’ve been putting out to Superintendents and Principals across the state because the information has been vetted, is based on science, and in addition to that, it is coming from the National Federation of State High School Associations, which is the governing body for the New Jersey School Interscholastic Athletic Association. They are providing the guidance that high school athletics in New Jersey will be following and that same entity is providing us with guidance and information as to how to safely conduct our Performing Arts programs. It’s taking the educator out of saying ‘this is what I believe’ or ‘this is my opinion’ puts it into the hands of the governing association which provides for more credibility. Use that information, guidance, and resources to help you make the case so that you do not feel like you are making the case on your own.

As long as you are advocating for students, I think it is okay to be respectful but also a little on the aggressive side in order to educate people and at the same time I would look for colleagues that you can advocate with. Look for allies in your building and district that you can bring into the equation. Also, see if there are external allies, whether that’s a parent or perhaps a school board member who has a student in the program, you can do that as well. First it is yourself, then it is your close allies, then see if there are others in the community that would be able to speak out on behalf of the program. At the end of the day, it is for the students. As long as the focus remains on the students and doesn’t get put on adult issues, the better chance you have at being successful. It doesn’t mean you are always going to be successful, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that every administrator is convertible. That is the way you should approach it. Be respectful and see where that takes you.

DA: What is the role of Arts Ed NJ in all of this?

BM: Arts Ed NJ started originally as the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership back in 2007 and was renamed Arts Ed NJ when we became a non-profit back in 2015. The role of Arts Ed NJ is to create proper conditions so that arts learning can take place across the state. That’s it….that’s the goal. We do that through monitoring state policies, working on convenings on major issues like Social Emotional Learning in the Arts or development of standards, putting out public facing for the arts in the area of advocacy such as the ARTS ED NOW campaign, surveying school board candidates to see what their positions are when they are running for office and then collaborating with the Department of Education, the Governor’s office, the Superintendents’ Association, the Principals’ Association, the Boards Association, the PTA and NJEA. We collaborate and coordinate amongst all those organizations so that we remind them and keep them informed on the importance of an arts education for every student in our state and support the role that the arts have as a core subject and a requirement for every student. We really serve in that umbrella capacity, collaborating very closely with the individual arts disciplines, dance, music, theater, and visual arts. NJMEA is a part of Arts Ed NJ. It has a seat at the table and provides input and guidance on areas that we make priorities.

DA: What will the collaboration between NJMEA and Art Ed NJ look like once school is back in session?

BM: Well, it is ongoing, and it will continue to be ongoing because everything is changing. Right now, we are dealing with issues such as how hybrid models are going to be implemented. We are hearing from teachers in the field about being taken out of their classroom and put into other areas, and that is an issue. So then we now need to engage with the appropriate agencies in order to address that, whether that is NJEA to alert them to the fact of how some of their members are being used outside of their area of certification, or addressing it with the New Jersey Department of Education about the fact that it might be difficult if not impossible for a school to meet the standards if the students aren’t receiving the instruction to achieve those standards. So, by getting information from the field, and from the individual organizations, we are able to address issues as they come up. Right now, because the situation is so unpredictable and so unstable, we are paying close attention to what is happening in individual districts and we are relying on both the individual educators and associations to tell us what’s going on, and if there are problems.

We had one instance with a district in southern New Jersey where the district said they were not going to teach the arts at all. Well, in New Jersey you can’t to that. You’re not allowed to do that. As soon as we were made aware of it, we intervened with the Department of Education and they intervened with that district.

We found a problem coming from a county health department down in Burlington County where they said, ‘you’re not allowed to play instruments and you’re not allowed to sing’ and they told that to all the high schools. All of a sudden, the schools are asking, ‘wait a second, where is this coming from?’ When we received that information, we were able to confirm it in writing and then went to the appropriate au-

thorities in Trenton so that they could intervene and then that county rescinded those recommendations. It’s a little bit of a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ right now, where you never know where the next issue is going to pop up, but we need to know when it does pop up so that we can engage the appropriate organizations and authorities to be able to address it. I don’t see that changing. As we get into the beginning of the year, once everyone knows how they are coming back, and again it changes every day, then things should settle down. Then we will be working to support folks that are in hybrid learning with questions on ‘how do I do this effectively?’ We will be working with the associations on what are good strategies and techniques, largely which are worked out in the September Ready report. Or, if we are remote, what do we do. We are also on the lookout for things that will undermine the integrity for the ability to deliver sequential arts learning that meets the standards for our students.

DA: You mentioned SEL in your answer and we know that the updated NJ Student Learning Standards were just recently (finally) approved and that there are accompanying SEL standards with a well-designed ‘crosswalk’ for our teachers and administrators. How can our colleagues use these new standards and SEL crosswalk to promote advocacy for music?

BM: Well, there is one especially important thing and that is, over the next twelve months everyone is going to have to revise their current curriculum. In that district curriculum revision project to come into alignment with the new Arts Education standards, it should be done through the lens of the SEL framework that we’ve established so that you can embed the SEL elements into the curriculum when the revision is being written so you don’t have to go back and retrofit it.

So, when your district decides to update and revise, ask to be on the writing team. Make sure you volunteer and make sure that they are using the new SEL framework as the lens to embed the SEL into the new arts education curriculum. That will effect how you write your lessons and how you infuse them into your instructional units you use in the school. This is important because SEL is going to be the priority for our educators and our administrators. It was an emerging priority before the pandemic and once the pandemic hit it was like someone strapped booster rockets onto SEL and now it is the priority for everyone. Because of the unique role that music and the arts have in activating SEL within our students it’s imperative that we document that within our curriculum and that we educate our administrators to that.

Over the next twelve months we have a very unique and powerful opportunity to, through the curriculum revision process, intentionally embed SEL into the curriculum rewrites. It’s an incredibly important time and opportunity for us to seize the power that music and the arts have in activating SEL in our students, and that will position us well for how our programs develop over the next several years.

DA: This has been another enlightening session with you Bob! Is there anything that I didn’t ask or bring up that you thought I would, and if so, would you like to at this time?

BM: The one thing I would say is that everyone’s situation is going to be different. We put out guidance and we put out recommendations for how to conduct programs in a way to reduce risk. But it’s not ‘everyone do it the exact same way’ because everyone’s circumstances are different. The question is ‘how do I create an environment where it will work?’ That’s the effort behind the guidance. If I can’t make it work here, can I do it someplace else? Can I get tents? Is there another space? But don’t sit in your room and say ‘I can’t do it’ and throw up your hands. This was designed to help lead you through a process that would allow you to identify the proper conditions for you to provide instruction for your students and program. The guidance is very solid, but we need to look at it through the lens of our own circumstances. Our job right now is ‘how do we make it work in a way that reduces risk?’ and that needs to be the priority.

I will tell you this, if our kids are in school, then the arts should be in school, with the proper mitigation strategies. Lastly, when our kids are in school, and music is in school, and we see our students, we need to create. They need to be able to make music together, because it’s the one thing we can’t do remotely. We’ve learned a lot of things we can do well remotely, but we learned that remotely we cannot play together, and we cannot sing together. So, when we are together, we need to do those things, and focus on the things we can do remotely for another time.