Arts Education Research

Promoting Your Program is No Longer an Option. It’s a Requirement!

Wow… where did the summer go? It feels like just yesterday school was wrapping up. Yet here we are facing the start of the new school year. New hopes. New dreams. New goals for you and your students. It means planning your programs, selecting your music, getting your lesson plans arranged, reviewing your student roster, instrumentation or vocal range and… 

Planning your advocacy activities!!!

That’s right… planning your advocacy strategy and activities to promote your program.

“But Bob, I don’t have time to focus on advocacy” you may say.

Well if you do not care enough to plan how to advocate and promote your program… who will?

Yes… I know this can be time consuming… But fear not… here are some ideas to help you plan as well as some resources to help get the job done!

September 12, 2001: You Can Always Have an Impact... If You Choose To

Today I opened a letter I have not read for nearly a decade. It was from Harold Decker, the president of the American Red Cross. It was a thank you note that accompanied a statue (called Motherland) he sent to me as a special gift. There is a story I have never told behind both the letter and the statue. The story began on 9/11. I decided it is finally time to write it down.

 

September 12, 2001

 

On Wednesday, September 12, 2001 I was at home. I got home about 1 AM in the morning following my 19 hours of adventure on 9/11 (which I have detailed in another post). I did not sleep well at all even though I was tired. There was just too much racing through my mind.

We were instructed to check our work voicemail for announcements and instructions from Viacom and MTV Networks (MTV Networks is a division of Viacom and VH1 where I worked was a division of MTV Networks). There was a message telling us the office would be closed Wednesday and to check back for updates. Fortunately, I had grabbed my laptop computer and tossed it into my brief case as we raced out of the building. (This was the famous brief case that created the bomb scare in Hoboken I have written about).

Being an executive with the company I had remote access to our systems so I could log in and check email and have access to files. This would be important.

I made some calls from my home office to check on my staff to be sure they all made it home OK. My boss, VH1 President John Sykes, was stuck in Denver following the Giants/Broncos game trying to get back to New York. I spoke with our head of communications John Kelley and others on our executive team to be sure everyone was OK.

As I sat at my desk I was feeling kind of helpless. Our nation had just suffered this huge tragedy. The many firefighters in the trucks we saw racing through Time Square on 9/11 never came back. The numbers of presumed dead where being reported in the 10,000 range. The images were horrible. So many people had suffered. So many people died trying to save others. So many people were trying to help. Everything was confusing.

Me? I felt like I could do nothing. How could I help? What could I do? I hated the feeling of helplessness. It ate at me.

My September 11th Story

As the 10 year anniversary of 911 approaches all of the coverage has brought back powerful memories and emotions. From escaping the city, to organizing the nation wide public service announcement campaign for the American Red Cross, to my work on the production team for the Concert for New York City, all of these events and my role in them are now part of history. Nothing was more life changing than 911 iteself. On September 11, 2001, I was at my desk in Times Square in Manhattan tending to the start of the day. What would transpire over the next 19 hours is something I will never forget. At the time, I sat down and wrote about what had happened on that day as I experienced it. I shared it with my family and friends. Today, in memory of this solemn day, I am sharing it with all of you. It was written on September 12, 2001 and appears exactly as it was then... errors and all!

 

The Parent Trap

I first wrote about this a few years ago. With the recent budget challenges facing public education and the strain on many of our school districts now is a great time to review tis idea one more time.

There is an emerging trend that, until recently, had been isolated to California (Redwood City, Concord, and dozens of others). This trend has now started to pop up in school districts across the country. I call it The Parent Trap.

 To illustrate the point here is an actual email I received from someone that illustrates the point:

I am a parent in a NY school district, and although I no longer have anyone in the elementary school I am worried. Our school's budget recently failed and cut from the school program was our music program in our Elementary schools. Our Board of Ed says that if we can raise $170,000 in donations, grants or scholarships we will be able to restore our elementary music program.

Did you see what just happened? In a two-step move the school district has now shifted the responsibility to fund a core subject, music, from the school board to the parents.

This is The Parent Trap. And more and more parents and concerned citizens, with the good intentions of trying to keep their music programs alive, are falling for it. What happens?

The minute a school district is able to shift the responsibility to fund a program from the district to the parents... THEY WILL NEVER TAKE THE RESPOSNIBILITY BACK.