Using Creativity to Enhance Afterschool Music Opportunities

Music educators, at all levels, are known for being creative. Many are also renowned for their teaching ability, their public speaking confidence, their time management skills and, of course, their musical talents. However, it is their creativity that supports everything, creativity that helps them approach their concert programming, rehearsal techniques and the place music has in their school with the flexibility required.

That same creative approach to education can be used to support a wide variety of afterschool music opportunities. Those activities can be focused on providing additional outlets for students already involved in other school music courses, but they also can be a way to involve students who have not previously shown any interest in participating in music classes. For those students, the typical afterschool jazz ensemble or marching band isn’t for them.

If your current band or wind ensemble features standard instrumentation, offering Modern Band after school would be a great way to combine some of your current musicians with those who play (or want to learn to play) non-traditional instruments. Guitars, electric basses, world percussion, piano or other keyboards, acoustic string instruments (banjo, mandolin, cello, violin, etc.) can all be added to woodwind and brass players to perform a wide variety of music. Even vocalists can be added – to carry the melody with lyrics or to serve as a part of the harmony or percussive effects.

There is a growing collection of composers who write for such non-standard combinations. Those compositions or arrangements are often flexible enough that just about any combination will have what is needed to carry the necessary melody, harmony and rhythm. And while most of these are either new compositions or arrangements of popular music, a creative music educator can find ways to include those instruments into the standard arrangements of many classic band compositions. The sound of a Holst Suite with guitars, synthesizer and strings is amazing.

Small vocal ensembles can be used to entice students who aren’t interested in the choral offerings to share their musical talents. The traditional barbershop or sweet Adelines quartets (doubling or tripling the parts) will expose your vocalists to new repertoire and tighter harmonies as well as improve their ability to perform unaccompanied. Both are small and simple enough to be able to perform in smaller venues for smaller audiences, allowing your music program to be represented at nursing homes, senior citizen centers, holiday programs in shops or offices, and church or civic events. Both have adult organizations that can help with music, lessons and performance opportunities. And a creative music educator can find ways to add a wide variety of instruments to those groups to enhance the performance. That enhancement could include anything from a solo melodic instrument like a flute, oboe or violin to a whole rhythm section with guitar, bass and drums.

Not every musical offering has to have a performance outcome nor last an entire semester or school year. You can offer shorter music experiences where the students get to explore music as a listener, evaluator and fan, and not necessarily as a performer. Offering students the opportunity to learn more about a genre of music that interests them can be done in sessions that occur once a week for a month or two. Learning about and listening to their favorite music will appeal to a different segment of the student body, one that, once they get exposed to what the music program can offer, might consider joining in a more tangible way. Learning about the history of Jazz or Rock N’ Roll or Heavy Metal music could be just what that kid that always hangs out with other band or chorus students needs to take the next step and become a performer.

Providing a musical exploration of other cultures can also encourage new students to become participating students. With some creativity (and a good local hardware store), a wide variety of instruments can be made by students. World drumming with various pails and buckets with hands, dowels or drumsticks can provide students with exposure to music from a wide variety of countries, histories and cultures. PVC pipe fittings, some glue and melted wax can be used to build didgeridoos of different pitches all while teaching about wavelengths and frequencies. Rope, flower pots and kitchen utensils will provide the materials needed to build a Gamelan drum section, ready for rehearsal and performance.

In addition to learning how to play and perform these instruments, the activity can include studying their cultural history and having the students build their own. Their creativity can come to the forefront by enhancing or designing their own instruments using similar (or totally different) methods. And they could also compose their own music for any instruments they build and learn to play, once again with the possible incorporation of established band instruments, non-standard instruments or vocals.

The unfortunate part of providing any of these offerings is that it adds more to the music educator’s day, likely a day that already includes more commitment than just the school schedule indicates. Most of these offerings also put an additional demand on an already strained music budget. But the benefits outweigh those challenges for three primary reasons and lots of smaller ones. Your core music offerings will benefit when some of those previously uninterested students start signing up for your courses. Your current music students will gain confidence and improve their skills from their participation. And your reach into your two communities, your school and the households that support it, will be deeper and involve a broader base of parents, business owners and civic leaders – benefits that will serve you and your program well now and in the future.

Steffen Parker is a retired music educator, event organizer, maple sugar maker, and Information Technology specialist from Vermont who serves as the Performing Arts/Technology representative on the NFHS High School Today Publications Committee. He received the NFHS Citation Award in 2017 and the Ellen McCulloch- Lovell Award in Arts Education in 2021.