Ravinia 2021 - Issue 4

RA9INIA 3A7RIC. GI3S2N Snap this QR code to join the Ravinia Associates and the Music Matters guests in supporting Reach Teach Play. Any $100–$500 gifts will be generously matched by The Negaunee Foundation. “So, a lot of our kids at Irving don’t necessarily live in the neighborhood,” she said. “We get students from all over the city, some from typically low-in- come areas. We get a really different kind of blend; they come from all over. It’s kind of like a best-kept secret on the West Side of Chicago.” Lewis, she said, immediately picked up on Irving’s distinctive vibe. “He understood the assignment right away,” she said. “He understood the climate, the culture of the school. “ We would have about an hour,” said Smith-Vanduan, describing Lewis’s weekly visits. “He’d start out with a ‘hel- lo’ song, then some kind of movement. The kids would just be jumping and dancing; they would follow his every move. I mean, every move . They would get into some of the deeper concepts of music [like rhythm and harmony] even without the kids really knowing how deep this stuff was. They were just enjoying and loving it. We would sing Stevie Wonder, Louis Armstrong, [Peter Ilyich] Tchaikovsky. They were being filled with Mo\ Ȉ As so often happens with arts pro- grams, the music classes helped some students blossom. “You would see kids who weren’t necessarily vocal,” said Smith-Van- duan, “these kids would come alive. They would be singing and talking and dancing—kids who really didn’t think they were doing well in certain areas. “Music is powerful,” she contin- ued. “Music teaches so many things. It teaches cooperation, problem solving, fine Potor skills <ou have kids who might not have been able to show leadership in other ways—the kid who is shy but is maybe a vocalist. When other kids discover that, that kid be- comes a rock star, right? “It teaches them so many [long-last- ing skills]—self-discipline, stress management. Music is something that should be at the baseline for education. I watch kids who don’t connect with any other area, kids who have trouble. Some of the toughest kids in my school come and play the marimba and the xylophone, and they rock it. That’s where they come to get themselves together.” The Music Discovery Program typically sends artists into schools for weekl\ visits the first \ear visits the second \ear and five the third said Madelyn Tan-Cohen, associate direc- tor of the Reach Teach Play programs. The aim is to help the school’s primary grade teachers learn how to integrate music into their regular classroom lessons. That idea launched Smith-Van- duan on an entirely new career path. Born and raised in Dallas, she comes from a family of singers. She attended a magnet high school of performing and visual arts and won a music scholarship to Clark Atlanta University in Georgia. But she didn’t pursue music as a career. Not until she moved to Chicago with her husband in 1997 and started volunteering at Irving did she think about becoming a class- room teacher. Encountering Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play programs at Irving prompted her to take a deeper plunge and EecoPe a certified Pusic teacher “I learned so much from Matt Lewis,” she said. “It kind of ignited the spark, about music and the power of music. I studied his classes.” Knowing Smith-Vanduan’s music background, successive principals at Irving asked her to become the school’s music teacher. She had enough aca- dePic credits to Peet C3S certification requirements, and the Reach Teach Play staff also encouraged her. But the prospect was “scary,” she said, and she repeatedly declined. But one day in 2019, a group of her former third-grad- ers, now in seventh and eighth grades, staged a kind of intervention. “I have a couch in my room,” she said, “they all [piled onto] my couch, and the\ȅre sittinJ on the ɷoor 7he\ said, ‘Why can’t you teach us any- more? The last time we had fun in school was in your class. We don’t have fun in school anymore.’ ” An hour later Irving’s newest principal asked her to become the school’s music teacher. This time, she agreed. Given the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown and subsequent shift to teaching via Zoom, last year was daunting even for veteran teachers. Amid the worldwide protests following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, Smith-Vanduan once again found support from Ravinia. “Before COVID, we were two weeks away from having our very first PusicalȂ Aladdin ,” she said. “My kids were severely disappointed. It was heartbreaking. And after George Floyd, oh my God. I was feeling very lost. My students were feeling really, really, really lost. I was looking for a way to connect to them about what was going on. We were going through different protest songs, things that mu- sical artists had done to express what they had felt during tumultuous times. I called Madelyn. I asked Matt to sit in on one of my classes. We were crying. My kids were crying. It was cathartic, and it helped the kids understand the power of music—how music can heal, how music can help you relate, how it can help you express and get some things off your chest. “It was a pinnacle moment with me and the Reach Teach Play program,” she said. “It showed me why music needs to be present in kids’ lives.” Wynne Delacoma was classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1991 to 2006 and has been an adjunct journalism faculty member at Northwestern University. She is a freelance music critic, writer, and lecturer. Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play programs support classrooms like Heather Smith-Vanduan’s, engage young students with musical activities (above), connect student musicians with artists who headline Ravinia’s stages, like conductor Jonathan Rush (top left) and Yo-Yo Ma (bottom left), provide access to live music experiences, and uplift Chicago communities in many more ways. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER 7 – SEPTEMBER 24, 2021 26