EDUCATION COLLABORATIONS

In 2003, I held a focus group with Chicago Public Schools Jazz Band directors who identified areas that could improve their students’ outcomes. We formed a Teachers Advisory Council and together created programs to address those needs. Jazz Links’ mission enlarged when I realized there was little internal support for the teachers themselves, so we collaborated in creating professional development programs for them. Realizing that they also needed a place to practice what they teach, we created Noteworthy, a big band comprised of Chicago Public Schools Jazz Band Directors, the first of its kind in the nation.

The camp was created with the Teachers Advisory Council to provide high-level professional development for Jazz educators in Chicago. It featured five days of innovative, hands-on sessions led by professional jazz musicians both local and from across the country along with expert clinicians in the field of music education. The camp grew to serve adults and students 18 and up, and provided musicians of all levels, educators and music lovers with opportunities to connect to their peers and expand their understanding of the music.

This 1-day annual professional development day was conceived of and led by Chicago Public Schools Jazz Band directors in an effort to create peer-to-peer engagement and to introduce basic jazz pedagogy to non-jazz music teachers. Chicago Public Schools offered a limited range of general professional development programs for educators but few of them addressed the arts. Jazzin’ Up was unique in allowing educators to assert their leadership in their field and drew upon their lived experiences in teaching music in under-resourced environments.

Initially, I gathered Chicago’s top jazz artists together to create a curriculum that they could use as a template in a broad range of classrooms to enhance what music teachers were already presenting. Over time this evolved to introduce specific jazz genres that included Latin Rhythms, Jazz Vocals, Big Band, Graphic Notation and other styles within the genre of jazz. We also developed a Teacher Training Program for these residencies so the classroom instructors could continue the program after the residencies concluded.

The Jazz Band directors felt that their students would benefit from playing outside of school in a supportive semi-professional environment. The Jazz Links Jam Sessions were the first public jam sessions anywhere that welcomed elementary and high school students, giving young students a chance to test their improvisation skills in front of an audience and to meet and play with their peers from across the city.

I reached out to CPS to reinstate the dormant jazz band contest because the teachers said it helped attract and keep students in their band programs. Partnering with CPS, we rebuilt the annual competition to include inviting top national artists to give keynotes, workshops with adjudicators, and awarding the winning ensembles a chance to perform at the Chicago Jazz Festival.

The JLSC originated as a focus group to get input from students about what they would be interested in learning, which included composing and performing. We developed a format that included cultivating leadership skills both at the table and as leaders of small ensembles that performed at citywide Jazz Institute programs including JazzCity, the Chicago Jazz Festival and Made in Chicago series at Millennium Park. Those leadership skills and high visibility performance opportunities launched many of them into professional careers.

I collaborated with Chicago Jazz Philharmonic staff to create 6-8 week programs that addressed specific subjects as a way to expand our Jazz Alive education program into schools that couldn’t afford longer programs or didn’t have room in their schedules. Subjects included Music and Social Justice, Music and Culture, The Five Elements of Music, Creative Production: Self-Expression in Digital Music and Spontaneous Composition: The Art of Improvisation.