Orchestrating a new approach to learning

For decades, the Phoenix Symphony has played an important role in making Arizona one of the nation’s best places to work and live. Not only does it bring world-class performances to the concert hall, but it has always strived to support the community in other ways, too, especially through music education. When it comes to this second part of its mission, though, it has struggled at times. Like many other orchestras across the country, most of its outreach has taken the form of “drive-by” programming: classroom concerts that do not feature much student involvement. Typically, musicians would be bused to a school, perform selections from “Peter and the Wolf,” and then head on down the road.

When he took over as president and CEO of the Phoenix Symphony in 2011, Jim Ward pledged to do more to support the region’s public schools. Inspired by the growing movement to integrate the arts into K-12 classroom instruction, he and Kim Graham — the symphony’s new director of education — created a program called Mind Over Music, which aimed to tap the skills and talents of professional musicians to make meaningful contributions to student learning.

The idea was to bring musicians and elementary school teachers together to design and deliver a new STEAM curriculum, incorporating live music into academic lessons. Such an ongoing partnership, Ward and Graham anticipated, would lead to improvements in teacher knowledge, planning, instruction, and assessment; boost student achievement in music and the STEAM subjects; maintain the integrity of music instruction in the schools; and build strong working relationships among teaching faculty, symphony musicians, and education staff. Further, they hoped the program would become a model of successful arts integration, inspiring other arts organizations to build effective partnerships with local educators.