How do you teach performing arts when there are no performances? This school is learning
PHOENIX — For Monica Sauer Anthony, adapting to the challenge of a virtual classroom started with a reenvisioning of what it even means to teach at a performing arts school.
A choir can’t really rehearse in a virtual classroom much less give a live performance.
Neither can an orchestra.
There’s too much digital delay involved in streaming to get everybody synced up.
When Gov. Doug Ducey ordered Arizona schools to close in March because of the pandemic, Sauer Anthony was teaching Music History and Culture, and Beginning Woodwinds, Flute and Oboe Studies at Arizona School for the Arts in downtown Phoenix.
As ASA began to make the switch to online learning, Sauer Anthony, who’s since become arts director and vice principal of student services, said the faculty was trying to maintain as much of a sense of normalcy as it could.
Teachers changed their focus
They did some virtual