North Thurston choir teachers harmonize remotely during COVID-19 shutdown
North Thurston Public School choir teachers have a message for their students while schools are shuttered in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19, says Stephanie Bivins, who teaches at Aspire Middle School.
“We really terribly miss our students, and we wish more than anything that we could be back with them, making music together,” Bivins told The Olympian Monday.
In the meantime, Bivins hopes a video of her and five other choir teachers from a smattering of NTPS schools singing The Beatle’s “Yesterday” will “stave off that need for a little while.”
On Facebook Friday, NTPS posted the video created by Bivins and choir teachers Caitlin Van Zee of North Thurston High, Sarah Edwards of Komachin and Chinook middle schools, Peter Annis of Nisqually Middle School, Austin Schlichting of River Ridge High, and Amanda Herrmann of Salish Middle and South Sound High schools.
The teachers are “pretty close,” Bivins said, and meet every other week. They’ve been sharing ideas and talking about teaching methods as they prepare to launch online instruction after this week’s spring break, she said. Plans are in the works for deeper dives into music theory and vocal technique.
Finding ways to collaborate with each other and students has been more of a challenge.
“It’s really, really hard to not be singing and making music, so want to provide those opportunities to create and respond to each other creating,” Bivins said.
The teachers planned to sing the “Yesterday” arrangement at faculty benefit concert May 19, Bivins said, and it felt like “an appropriate song to work through.”
The teachers recorded themselves individually, Bivins said, while listening to the song in a key that kept everyone on track. Then Bivins stitched the videos together using an application and sent it to their supervisor. It eventually made its way to Facebook.
“We shared it because we wanted them to know we are thinking of them,” Bivins said. “We know that music and the arts are such a big part of how people make it through situations like this. We want them to know what they do is important to us and to our community. We hope that we could bring a smile to their face and give them something to be positive about.”
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