Newark Middle School Musicians Get a Lesson in Audible Production
When seventh and eighth-graders piled into Audible Studios for a day in November, it was “really a takeover,” explains Analee Campbell, Audible Community Service Associate. A fun, loud, musical takeover, that is! Sixty music students from First Avenue and Abington Avenue Schools sang, played their instruments and shadowed engineers, with 20 members of the Studios team as their guides.
For Senior Audio Editor Sara Pagluica, who helped organize the event, “it was so cool just watching the kids walk into the studios and showing them what you can do being a musician.” For Sara, it was not only a chance to activate caring, but it marked a full-circle moment: the day, in fact, came to be after she spotted a former William Paterson University classmate on the local news while eating lunch in the One Wash Cafe. Jenna Sandman, a music teacher at First Avenue, was being featured after receiving a grant to get her students new pianos.
Sara, who studied sound engineering, reached out to Jenna, who had majored in music education. “It just hit me that she teaches right in Newark, and we do so much with Newark students.” So she spoke to Analee, and they worked on planning a first-of-its-kind community event.
For Sandman, who has been teaching in Newark for seven years, “the faces of my students when they walked into the recording studio” was a highlight. “I don't think they believed themselves that they were actually going inside of one, although they were told, because it is something that most of them had only heard of,” she says. And for some students who didn't know or couldn't conceive of what a recording studio was, the day's events allowed them to make “the connection of 'the artists that I listen to actually do this,'” Sandman explains.
Audible’s Content team got in on the fun, too, leading a creative writing workshop for the middle schoolers. As music students, the students might not have necessarily been drawn to writing, Analee notes, but “they really embraced it and got into it. It came together beautifully.”
We conceived a unique, engaging workshop to get the students to think creatively about how to write for audio, and encouraged students to use different voices and musical instruments as they narrated their stories to the entire class. The event wonderfully showcased the power of storytelling – and the magic that happens when we create together!
Jenna agrees. For some of her students, many of whom face challenges at home and in school, arts education and expression “not only gives them an area to shine and grow, but also reinforces things they are learning in other classes,” from English class in the creative writing workshop to the importance of math in sound engineering. A real-world experience like the Audible visit can spark an interest in students who are deciding what classes to take, or show them what a potential career path might look like.
First Avenue and Abington Avenue students definitely took in an abundance of new ideas about how to use their music and writing skills, says Sara. “A lot of the kids really didn’t want to leave!”
