Helping Young People Find Their Voice

In this episode of Behind the Story, Jelani Gonzalez sits down with Dale Novella Anderson Lee, a singer, songwriter, music producer, educator, and leader in teaching artistry.

Dale shares how music became a source of healing in her own life and how that calling eventually led her into classrooms, workshops, and community spaces where young people learn to trust their voices. Through her work with Community-Word Project and the Teaching Artist Project, Dale helps artists and students use music, poetry, movement, storytelling, and visual art as tools for expression, confidence, and connection.

This conversation explores what it really means to help young people feel seen, how art can create safety in under-resourced communities, why teaching artists need emotional grounding, and the responsibility that comes with shaping the next generation.

At the heart of the episode is a simple but powerful message: every young person has a voice, and that voice matters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Our main goal for our students is for them to have confidence to speak their minds. And that is our main goal. We do that through art programming. But we want them to believe that their voice matters. And we actually have a chant that we do with most of our workshops that's uh at the end of our workshop to close out the space that says, I have a voice, my voice is powerful, my voice can change the world. And we try not to dictate what that means for each and every one of our students. We don't try to make them little versions of ourselves, but we want them to know that they can speak their mind if that's through a poem, if that's through a painting, if that's through a song, whether they're singing or they're making a beat or learning an instrument, that they're the what they have to contribute to the world, what they feel like they should contribute to the world is valuable. Well, my name, my full name is Dale Novella Anderson Lee. I like to joke that you have to address me as the full name every time you say every time uh we speak. But Dale Novella or Dale is fine. I am a singer, songwriter, music producer, and educator in New York City. Uh and I've been I've been a performer here in the city for 14 years. I started teaching about 10 years ago. Um, and then four years ago, I became the director or a co-director, and now I'm the director of Teaching Artists Project. And we train artists how to incorporate social justice and social emotional learning into their arts curriculums. That's like, of course, all of this is very new, but I kind of got here from just a lifetime of loving singing and loving the arts, and knowing that I wanted to use music to help people and bring people together. Um, because that's what music was always for me. It was like a best friend. It was like something when I was sad, when I was any emotion, there is a song for every emotion that you could possibly have. And I knew I wanted to bring those same emotions out to anyone that I met, anyone in the audience. I wanted to show people how they can create it themselves for themselves. Um, and yeah, I've just been looking for more and more opportunities to do that. I hope that answered your question.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah. Um, I suppose my follow-up is when you strip away the the job titles, the director titles, and all the accolades that you just mentioned, how how would you describe who Dale, Anderson, Lee Nalella, if I got that right, is today?

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Oh man, I would describe myself as someone who uses music to bring people together and to heal. Um, and I I try to invite people into that journey with me as I'm like healing myself, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Was there a specific moment inside or outside the classroom when you realize that um like language, storytelling, or poetry would literally change someone's life?

SPEAKER_02 2:41

You know, I think every few years I have another moment where I realize how much these things really affect people. Of course, I knew it as a child. I could feel it, just you know, having a bad day at school or getting a fight with my siblings and putting on TLC or in vogue or, you know, like Tony Braxton, Mariah Carey. I felt like I was I was no longer alone. They understood what I was trying to say. I was like having a conversation with my friend, belting or any kind of singing, but I like to belt. I was released so many different emotions. So when I was a kid, I could really feel it because that's what I was experiencing. But as I've gone through my life, I'm a veteran of the uh United States Marine Corps reserves. And I've, you know, I have a lot of friends who have PTSD from their service. And I've met so many veterans that have used music and the arts, poetry and yoga to help them through this process. Like we're kind of taught when you're in the military, I think with anyone's military, you're taught to kind of like bury down your feelings and just get your job done, um, which can be detrimental. But uh, some people can only talk about the things that they've experienced through painting, through poetry. They can only get like the pain out of their body when they do yoga. Um, so I've, you know, every few years I have another moment where I'm like, these things have helped people. And like in when I'm in the classroom, you know, I have students that are, you know, they might be undocumented, they might be homeless, they might uh be impoverished and living in some of the poorest regions in the country. You know, I teach a lot in the Bronx, which I love the Bronx. I I hate that people just talk about it. Like, it's poor. It's like, oh yeah, that's where hip hop is from, and everyone's poor. It's like it's much more than that. It's very lively and the people are great. I think they're great. But there there's a lot of hardships, and the arts can bring it people together so they can reimagine what they can do with what they have.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

So would you say that this work is your calling?

SPEAKER_02 4:38

I think music in general is my calling. And it might, I think it manifests itself one way in teaching artistry and the work I do with youth and with adults. Because just like you, like we're always like changing and evolving. So the adults in my program many times are going through their own personal issues, and the program gives them like an anchor. So it's not just like a job change or job training for them. It's like something that's stable in their life when they could be going through a divorce or, you know, addiction or homelessness. So, yeah, just going back to like using music as a tool to heal and to bring people together, I think that's my calling. And I'm happy to do it as an educator or as a performer.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

How hard is it to stay rooted when it gets emotionally heavy for you? Because you mentioned dealing with children and people from different backgrounds where they could be impoverished, for example, or you mentioned undocumented. Um dealing and that would seem to me that it would be heavy emotionally because you're connecting with them, obviously. How how do you stay rooted and and and grounded as you you deal with that?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

It's really hard. Um, you really have to have your own practices set up so that you know. I mean, because you could be the one being triggered in a classroom, right? You could go into a classroom or any setting where you're sharing emotions and you could have a very extreme emotion to a story that you're healing, hearing. Um so knowing what calms you down, what grounds you so that you can address the situation. A lot of times it is just taking breaths with my students, making sure we're giving each other eye contact and listening to what they have to say. Or if they don't want to talk, like I usually have some kind of like healing tools in my classroom, like like oils and crystals and sprays and affirmation cards and things like that. And we go through usually with the teaching artist, you have like 13 and 13 to 15 weeks with a student. Like sometimes it's a full year, but usually it's in these little, it's like three months or so. And your first couple weeks, you try to set up all these rituals and all these like routines that you'll do throughout the 13 weeks together. And so my students usually know Miss Dale always has oils in the back of the class. I can take a moment, I can tell her that I'm going through some stuff and take a moment and just sit with the lavender oil. But it just depends on what class I'm in and who my students are. Uh specifically with students, with me, I know that I have to pay attention to my body and how I'm reacting and take a breath. And if I'm lucky enough to be in a situation where I have a co-facilitator, I can take a moment outside, maybe like just shake it out a bit and then go back to what I was doing. If I'm the one who's triggered, because you know, a 12-year-old boy has no filter and will tell you anything. And it's not always what you want to hear at 4 p.m. when you've taught four classes already. You're like, please sit down, please get out of my face.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

I understand that completely. Uh, my son just turned 13, and the brutal honesty is very, very beneficial. Uh anytime you start feeling yourself, if you've got a 12 or 13-year-old, they will they will center you back really quickly, I found. Yes. So I understand what you mean. You you mentioned keeping yourself centered and and be being you know conscious of your triggers. When you look back to your background, you mentioned being a former Marine. Thank you for your service, as I said there. Um, what part of your identity and your background do you find most helpful for you as you show up for young people?

SPEAKER_02 7:59

I think because I do work with a lot of black and brown youth, it is helpful that I'm black. It's helpful that I wear my hair natural and that maybe that I am a working artist and I say that I'm a working artist. And so I notice that a lot of times your students will assume if you are teaching an art form, you're not practicing the art form outside of the classroom. But knowing that I am an actual performer who gets paid to do these things and I'm a black woman. I'm also very short, five one. And I don't usually wear heels in the classroom. I wear flats because I'm running around all over the city. So I look like a middle school student when I'm walking around. Um, which also I think may give some people some kind of comfort because I don't seem very like authoritative, I guess, in my stature, which can be annoying. But yeah, I'm very proud of being an African-American woman. I'm very proud of being Southern. It's something I I feel like I empathize with my students who are multi-language learners who are like new to the country and they don't understand the language because where I grew up in South Carolina, the slang is so different from New York. Even now, after 14 years, sometimes I'm just like, I don't know what you're saying to me. So I understand. I also understand that it can be confusing because my accent, if I'm speaking, if I'm a teacher in the room and the other teacher is a native New Yorker, we're pronouncing words differently. You're trying to learn English. It's very confusing. It's like, how am I supposed to say it? So I and I understand that because I get point like New Yorkers will be like, what are you talking about? Like, that's not the way you pronounce that. And it'll be a whole thing. So it's a very small similarity, but I do understand a little bit, a little bit of that. But yeah. Um, I guess that one of the good things about being a transplant, transplants to New York get a lot of flack. We're not like the the most accommodating people, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Yeah, I I love New York. Well, you know, I was born and raised in the Caribbean, living most of my life in Europe, but I remember coming to New York City to go to university. So I went to university in New York where I and I called it where I came of age, and I would not trade it for anything. I that time I spent in New York City, I honestly believe prepared me for the world. And I I wouldn't I wouldn't trade it for anything. Um it's definitely my my favorite city in the US. So I'm I am obviously biased when it comes to New York City. So I'll I'll just say that. Let's let's talk a bit about the um the community word project. Let's let's let's talk about that and get into it from for a little bit. Um, if someone was thinking about the organization and and they just thought of it as just parts education, for example, what would you say they're missing at a fundamental level?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Community word project, our main goal for our students is for them to have confidence to speak their minds. That is our main goal. Whether that's we do that through arts programming, but we want them to believe that their voice matters. And we actually have a chant that we do with most of our workshops that's that at the end of our workshop to close out the space that says, I have a voice, my voice is powerful, my voice can change the world. And we try not to dictate what that means for each and every one of our students. We don't try to make them little versions of ourselves, but we want them to know that they can speak their mind if that's through a poem, if that's through a painting, if that's through a song, whether they're singing or they're making a beat or learning an instrument, that they're the what they have to contribute to the world, what they feel like they should contribute to the world is valuable. And that's what I think that's what makes us so special, because that is our that is actually our main goal.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Has was there ever a time when a student's words or their expression of whatever the art was surprised even you? And not because it was so polished or perfect or something like that, but more so because of what it revealed, the rawness or the unexpectedness of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

I don't know. I think I'm not as surprised by rawness, like I hope for it. Like I want to hear the rawness, and I think in New York, because that's that's kind of de facto, right? Like, like everyone's like, I'm real. Um and yeah, that's the way I said that sounded corny, but like they're not corny. But I think I'm more surprised when I have students that are are a little more conservative in their values and like stick to the status quo, especially when they're growing up in impoverished neighborhoods and under underrepresented neighborhoods, and just hearing their thought process around that. There's a lot of like interesting and uh heated debates about like resource officers and metal detectors in schools. And the amount of students that feel safe with cops and metal detectors in schools, I would say equals the amount that feel like it's unnecessary. And hearing their reasonings behind it and their feelings behind it, I think you yeah, I I just enjoy hearing their thought processes and what makes them feel safe.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Um Okay. What's the um what's what's possibly the hardest thing about working in an under-resourced community that people from the outside probably romanticize or oversimplify?

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Think thinking about it broadly, I think one thing that's really hard for a lot of teaching artists is, including me, I think, when I first started, is to remember that there are no bad children. There are youth that are responding to their environment and they're responding to the way they were raised. But they're not necessarily bad. They're still learning, they're still in development. And making sure you go into a classroom or going to wherever you're going to, a learning space, library, community center, a prison, that you are not addressing them as if they are bad or failures. If they are running around the class, it's probably because it's 5 p.m. and they haven't eaten and they're delirious. You know, it's if it's after school. Or they're just like really engaged. They actually really like the activity and they're just so hyped, knowing not falling back into the way we were taught to be good, knowing that everyone has a different way of learning. I think that that's been really difficult. I've had I've had bad experiences with like subs. Like I had to take off from a class and I got someone else to teach my class. And a sub told my student, two of my students, that they were the troublemakers, that I told them they were the troublemakers. And I was just so happy that I had CC'd the site director on each email that I had with this sub because they're there he knew I did not say that at all. And that these were students that like had been in my class for like three semesters and were choosing to be in my class and that I would never say that about them. Right. So I lucked out with that. But you meet a lot of you meet a lot of people who just like, this is what a good child is. This is what good behavior is. And if you're not acting like if you're not sitting there quietly, you're not a good child. And it's not realistic for most children. It's not realistic for most people. I don't even think adults can really do that.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

That that sort of sentiment can be damaging to a child, you know, hearing that sort of negative feedback depending on the mental state of the child. You don't know what state that child is in, and that sort of thing can stay with somebody for some time. It's a dangerous, you know. Not that I believe in coddling people, but you never know the mental state of a person if you don't know them. So you can't really decide or know what impact your words are going to have. So especially with children, I I think it's important that that people are careful. So hopefully those students are okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:16

Hopefully. I'm sure I've made mistakes. Every no one's perfect, but of course. It's definitely something that I try to remember.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Tell me about one of your workshops. Like, give me a high-level overview of what that looks like for a student.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

For uh for our youth, we try to examine like what age group we are working with and how we need to structure the class first. So how fast are we moving through each activity, basically? But you always start with an opening ritual, and then you have an intro activity that will like introduce the main activity of the day, and then you have some kind of closing ritual. And these will take different amounts of time depending on how long you have with those students and what age group they are. So if I'm with littles, what I call littles, the early elementary, uh, my class is gonna go a little faster. That main activity might feel like four or five different activities. But then we always have this exact same opening and closing ritual. So it's something that the students can look forward to and they know now this is Miss Dale's time, and now Miss Dale's time's it's over. She's gonna leave, but we are going to sing the goodbye song, we're singing the hello song, and then everything in between is like learning new songs, like experimenting with like how do our fingers work or something like that. And we try to make sure everything is built upon each other or scaffolded in a way that it feels seamless from workshop to workshop, but also throughout the lesson itself, right? So building on skills, if we're if we're learning choreography or if we're just trying to like get a whole bunch of songs in for some kind of performance at the end of the, at the end of the time together, what does that look like for them for that age group? Of course, with littles, you have to talk very fast and be very dynamic in the way you're talking. But high school, of course, is not like that. You want to be a little bit more of a straight shooter. You can spend a lot more time on the main activity and do more like small group work. They do, they like usually like a lot of pair shares where they can just like partner with their friend and like maybe trade bars or do a color a collaborative poem, something like that. And your opening and closing rituals can change. They can be in the same idea, but change every single week. For a while, I was they for some reason I kept getting like 8 a.m. classes, so first period, which is rough in in New York for high school students. They do not show up and they're like, I'm gonna have my bacon, egg, and cheese. So when they do get there, they're eating specifically a bacon, egg, and cheese. It's like the official breakfast of New York City. So with that, I try to do like a do-now, which could end up being like half of my class. As soon as I walk into and I'm getting ready, I put up a some kind of invitation, artistic invitation, and it stays there for like 20 minutes as everyone's kind of just like walking in and everyone can jump in, we do a reflection, and then we get into a main activity. So the activities might feel like I have less of them, but they can get, they can kind of sink their teeth into them a little bit more because we're spending more time on them and we have more intellectual conversations about what's going on with how they're processing it, how they're feeling it. And I like to have a lot of examples that are visual, even if we're making music, because I'm a visual learner and I'm influenced by a lot of visual arts and movies. My degree is in media art. So I that's it's just my jam. And for adults in Teaching Artist Project, we try to replicate that and like give them an experience where they are being students, but then also give them the tools to replicate what we're doing, what we're modeling. So we name things. We also spend several weeks going through things like what is who are your artistic ancestors? Like what are the forces and crafts that influence your work, or we call them creative elements and how are we going to interact with each other? So we go through like an accountability, we create accountability practices, we create community practices so that we just know how we're going to be in space together. And we, I mean, all of the teaching artists for community word project take that kind of air into our classes and we do try to get to know our students. We do talk to them about who are their influences, like what do you listen to in your home? And like, of course, for littles, you have to explain that a little bit differently. It's like, what is mommy like to listen to? Or what what is what music do you hear in your house? And if you don't hear music, like what sounds? But then with a high school student or a middle school student, you can say, like, we're gonna do a playlist of your life or a playlist of your week and try to like name 10 songs that describe how your week went, you know? And this we can see who's influencing them and we can incorporate that into our curriculums, right? And we can say, I have a student who likes Osuna. I don't speak Spanish, I don't listen to reggaeton, but I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna bring an Osuna song and maybe like maybe the other students will really get into it. And we can compare it to one of these skills that I'd like to teach. And I'll figure it out. If I if if I have whenever me or a co-teacher bring in something from a language we don't speak, we try to find a native speaker to translate it. But if we can't, then Google Translate is our friend. I've had conversations with my students in classes using Google Translate, and I try to learn little phrases in whatever languages in the class so that they know like you're not the only, I don't think you're an idiot and that you should just be spending your whole life trying to learn English. I we can trade. I will learn and you will learn and we'll figure it out. So yeah, I uh we have our four like big buckets in each workshop, and we try to tailor it to what our students need and what we want our overall goals to be.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

I I've got a question about the process. You mentioned opening ritual and and closing rituals. What's an example of an opening ritual and a closing ritual in the workshop?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

A good example, like if I'm in a singing class or a music class, a lot of times it is like body and voice warmups, or I've co-taught with theater artists as well. So it we always start with like a body day warm-up, tongue twisters, maybe even scales, massaging your face. And I have the same like five exercises that I do, and just depending on the age group, is how I change how I'm introducing these activities to the students. Closing ritual, you want something that's going to just seal off the space and let everyone know that it's over for the day. So that might be a callback to what you did at the beginning. If like I've taught poetry and music classes where we always started with a short uh poetry prompt, very like Instagram friendly. You just write your poem like a haiku on a sticky note and then you put it on the board. And then maybe at the end we have like a closing sticky note, or you collect your sticky note and you make like a community poem with like a couple friends. So y'all have now have like four stanzas of one poem, and that's how you close out. Or it could just be that chant that we talked about before. I have a voice. My voice is powerful, my voice can change the world, but you always know this is what we're gonna do at the end. Um yeah, and it really there's so many things, so many different ways you can open and close a space. Um, opening. The space. I like to think of it as like you're you're think of something that will settle you in or settle your students in, or yeah. I've taught like maker classes, which is kind of like Steam, or they used to call it Steam, where it's like the meeting of science and art. And so, like, just to make sure my students were using their imagination, I would do visualizations for the first five minutes of class. And like that visualization would lead into whatever we were planning on making that day. Whether it's like if you could devise a machine that fixed a problem in your community, you know, we would think about like, what are the machines you already know of, or what uh think of a time you solved a problem that you didn't think you could solve, or something like that. Or it could just be a calming visualization. Whereas with that class, we almost always with my maker classes, we almost always went over time. So I just started doing really simple closes, whereas like, um, thank your neighbor for helping you. Cause I encourage them. Like, if you are having trouble with your your robot or your lightsaber or whatever we were making that day, Miss Dale is not the first person you ask a question to. You ask your neighbor. You ask the person behind you, the person that's in the corner looking bored because they are already finished. That's the person that you need to ask. Because they they know they if you're having a problem with it, they could help you just as much as I am. And three other students is are probably gonna try to ask me, right? Also, in art, like I don't know why we teach that you should do all your work by yourself. No one succeeds doing anything by themselves. So I also try to tell my students that. But going back to closing rituals, I forgot how I got off of that. Maker classes would always go over, so be a very simple like bow, thank your neighbor, everyone give yourselves a round of applause for trying something new, for building something. So it could be, I I like to say, like, try to make sure your openings and closings match what you want to teach, match a little bit of your personality, and also maybe your students pretty.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah. As you are shaping these young people, do you realize the power and the responsibility that you have in this process? And I wonder how does that feel for you internally, dealing with that power and that responsibility influencing these young people?

SPEAKER_02 24:15

I think I should probably think about it more. I think if I did consider it quite as much as I should, I would be too anxious to do it. Like sometimes you have to think about it. Like, I'm going to class, we're going to have an experience together. Um, and I hope they enjoy it. And that's all you can think about. Hey, I mean, if in 10 years I run into a student and they're like, you changed my life, then I I'm just gonna be I'm gonna be grateful for that. I've met students where like I was working with a classroom teacher and they were like, oh man, Kwame, he like, I was on the street and he got me off the street, like just like just introducing me to a couple books. And I was like, that's amazing. Um which yeah, Kwame Baird is uh an amazing educator from Harlem, and I worked with him for three years. I every time I met a student of his, a former student of his, they were like, he saved my life. And it was he was very humble. And so I aspired to I hope I'm a little bit of that. Also, like I married an educator, and he's it's the same thing. I meet young rappers all the time. My husband's an MC, and they're like, Yeah, that's my rap dad. He taught me everything I know. He was like a great model of positive masculinity. So it wasn't just I didn't, it wasn't just like, you know, whatever. If you live in a neighborhood that has like a lot of gangbangers or drug dealers, like my husband, McAllamine, was like a different example for them. And that's yeah. So I know there's there's power, but I think if I really sat down and thought about it, I I I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to teach. So I just hope I'm being responsible when I'm when I'm in the class. That's what I hope.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Have you ever felt overwhelmed or feeling burnt out?

SPEAKER_02 25:53

Yes, all the time. I think that's like the number one problem with this with teaching artistry. Yeah. Um the the thing that really gets a lot of artists who go into teaching artistry is the workload. We're not usually employed by schools. So school, it's not like a classroom teacher where you go to one school every day and you're there all day, every day, which is its own overwhelm and its own has its own like issues. Um, but most teaching artists they might be going to three schools in one day, or they're at one school for five hours, and then the next day they're at another school in five for five hours, and then the next day they're at another school for five hours, and they might be at a different school every day of the week, just so they can make $50 an hour, $60 an hour. A lot of teaching artists aren't even making that. So you stack residencies, right? You work for arts ed organizations that have uh there's no real standard on what teaching artists should be paid. So some teaching artists might get paid $30 an hour, and others would get paid $120, right? Just depending on the art form and how big their org is. So it causes a lot, it can cause a lot of burnout, a lot of uh, I think resentment as well. And then going back to that idea of um being triggered in the classroom, I know I've like I've had students say things to me and I'm like, I feel like I'm back in middle school. I'm like, no, get out of this. And like I said, I have my own process for that. But I've met teaching artists who are like, I can't do it anymore because these kids told me I was, you know, offbeat white lady and they didn't they weren't gonna listen to some off-beat white lady lady. I'm like, I'm sorry that happened to you. Yeah. And they were like, that was the final straw, I couldn't do it anymore. It's yeah, it's all the things. It's can be very stressful.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

How do you handle moments of conflict like that if it comes up when you're dealing with the students? How do you handle it?

SPEAKER_02 27:44

Man, uh, I would love to say that I handle it really well. The moments that replay in my head are the the moments that I handled it poorly. But I'm like, but that can only think of like four times in like over 10 years of doing the work. So I will say in those moments where I'm burnout and irritable and a student says something crazy to me, I like to say that I just like kind of give them the same kind of snark back, but it's not, it's not, it's more humorous. That's what I'd go for, which is why I worked in middle school for so for a very long time or a big chunk of my career. It was like middle school because I was like, I can I am just as quick as you are. But yeah, I do, I definitely have had my moments where it was like I could handle that better. I was very tired that day and I just did not, I was just I yelled or something like that. I think when I first started, I was very not divorced enough from my time in the Marine Corps, and I think I had some students doing planks in class. Like, no, maybe not, maybe not. But I learned that that was a mistake very quickly.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Why? Why was that a mistake?

SPEAKER_02 28:46

You know, it was after school, so it wasn't as big of a deal. But I was like, they're not listening to me anymore than if I was just like, okay, y'all tired. Just sit down. Just sit down and have your snack, and we'll sing in 15 minutes. We're just gonna sit here and check in. Um that yeah, that particular residency, I think I had them for, I think I had them for a full year. So by the end, by second semester, like after a winter break, I wasn't doing stuff like that anymore. It was just like we were recording, we did, we made some music videos. Most of them were in fifth grade, so they were going to middle school the next year. So I wanted to make sure they had a lot of like material to share. So yeah, no more planks, not after a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Okay. Logistically, how does it work with the community word project with a school? Do you do you do your does your group solicit the school? Does the school reach out? Logistically, how does how is that connection made?

SPEAKER_02 29:39

We do solicit schools every once in a while, but we've been around for 25 years, so we have some really long partnerships. Many times it is the school will recommend us, they'll just keep asking us to come back and they'll recommend us to other schools. Sometimes we have teaching our we have classroom teachers that we've worked with for years and years. When they leave a school, their new school, they will recommend that we come in. So at this point, most of our work is word of mouth and just like a great reputation. Um, but every once in a while we do have to solicit, especially right now, funding for the arts is at a low. So you have to put in a little bit more elbow grease to get a contract, um, and stay alive. Everyone, I think everyone's kind of like trying to figure it out right now. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

So, you know, when you when you have students in your workshop and obviously they're coming from, you know, different backgrounds, could be trauma, could be, you know, instability at home or whatever it is. How do how have you seen that impact their performance in the classes and what have you done to help them?

SPEAKER_02 30:45

Usually if a student is going through a particularly hard time, they can't do kind of check out in class. I like to just sit and talk with them for a while. If they're not doing any of the work that we're assigning, a lot of times you see it more with high school students, it's more noticeable. Middle school students, you know, like 12 to 14 or 11 to 14, they'll kind of just do with whatever their friends are doing. So if they're if there's buy-in from their friends, they'll just follow along. So if you can get a group or like the leader of the group to buy in, even if someone is having a tough time, they'll get into the activity. With littles, it's they want to be engaged. So if they are having a tough time at home, they're gonna do the activity because it helps them give like a little gives them some sunshine. But regardless of an age group, I do like if I'm noticing that a student is having a hard time with it just in general, I do like to just sit down and check in with them. It's like, how are you doing? You seem a little sad today. You know, whatever I think will help them. Just like very open-ended questions. And I do that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Okay. Let me ask you this this what if question. If the organization had unlimited resources for one year, there was no restrictions, you had all the money you needed, access to every resource that you could possibly need for all the workshops, all the programs, what would the the organization look like for that one year?

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Oh man, our organization would definitely, particularly my program, because my program for adults is tuition-based. There will be no tuition, no tuition, and they would get small stipends. Maybe if it was just a transit stipend, because they have to come into the city to meet with us on Saturdays, and that can be a lot. So just giving like a even if it's just a transit stipend and like a full lunch for all of our workshops, we give them snacks and refreshments, but not they have to bring their own or go out and get it. Just that no tuition, stipends. Uh I had a we we were running a program in Rochester, New York for a little bit, which hopefully will be back on its feet next year. Um, and we did have enough budget to give small stipends and a lunch every day for an intensive. It was a three-day intensive, and it just, yeah, it was so much you could see the community being built at lunch. And because it's such a short time period, it was important for them to bond. Because once like teaching artistry can be very lonely. You're by yourself going to these different schools. You might have a co-teacher, but y'all more than likely aren't traveling to the same place together. Every once in a while, you are and you look up, but it can feel like you're alone out there in the world. So it's important to build community and know who you can contact and have friends in the industry. For our youth, I think it'd be similar. Like making sure that our students have oranges. I've met students that have never seen a blueberry. And we had blueberries in class one day, and they were like, What is this? This is delicious. So making sure we have healthy snacks and then field trips, all these museums around New York City, so many students don't really get to go to them, or the same students go over and over and over again. Like some schools are sponsored by, like, let's say Lincoln Center. And so I had students, I did uh years ago, I did Lincoln Center's summer forum, and we went into a school for a week and taught a choir class, I think. And those students were so tired of going to Lincoln Center. I just thought it was so great that these kids for the South Bronx were so bougie. They were just like Lincoln Center, one of the top presenting houses in the world again. I loved it. I thought it was great. I was a little annoyed to the other TAs, but I was like, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 34:25

Yeah, taking it for granted. It was brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah, but like think about like how many students from you know from all these neighborhoods that we were kind of like, oh, it's a terrible neighborhood if they were if they were going to Lincoln Center, even just once a year, or the Guggenheim once a year, or even like our offices are right next to the Smithsonian Museum for the American Indian, with you know, that name is that name is that name, but it's there and it's a great museum. It's a great resource. Like and their exhibits are amazing. How many students really know the there are so many organizations teaching like the real history of colonization, specifically of New York, New Amsterdam, and how many of them actually get to hear it? And it's like right there in our faces, so much of it. Um it'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Let me ask you about Dale, a little personal things because you mentioned you're still an artist. When was the last time you were on stage performing?

SPEAKER_02 35:18

Man, I was I was hosting a salon, a women's art salon, all last year with an organization called International Women's Art Salon. Um, I would host, I would get up and do a couple songs, and then I'd like to do some interviews. And I have a gig coming up in February. It's actually our the Teaching Artist Project has a concert fundraiser on February 26th, which I'm really excited to do. And I'm like blanking on the last time I got like a paid singing gig. I try to sing all the time. I sing with a blues band. Silly me. Okay, I do sing with a blues band, but I also sing with a drumline called Batala New York. And Batala is an international uh drum core that celebrates Brazilian, Afro-Brazilian culture. But our specific chapter is all women or all feminine identities, which is great. I've been a member for six years. I played the Serdu 3, or we call it the Dobra. But I get a lot of joy out of singing with them when I can. So that's the last time I sang with them. We had a Christmas party uh a couple weeks before Christmas, like mid-December. I sang. Yeah, my last, I think, three gigs in the fall were all with Batalau, New York, which is really fun to hear my original compositions and like some covers with them. I'm still working on my Portuguese though, it's not there yet. I get to sing with um with some brilliant, brilliant Brazilian singers and uh singer from Cabo Verde, and I'm also a Dominican-American singer as well. So we get to blend all our cultures together sometimes. And we're working on original compositions, which is very exciting.

unknown 36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

I'm actually really familiar with the Capa Verde music scene. It's it's really great. I had a friend of mine, uh, he's based in Holland, but he's really big in the Capa Verde music scene, Franklin Thomas and Franklin Rodriguez, sorry, and he's even won awards down there. And the Capa Verde music scene is actually really, really great. I saw that you traveled to quite a few countries touring. What's what's the most memorable spot that you visited and the most memorable performance?

SPEAKER_02 37:22

The most memorable for performance for me was in Budapest. We had a couple gigs right on the water, right on the river. And one was a jam session called I on a boat, I think it was called A38. And the jam said it was just so warm and and beautiful. It was like three, four hundred people, and we were just jamming with a live band. And um, I got to perform with my husband, who, like I said, is an MC McAllamine, but then also Hungarian rapper and singer, and we were all just like trading bars, and I that was like a beautiful experience. And it was, I think it was one of my first really big gigs. I feel like you can have a lot of gigs in New York, but it uh when you're a New York City-based artist, an indie artist, it's like you might have like a hundred or less here, a hundred or less here. But having like three, four hundred people like cheering as I was singing was really uh memorable for me.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Budapest, interesting. Yeah, I've been to Hungary, and believe it or not, my 13-year-old son speaks Hungarian. So that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

That's really crazy because no one speaks Hungarian. They were telling us that they were like, please don't try to say anything in Hungarian. No one can speak.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

Yeah, my son speaks four languages. He speaks he speaks Hungarian. He actually, because he goes to school in Europe, he's away at school in Europe, and his school they actually teach in the Hungarian language. That's why he speaks equivalently. Because they teach like everything that we're teaching, but the language is Hungarian. There's a Hungarian school, so he speaks perfectly. It's hilarious. So I know the I know a bit of the language. But I can understand why you like Budapest. Um, Hungary is one of the nicest, nicer Eastern European countries to visit. So I get it. So you've got the the performance coming up in February. So tell people listening if they wanted to want to see you where they can access tickets or see that performance.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Yeah, so the performance uh will be at Opera America in Chelsea on February 26th. Show will start at 6:30. We do have it, we are raising funds. So there are two ticket tiers, one's $75 and one's $25. $25 is an artist price. So consider it if you're an artist or you can sponsor an artist. But if you uh can afford a little bit more, we have $75. And of course, this is all to benefit Teaching Artist Project and that training for artists who want to um do social emotional learning and social justice and bring that to youth through the arts. You can also just donate if you'd like. And I have a website, Dale Novellapresents.com. Also, whenever I post on Instagram, I'm the only Dale Novella in the world, first of all. Novella with two L's. It's not Spanish, it's English, like a small book. So I'm the only one in the world. So it's very easy to find me. Um, but if you want to follow Community Word Project on Instagram, they like the my coworkers are really great about reposting anything that I do, and sometimes I'm just on our Instagram. So you can find out everything that I'm doing there too.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Well, Dale, thank you so much for being with me. I really enjoyed our conversation and best of luck in the future and best of luck in the performance coming up.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here, and thank you for having me.