GOSHEN — With a little help from their conductor and a lot of collaboration, more than 150 school leaders, community members and music teachers took the stage Monday to learn about a musical method called “El Sistema” that might soon be spreading across the county.
The group met at Goshen College’s music center Monday for an all-day “Music for Social Change” workshop featuring musical method “El Sistema.” The workshop was organized by Horizon Education Alliance and several partners including Conn-Selmer Inc., Elkhart Community Schools and Goshen College.
El Sistema is a music education program developed in Venezuela by José Antonio Abreu and is geared toward providing music instruction to students from low-income or under-served communities.
Variations of the El Sistema program have been formed across the country and in countries throughout the world based on the success of the Venezuelan model.
Karen Zorn, president of the Longy School of Music of Bard College, in Massachusetts, gave the keynote speech Monday and invited Elkhart County leaders to consider how a program like El Sistema might benefit students.
“What we know is students here in Elkhart County are just as talented as those across the country. They just need the opportunity and that’s indeed what you are giving to them with this (program),” Zorn said.
The program has already been implemented at one Elkhart County school.
El Sistema was introduced in the fall of 2014 at Elkhart Community Schools’ new Roosevelt STEAM Academy. All third-graders are learning to play musical instruments using the musical method, with plans to add more grade levels of students in the coming years.
Although the county’s school corporations have strong music programs, only a small percentage of the total student body participates in band, choir or orchestra, Horizon Education Alliance Executive Director Brian Wiebe said.
“Seven school systems here. Seven strong programs,” Wiebe said. “But one thing that I think we would say in these strong programs is that it’s still a subset of people who play.”
Elementary students might attend music classes once or twice a week and several times more in middle and high school if they continue on that path, but that only accounts for about 20 percent of the student body, Wiebe added.
“That’s one distinguishing feature of El Sistema in Venezula or in Colombia or in Chile, or in the programs here in the U.S., it’s lots of children. Much higher percentage. You can have the whole community playing,” he said.
And studies have shown that children and teens who are involved in the arts or play a musical instrument are also better students, and, as a result, better citizens, Zorn said.
“Children who learn music in childhood have thicker corpus callosum, the sort of super highway of your brain which means that the two hemispheres tend to have more connections and speak a little more effectively,” she said. “... and if you look at the data, students who have a significant amount of music in school have a significantly higher graduation rate.”
Local education leaders spent Monday afternoon learning more about the El Sistema method and discussing ways that it might benefit Elkhart County students.
On Tuesday, community members and program participants are invited to visit Roosevelt STEAM Academy to see the program in action.
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