The italicized parts are incomplete and will be filled in once I receive the rest of the information/ finish the paragraph. As before, nothing is properly cited yet but all the links are live to look at references if need be. The pie chart is self-created and has not been cited yet.

Introduction

It feels like the underfunding of Music Education has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years; and as of last year, it is. In 2001, President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to close the “achievement gaps”¹ between different races, gender, and wealth classes. This act set many things in motion, including, but not limited to,  standardized tests for middle schoolers and more flexibility for students in Title 1 schools². Along with these new standards, the NCLB Act of 2001 allowed for more flexibility in how a school district chose to distribute their budget through each subject. Due to the fact that the standardized tests mentioned above focused on math, english, and eventually science, most school districts chose to direct their money towards those subjects, ultimately pulling that funding from the subjects that  students would not be tested on: the arts³.

The No Child Left Behind Act, with the intention of creating a more equal education for all the children of America, indirectly impacted a very large part of that very education it sought to protect. While math, science, and english are extremely important subjects to have an in-depth knowledge of, studies have shown that receiving an education in music has been proven to improve verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, speech response, linguistic development, and reading and writing skills⁴, all of which are necessary to create a successful student and eventually a functioning member of society.

However, music education has not -and has never been- deemed worthless by parents, teachers, or students. According to a Harris Poll administered in 2005, “93% of Americans agreed that the arts are essential for providing students with a well-rounded education”⁵. Although this is an old poll, it sparked a lot of interest in the topic of music education and its severe lack of funding within the last 17 years. Stars & Catz, an online music educator program, discovered that out of 200 studies done on the benefits of music education and its lack of adequate funding, 80% of these studies have been published, a 65% increase from 2005⁶. In a more recent study conducted in 2015 by the NAMM Foundation, “Sixty-three percent of teachers and Fifty-seven percent of parents believe music education should be a required subject in middle school”⁷. People believe that music needs to be an integral part of student’s lives, and by cutting the funding for those programs, we are possibly cutting their creativity and ability to develop skills they will always have a use for. As the initial, yet unintentional, creator of this severe lack of funding for the education of music and the arts, including music education into the No Child Left Behind Act funding presents itself as a corrective measure for this matter. It will allow for adequate funding from both the government and individual school districts as it will be a part of the curriculum that is now expected to be learned by all.

Benefits of Music Education

As mentioned above, receiving an education in music can have many underlying benefits outside of learning how to read music or play an instrument. Besides some of the benefits that have already been discussed, such as improving verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, and speech response, music has also been proven to have a higher graduation rate in high school and a higher acceptance rate into college. According to Children’s Music Workshop, “Schools with music programs have an estimated 90.2% graduation rate and 93.9% attendance rate compared to schools without music education, which average 72.9% graduation and 84.9% attendance”⁸. Along with this, many other statics prove that music education provides students with better tools for the future more than any other one subject:

• Students who participate in school band or orchestra have the lowest levels of current and lifelong use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs among any group in our society⁹
• High school music students have been shown to hold higher grade point averages (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school¹⁰.
• A study of 7,500 university students revealed that music majors scored the highest reading scores among all majors including English, biology, chemistry and math¹¹.
• The schools that produced the highest academic achievement in the United States today are spending 20% to 30% of the day on the arts, with special emphasis on music¹².
• Music training helps under-achievers. Students lagging behind in scholastic performance caught up to their fellow students in reading and surpassed their classmates in math by 22% when given music instruction over seven months¹³.
• Student involvement in extracurricular or co-curricular activities makes students resilient to current substance use among their peers, according to a recent statewide survey of Texas Schools. Secondary students who participated in band, orchestra or choir reported the lowest lifetime use of all substances¹⁴.

As you can see from these countless reports and studies, music education finish out section with something about statistics and/or why they prove it is a necessity.

Graphic (bar graph) on students with/without music ed

Cost of Music Education

It has now been well-established that a music education benefits students in countless ways, most of which are unconscious and irreplaceable by other subjects. However, an enriching program often comes with a high cost. In research funded by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation’s Sounds of Learning research initiative, a cost for music education averaged $187 per student annually in the sample school district¹⁵. In a 60-100 person marching band, the average size for Pennsylvania schools¹⁶, the total cost to run a program would be between $11,220 – $18,700 annually, which may not include marching band programs. In numbers provided by a local high school assistant band director, the average cost to run a marching band annually is $21,500 if staff is paid properly¹⁷. According to the same assistant director, all of this funding (besides the salaries for the directors) is provided through booster organizations and donations, with the school district only providing funds for inside programs¹⁸. 

However, even the funding provided by the school district for the more “classic” parts of music education can be inadequate in covering the costs. If a program spends as little as possible on equipment and only runs one ensemble, their average cost will average out to around $11,000. If the program spends more on equipment and runs two or three ensembles, their annual cost would be between $19,000 – $23,000¹⁹, Not including the cost of a marching band, which could bring the total cost for music education to $44,500 annually.

Comparison of two PA Schools

In the reports provided by two different school districts in eastern Pennsylvania, the support provided by the school district is between $9,600 – Waiting on other number.

School District A, which is located near a small city and has a high school student body of 2,673²⁰ provides $9,600 to their music education program, which is split between the wind ensemble, orchestra, and choir program. The rest of the funds necessary to continue the program is paid out of pocket by either the directors or the students²¹.

School District B, while having more funding provided by the school, still largely relies on the booster organization to support their program. District B also provides the salaries for the 2 directors in addition to paying for the music and its copyrights for football games and halftime shows. However, both school districts are required to do major fundraising throughout the year in order to keep their programs afloat. Even with some funding provided by the school districts, the numbers have shown that a music program requires much more than they are allotted in order to continue to succeed.

Incorporating Music Ed into the NCLB Act

• Small transition for why this needs to happen
• How would It be possible
• How it would benefit music programs
• How it would benefit schools/students

Conclusion

• Recap of benefits
• Recap of costs
• How incorporating music ed into the NCLBA will work and will be beneficial
• Restatement of thesis

I tried to model this off of the example, and I know it still needs work. All of my references for this part are hyperlinked to the superscripted numbers, but are not yet in the proper citation form. If possible, I would particularly like feedback on my final paragraph.

It feels like the underfunding of Music Education has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years; and as of last year, it is. In 2001, President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to close the “achievement gaps”1 between different races, gender, and wealth classes. This act put many things into place, including but not limited to,  standardized tests for middle schoolers and more flexibility for students in Title I schools2. Along with these new standards, the NCLB Act of 2001 allowed for more flexibility in how a school district chose to distribute their budget through each subject. Due to the fact that the standardized tests mentioned above focused on math, english, and eventually science, most school districts chose to direct their money towards those subjects, ultimately pulling that funding from the subjects that would not be tested: the arts3.

This Act, with the intention of creating a more equal education for all the children of America, indirectly impacted a very large part of that very education they sought to protect. While math, science, and english are extremely important subjects to have an in-depth knowledge of, studies have shown that receiving an education in music has been proven to improve verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, speech response, linguistic development, reading and writing skills4, all of which are necessary to create a successful student and eventually a functioning member of society. 

However, music education has not been and has never been deemed worthless by parents, teachers, or students. According to a Harris Poll administered in 2005, “93% of Americans agreed that the arts are essential for providing students with a well-rounded education”5. Although this is an old poll, it sparked a lot of interest in the topic of music education and its severe lack of funding within the last 17 years. Stars & Catz, an online music music educator program, discovered that out of 200 studies done on the benefits of music education and its lack of adequate funding, 80% of these studies have been published, a 65% increase from 20056. In a more recent study conducted in 2015 by the NAMM Foundation, “Seventy-seven percent of teachers and Sixty-four percent of parents agree that music and arts education are “extremely important” or “very important. Sixty-three percent of teachers and Fifty-seven percent of parents believe music education should be a required subject in middle school.Eighty-seven percent of teachers and Eighty-one percent of parents believe children should have a chance to learn to play musical instruments as early as elementary school”7. People believe that music needs to be an integral part of student’s lives, and by cutting the funding for those programs, we are possibly cutting their creativity and ability to develop skills they will always have a use for. As the initial, yet unintentional, creator of this severe lack of funding for the education of music and the arts, including music education into the No Child Left Behind Act funding presents itself as a corrective measure for this matter. It will allow for adequate funding from both the government and individual school districts as it will be a part of the curriculum that is now expected to be learned by all. 

Passion blog: This semester my passion blog will focus on underrated female icons, the women who have really shaped our lives without getting a lot of credit.

Civic Issues: I am going to explore how standardized testing has not only affected the school system, such as “teaching to the test” but also how they could possibly be improved, eradicated, or replaced with a more logical method.

I believe in mismatched socks. Honestly, what’s the harm in it? It doesn’t physically affect anyone else, and as long as they are generally the same in material and size, wearing two different socks won’t physically affect you either. Sometimes it even serves as an interesting ice-breaker or conversation-maker. I started un-matching my socks fresh out of the dryer about 6 years ago, primarily as a ruse that would produce an eye-roll from my mom when I pounded down the stairs in one blue sock and one green. For a while it really was just about the game; I even bought two different types of long black socks for marching band so I could continue it while in uniform. 

But as the years went on, the meaning of the game changed. It became less about how I could get that time-old reaction from my mom and more about how much fun it was for me to not match my socks. I would bring flowers and stripes to play practice, polka-dots and stars to gym class. However, now that it is time to grow up, get an education, and go off into the adult world, I don’t have as much time to mismatch my socks. It’s no longer about the game. I spoke to my mom about our old game recently and she pointed out that my reason for not matching my socks was probably never about her reaction, but rather the giddy, childlike joy it brought to me when she would point it out. No matter my mood of the day, if she or my grandmother pointed at my mismatched socks and said “you’re still doing that”, I would break out into an enormous grin. 

I have always been a “mature” child, I have honestly wanted to be a grown-up since I was in 4th grade. I can remember wanting to wear sweaters like my mom, jewelry that my grandmother had passed down to me, and staying inside for recess so I could read instead of playing tag. As I grew up, I continued to separate myself from my classmates because I felt that I was “too mature” for some of them. I began to live in the fantasy of my future, spending more time creating the perfect landscape for my adult life than on the playground. Looking back, I wished that I had embraced that playful part of my childhood where my afternoons could be spent with my dog instead of my computer. 

Today, I am still focused on my education, my career, my future, except for now is when I am supposed to be focused on those things. I spent years wishing to be exactly where I am right now, forgetting to pay attention to the amazing things I had at the time. But I will always have my socks. 

My mismatched socks no longer serve as a “game” or a way to get a rise out of my family members or friends, but rather that I need to embrace the childish excitement I have when I see a puppy, or to not take myself so seriously in every waking moment of the day. They remind me that I don’t always need to be my most perfect, “grownup” self, That I am allowed to relax and have fun, and do something wrong. Make a podcast about socks! In a world where everyone is desperate to grow up, remember to still be a kid, maybe even wear two different socks. I believe in mismatched socks.

Passion blog:

I would really like to continue my exploration on women of the past and present who have shaped the way we think of feminism and women today. I recently have come upon new material and Think that I could tie my passion blog into my civic issues blog on how certain women of the past have impacted the education of women today (ex: Malala).

If this doesn’t pan out the way I would like it to, I may shift the focus onto women behind the scenes of history (Betsy Ross, Josephine Baker) who had significant impact without any of the glory. I seemed to focus on more famous women last semester, so this could add an interesting twist.

Civic Issues Blog:

For my civic issues blog, I want to focus on education: how the education system operates and how it could be improved. as someone who has been taught the value of education, I would like to explore how other value their own education or not, and how that can play into adjustments made to the system (do standardized  test really show who you are as a student, teaching to the test rather than the student)

A different angle to this topic would be to look into how the history of our country/world has played into how we have shaped the education system and why some schools thrive while other struggle to keep their graduation rate at an acceptable level. how do our social views/prejudices effect how we how the system decides to teach certain groups of people versus others. This angle will also most likely have some political influences as well, but the main focus would be fairness in the education system.

This I Believe Podcast:

I am a big believer that the amount of work you put into something will be equal to what you get out of something, whether that is studying for days to earn an A on a test or putting countless hours into a volunteer service for other people to thrive, your work is always equal to your reward, even if you don’t see it that way. I think this would be a really good topic for this podcast, especially because it is a mindset that I buy into every day.

My second idea for this Podcast would be to express my believe that social media and photoshop has destroyed the image of what a “healthy female body” should look like. We are shown so many images everyday of size 0 or 00 women who are either starving themselves or photoshopped or both to look that way. This constant content is terrible for not only are self-esteem, but also for our own mental health, and many women suffer from eating disorders or body dysmorphia because of it.

Personally, I felt that this speech went significantly better than my first one. I was more comfortable with this topic and style, and I think that reflected in my delivery. I definitely think that my facial expressions and vocal inflections were better than the last speech, and I tried to incorporate hand movements, but I don’t think those were in the frame as much. I also think that my visuals made more sense and were more dynamic, when I watched my speech back, I wasn’t bored of the image on the screen and it made sense with what I was saying. I feel really good about this speech, even if there were still a few tiny mistakes here and there. 

For the History of a Controversy project I had two ideas, which are very different from each other. I either want to try to do Freedom of Speech or Minimum wage. Both have a lot of history behind them, meaning that they aren’t just recently occurring controversies, so my groups would have a lot to build on. Both also are related to how the actions of one group affects another; employees and employers, and how people use the free speech they have. I think both could be a good option for this project and deal with subjects that not only are relevant today, but also have been for a really long time.  

This will be the opening slide that will accompany my intro.

This chart is from the study I got my statics from, I will use this as the visual aid as I discuss the increase in burnout since the beginning of the pandemic.

The “green” slides (with the green box in the top corner) will go with my points on how the work-rest balance has been destroyed by the pandemic with the distractions of home interfering with work and vise-versa

The Blue slides will be paired with my discussion of children’s and student’s lives and how burnout has affected them this year and will cause long term damage.

I only have one pink slide right now, the color will be used with my closing. Since I am still in the process of making the final edits to my speech, I am not sure what I want my final slides to look like yet.

(the colored boxes will not be in the final presentation, they are simply for your reference and my rehearsal)

Burnout. A word our generation has become all-too familiar with. But what is burnout? Psychology Today defines it as feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy. Yet to millennials and gen-z, burnout almost feels like our natural emotional state. Not only were we beginning to feel the effects of constantly “running” as my mom has put it, before the pandemic, but the Covid quarantine only increased this exhausted feeling. How did it do this? How did we let a time that was supposed to allow us to rest and re-center become a time where our to-do lists felt longer than ever? Is it because the work-from-home option made our relaxing environment stressful? Was it due to the lack of real human interaction? Or is it because the definition of a successful life has changed? Our society has glamorized burnout, making it the ultimate mark of success, but at what cost?

Possible sources

 Indeed Study Shows That Worker Burnout Is At Frighteningly High Levels: Here Is What You Need To Do Now – By Jack Kelly 

I would like to use this article because it provides solid statistics taken from a survey on how each generation is suffering from burnout. This could be really useful in my essay from providing the evidence that the younger generations are feeling burnout more than the older generations. Along with this, this survey was taken post-pandemic, so I would also be able to use that information and Kairos to further prove the increase of burnout in recent times. 

Burnout Is Real, On the Rise, and Retractable – by Camille Preston Ph.D.

I really like this article for a number of reasons: 

1. It gives a definition of burnout from a psychologist
2. It has a relatability while still providing facts 
3. It gives examples of how to prevent/decrease burnout, which can also serve as further evidence of the things workplaces aren’t doing to help the mental health of their employees. 

I would definitely like to use the definition she gives of burnout, and how the things that could be solutions are just problems in disguise. It also gives a cost of burnout, something that is super intriguing. I would most likely use this information in the “side effects” of burnout in my paper. When we think of mental health issues, we don’t realize that there could and is a monetary cost to it, so this would be a great thing to dig deeper into. 

I really liked Ashley Whillans’s 3 rules for better work-life balance. She was very engaging in her body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. She also kept a consistent speed in her delivery that was fast enough to still feel like you are moving forward but not so fast that the audience wouldn’t be able to comprehend what she was saying. Another notable thing about this TED talk is that Ashley isn’t delivering in front of a live audience, but rather a camera to make a recorded video. As we all experienced in the making of our own recorded videos for the civic artifact speeches, this is an incredibly difficult thing to do because there is no audience to feed off of your energy and vise versa. Yet Ashley does a great job engaging with her audience, even though she had no interaction with them. 

Stepping away from the delivery of this TED talk, I also really liked the topic. The amount of people experienced burnout especially following the lockdown stage of the pandemic has significantly increased. Due to this ride in deflation, this is a super relevant topic, meaning that more people will want to listen and take action on what Ashley said in this speech. I (and most, if not all other students at this university) have personally been experiencing my own struggles with work/school-life balance, but this video reassured me that I am not alone and informed me that there are ways to make that balance easier to achieve. 

After watching this video, I have been inspired to write my TED talk delivery on a similar topic, maybe how the dynamic of a work-life balance has shifted in recent years as companies are demanding more from their employers. I could also work a shift in the dynamic of a family life into this, possibly expanding on how the definition of success has changed as well. Success used to be defined as “a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a happy marriage”, but now, success is more individual, finding happiness in a career and personal lifestyle rather than the typical “american dream” of what success is. All of these offer a really unique perspective on why we as a generations and a society are experiencing burnout at such a large magnitude.