SHOW TOPIC
Performing Arts at SV: Proud of the Past, Excited to Move Forward with Mr. Varden Armstrong
SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Varden Armstrong, Performing Arts Coordinator and Secondary Instrumental Music Teacher
Varden Armstrong is in his 24th year of teaching. He is a band director in the intermediate and senior high school buildings and works with students in five instrumental ensembles. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Armstrong is also the Performing Arts Coordinator for the Seneca Valley School District. He is responsible for coordinating budgets, calendars, equipment and scheduling all performing arts programs. This includes band, chorus, orchestra, dance, theatre and video production in grades 4-12, across seven buildings.
Mr. Armstrong, an SV alumnus, received his Undergraduate Degree in Music Education from the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University and has continued his education at Duquesne University studying conducting, music administration, and music technology.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW:
SHOW TOPIC
Performing Arts at SV: Proud of the Past, Excited to Move Forward with Mr. Varden Armstrong
SPECIAL GUEST
Mr. Varden Armstrong, Performing Arts Coordinator and Secondary Instrumental Music Teacher
Varden Armstrong is in his 24th year of teaching. He is a band director in the intermediate and senior high school buildings and works with students in five instrumental ensembles. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Mr. Armstrong is also the Performing Arts Coordinator for the Seneca Valley School District. He is responsible for coordinating budgets, calendars, equipment and scheduling all performing arts programs. This includes band, chorus, orchestra, dance, theatre and video production in grades 4-12, across seven buildings.
Mr. Armstrong, an SV alumnus, received his Undergraduate Degree in Music Education from the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University and has continued his education at Duquesne University studying conducting, music administration, and music technology.
IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW:
FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
File Name: Voices E33 Varden Armstrong.mp3
File Length: 00:11:18
00:00:02:23 - 00:00:07:25
Intro: Welcome to Voices, a podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.
00:00:10:24 - 00:00:22:19
Jeff Krakoff: Today, I'm with Varden Armstrong, who's a music teacher at the high school at Seneca Valley, but also you're the performing arts coordinator. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
00:00:23:02 - 00:00:23:29
Varden Armstrong: Thanks so much for having me.
00:00:24:08 - 00:00:29:11
Jeff Krakoff: So performing arts coordinator, tell me what all falls under your umbrella there?
00:00:30:01 - 00:01:01:15
Varden Armstrong: Well, it's a it's a little bit of a newer position. This is my fourth year doing it. And we have a lot of buildings in our district. And performing arts is something that kind of spans multiple buildings. So even though we have a lot of things that are that are dealt with on a building level by principals and by teachers in those buildings, certain programs and the performing arts is one of them, spans across the district. So it's important to have kind of a predictable liaison with administration and to have kind of a a broad view of all those programs spanning the district.
00:01:01:17 - 00:01:03:15
Varden Armstrong: So that's kind of where my position came into being.
00:01:03:28 - 00:01:13:05
Jeff Krakoff: So you must be busy. I know, under the category of performing arts, there's a whole lot there. Walk me through the content areas. What's available for students?
00:01:13:20 - 00:01:49:29
Varden Armstrong: Well, we traditionally kind of started thinking of performing arts at Seneca Valley as band, choir, orchestra and dance. Of course, band is woodwind and brass and percussion and choir is our vocal department orchestra is strings. And many people don't even know that we have a dance program, Seneca Valley, and we have a whole dance studio in our middle school building, our seven, eight building. And of course, I say it's there, but it's it's a seventh through twelfth grade program. And we have hired dancers that that are our instructors, professional dancers, and the students are able to participate in the dance program right during the school day here at Seneca Valley.
00:01:50:04 - 00:02:08:01
Varden Armstrong: So that falls under the umbrella. And then this year, we're adding something new in our program of studies. We've now incorporated a theater and video strand within the performing arts. And maybe if later we're talking a bit more about the future plans that fits in this theater. And video strand is something new to us. So a lot of things fall under the umbrella.
00:02:08:14 - 00:02:22:13
Jeff Krakoff: OK, so you mentioned the studio. I know a big part of performing arts are facilities and people getting together and practicing and performing, but now we're in the world of COVID-19. How's that affected your programs?
00:02:22:26 - 00:02:48:22
Varden Armstrong: Well, it's funny that you mentioned it that way because that's exactly what's affected us. You know, students are involved in performing arts because they like the family atmosphere. They like coming together and they like performing. Well, both of those things have pretty much been taken away because of COVID. And so we've had to really pivot. You know, I got kind of got tired of hearing that word, pivot, pivot, pivot. But we've had to pivot to to do other things to keep our students interested and to really help them enjoy the arts.
00:02:49:06 - 00:03:05:12
Jeff Krakoff: OK, well, I know that where there's challenges, there's also opportunities usually in life. So so in the world of COVID, let me ask some questions. I know there's a few things you're doing specifically to respond. You've got a virtual jazz ensemble project. What's that all about?
00:03:05:20 - 00:03:53:11
Varden Armstrong: Yeah, we completed that right around the first of the year and we had taken one of our jazz ensembles. We have two of them that are curricular here, and we had taken one of them and trying to really explain to the students what it's like to be in a studio environment. And we recorded individual parts remotely and then we assembled all those parts into a virtual ensemble. And so the the students learned a lot about what it's like to be a producer and how you make decisions about balance and what should be more important in the mix. We used software to learn how to do that, and then ultimately I put it together with some video as well, so that we had one of those kind of traditional YouTube things where we have little videos all across the screen of all the students playing together at the same time, that was really beneficial, something we never would have tackled without having to be kind of forced to do.music-based It's a great thing.
00:03:53:21 - 00:04:04:25
Jeff Krakoff: So you're exploring new technologies to make things work, kind of walk us through what technologies you're using and how you're you're making your programs more accessible.
00:04:05:12 - 00:04:38:20
Varden Armstrong: Well, for all of our programs, you know, music based for band, choir and orchestra, we all have used some free software called Audacity. And we've used district laptops to allow the students to record themselves as part of an assessment, but also a lot of them. We've done a lot of our departments we've worked with trying to do like self-defense or performing in small groups together by using that recording technology and then assembling those parts in an audio format. So the students have all been exposed to some technology in a different way in the music department.
00:04:38:22 - 00:04:45:14
Varden Armstrong: And I think this is technology that we're actually going to be able to use as we approach something closer to being normal. I think it's going to be incorporated long-term.
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Jeff Krakoff: Right.
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Jeff Krakoff: You mentioned duets. How are you seeing students and you and other mentors and teachers connecting with each other?
00:04:55:14 - 00:05:32:00
Varden Armstrong: Well, it's through the TEAMS software that the school district utilizes. We've had a it's it's very challenging. Of course, it's challenging for students to be comfortable in that environment musically, to put students in either a small group. On a virtual meeting or in one on one virtual meeting or having them do dance class, virtually, it's hard to be comfortable. So I think the teacher has to go out of their way to promote that comfortability. And through that, I think we actually develop some better connections sometimes because we've got to engage with our students very directly, one on one in the small small group or small classroom environment.
00:05:32:08 - 00:05:42:04
Varden Armstrong: And that in some ways has been extremely beneficial. I know some of our middle school teachers feel like they were able to connect with some students differently and and better than maybe in the past.
00:05:42:06 - 00:05:50:24
Jeff Krakoff: That's interesting. Are there any other silver linings? Are there other things that you've been able to explore because of the pandemic that normally you may not have?
00:05:51:09 - 00:06:23:14
Varden Armstrong: Well, I think as far as performing arts teachers, we're a little bit guilty of always driving towards the performance and we don't want anything to get in the way of preparing for the performance. And so it's hard for us to sometimes pull back and explore some other things in our class from things like music history and things like music theory within our performing arts groups. And the virtual learning has provided that opportunity. And in many ways, we've been able to explore some things that we maybe would not have forced ourselves to explore before. And I think that's also been another little bit of a silver lining to I think we've had some fun doing that.
00:06:23:22 - 00:06:31:01
Jeff Krakoff: Right. So you're probably in the midst of planning for the coming school year, right. What are some of the plans?
00:06:32:12 - 00:07:08:02
Varden Armstrong: Well, one of the things that we've done unique, I think, to Seneca Valley and unique to our performing arts department is we're we're very cognizant of making sure the students stay connected to what we do. And so if a student this year or next year decides that they're not going to be with us in a full in-person environment, let's say that something else is going on that maybe we're not privy to. But they decided that they're not going to be doing in-school instruction. We've developed these new classes called appreciation classes. So we have a it's a little bit of an odd title, but it's called Band Appreciation, Choir Appreciation, Orchestra Appreciation and Dance Appreciation.
00:07:08:12 - 00:07:36:15
Varden Armstrong: And what those courses do is allows the student to be kind of auditing our class almost. It's a pass or fail class where they're able to participate and see what we're doing on a live stream. But they're not they don't have the same expectation or requirements as somebody who's in person but allows them to stay connected. They can still play our music. They can still do our routines. They can still have a connection with the instructor so that in such time they decide that they're able to come back in person. That connection has been maintained, which is really, really important for us.
00:07:37:13 - 00:07:41:06
Jeff Krakoff: Is that something that's brand new, has anything like this been done in the past?
00:07:41:08 - 00:07:54:15
Varden Armstrong: No, that's brand new and it was really a reaction to seeing how we could incorporate a cyber version of what we do, even though cyber isn't really a world of performing arts existed in very well because we have to be together to perform.
00:07:55:12 - 00:08:29:08
Varden Armstrong: So that's that's that's great. The other thing that we've we're looking at a little bit here is we're planning for next year is we're trying to do some things over the summer with some of our parent groups. You know, the school district has a lot of programs in place. They're developing to try to help with some assistance and get students back on track. And we're trying to just keep students involved as best we can. And so that's kind of fall into some parent groups this summer. And I think it's exciting to watch people, you know, help and pivot towards things and kind of pick up slack where they need to. I think that's been a thread that's run through all we've been doing lately.
00:08:29:10 - 00:08:29:25
Varden Armstrong: That's great.
00:08:30:02 - 00:08:40:17
Jeff Krakoff: OK, so I know Seneca Valley tends to be very forward-thinking district. What about beyond this coming school year next year? What are some of the big ideas and big plans?
00:08:41:18 - 00:09:13:13
Varden Armstrong: Well, I think from a performing arts perspective, we just really want to continue having this feeling of allowing students to have a place they call home. And the performing arts is really a great place to do that. There's a lot of programs in Seneca Valley. I don't want to make it sound like our programs are the best, but we have we have circumstances in which there's a lot of family being developed in what we do. And so we want to continue to to grow that. One of the things we're doing is adding, like I mentioned before, we're adding this theater and video thread into what we do as performing arts.
00:09:14:00 - 00:09:15:05
Varden Armstrong: We've learned through COVID that.
00:09:17:05 - 00:09:19:17
Varden Armstrong: Utilizing technology, utilizing media,
00:09:21:05 - 00:09:49:15
Varden Armstrong: all the stuff that we see in our world with social media and YouTube and the like. We've got to make sure that we're fresh. And so I think that we're looking at those things, incorporating theater and video into our performing arts umbrella. Just really want I know it may sound a little bit overly optimistic, but with all that we offer and all that fits under performing arts, why wouldn't we have a goal of trying to get every student at Seneca Valley in the arts in one way or another? There's there's got to be a place for everybody there. And I think the arts are just so important.
00:09:49:23 - 00:09:59:18
Jeff Krakoff: It is. OK, well, last question. With that said, if I'm a student, if I'm a parent and I want to learn more how to become involved, where do I go?
00:10:00:09 - 00:10:32:09
Varden Armstrong: Well, you know, if you've never been in any of our programs before, we want to make sure we have the opportunity to discuss it with you because there may be an option for you that you're not even aware of. And so if you're excited about that or you're interested, certainly can see your guidance counselor, you could even contact your principal and your principal would direct you in the right way. Sooner or later, you're going to wind up talking to me probably about trying to get involved with some things and I'd be glad to help you with that. Also, if you've been in some of the arts programs before, but COVID know, kind of pushed you out of that a little bit or decided not to do it this year, we have an open-door policy.
00:10:32:11 - 00:11:00:04
Varden Armstrong: We would love to welcome students back and discuss how they can be a part of what we do now. I think more than ever, if you if you ask somebody what the students need, you know, they need things like socialization and creativity and language, communication skills and self-confidence and discipline. And we can go through all those little buzzwords. And I feel really strongly that the performing arts handles all of that. It gives kids a real sense of belonging and a sense of pride. And I think that's what our world needs in many ways.
00:11:00:12 - 00:11:09:00
Jeff Krakoff: Yeah. So you provide a lot of opportunities and a lot of different ways. So thanks so much for joining us. That's Varden Armstrong, you have a great day.
00:11:09:15 - 00:11:10:13
Varden Armstrong: You too. Thank you so much.