Teaching the Standards: Elementary General Music During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Teachers are being impacted by the current COVID-19 pandemic. The traditional methods of music instruction are not easily transferable during this crisis as teachers are forced to teach a small number of students face-to-face in classrooms that must be sanitized regularly, or they are teaching online with limited supplies. To compound the issue, teachers are still required to provide equitable access to a quality music education in an environment that makes equitable instruction difficult at best. Are teachers able to adequately cover the standards in music under these circumstances? The National Core Arts Standards (NCAS) have been in place since 2014, and they call for teachers to produce artistically literate students. This literacy does not simply include the ability to read, notate and perform music. Rather, it is focused on teaching students how to directly engage in the creative and artistic processes for creating music. In the past, teachers have generally focused on those standards that do not require creative and artistic skill in favor of focusing on singing, playing instruments, and reading and notating music. How has this changed since the start of COVID-19? The purpose of this descriptive study is to compare elementary general music teachers’ teaching of the National Core Arts Standards for music before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research is an attempt to understand how elementary general music teachers are meeting the challenges that come with implementing standards in unconventional ways. Additionally, the current pandemic may influence the ability for teachers to focus on certain standards, and instead, shift focus, perhaps to standards that in a “normal” classroom setting may have been overlooked in the past. Results from this study of elementary general music teachers can shed light which of the NCAS are implemented by teachers in varying teaching environments. No matter the learning environment, music standards should be portrayed within elementary education to produce quality educational experiences for all students.