Elm City Montessori School teacher Ramya Subramanian wondered if it was possible to sing with her students over a computer screen.
She had to get creative, though, to meet parent requests to hold the school’s annual winter concert despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
The school’s most popular event of the year, the annual Winter Sing, took place on Thursday online for the first time.
“This is the darkest time of the year. Children bring light in a dark place and a spirit of hope. We all need that,” said the school’s magnet resource teacher Dave Weinreb.
Elm City Montessori School (ECMS) is New Haven Public Schools’ only charter school. It gets an average of the dollars devoted to other New Haven Public Schools students, and it has its own governing board.
As part of the school’s Montessori method, students sing all the time. They sing as they clean up and transition between activities; they sing to learn about elements on the periodic table. Older students sing with more confidence than the younger students and promote the leadership and mentorship the school tries to foster in its multi-age classrooms.
Subramanian particularly loves singing rounds with her class. She sings rounds with a women’s group in her free time. When the school turned to remote classes during the Covid-19 pandemic, she had to give up on that teaching strategy. Students could not synchronize their rounds when their internet connections put them seconds or minutes behind one another.
“I felt an emptiness,” Subramanian said. “It felt contrived to force into singing on [Google Classroom]. Students don’t want to be seen and turn off their videos.”
When the Elm City Montessori Family Teacher Organization asked the school to hold the Winter Sing virtually, Subramanian thought about what she could do. She holds one weekly class in person, outdoors every week, but not all students opt to attend that class. So she both recorded the outdoor class singing and asked students to submit videos of themselves singing on Flipgrid.
Flipgrid
She was surprised by how many students sent her videos. Some recorded their videos with a friend in their pandemic bubble. Some sent her multiple videos to choose from.
“Kids who I thought would not sing at all surprised me,” Subramanian said. “In the privacy of their home and own rooms, they found the courage.”
She edited the video together and submitted it as one of the acts in Thursday’s performance. Click the video above to watch it.
Popcorn and Hot Chocolate
Over 160 families showed up on Zoom on Thursday night to watch the virtual concert. Elementary schoolers wore Christmas-themed pajamas and snacked on popcorn, candy canes and hot chocolate provided by the Family Teacher Organization.
The sixth graders, the perpetual oldest class that founded the school, introduced each act. They reminded families to keep themselves muted and use the chat to support the performers.
The first acts were of preschoolers and other young students (pictured above) wiggling to Christmas and Hanukkah songs. Some classrooms wished peace to the children of the world in dozens of different languages, or sang songs half in Spanish, half in English.
Unlike in an in-person concert, students could watch themselves.
Older students sometimes ducked out of the frame or covered their face in embarrassment as they watched themselves sing their lines.
They always came back, smiling or serious, to listen and silently clap for their classmates’ performances.
Second grader Corinne Scott said that she was nervous when she recorded “Tengo Paz Como un Río” with her class.
“Yes, I felt a little bit nervous, but once I heard my classmates, they were all very good, and I knew that I’m going to be very good too,” Corinne said. “I never knew that they had such beautiful voices, even though some people didn’t pronounce their line right.”
When asked about how she felt about the winter concert being different this year, the 7‑year-old considered it from a parent’s perspective.
“It’s different from the big stage. The great part is that on a big stage, you have to look around for your kid. [Online] when you talk, your voice pops up on the screen, so you can see your child,” Corinne said.
Corinne’s mother, Family Teacher Organization President LaToya Howard, asked Corinne how she felt as a student. She responded that the concert is going to be the same, just that everyone is in different places.
While the Winter Sing could have been a moment to feel sad about the ways the Covid-19 pandemic has limited interaction with friends, Corinne reported that she is not lonely. She has her weekly outdoor class where she gets to see her friends and practice a dance they are creating together. She gets to see her parents every day and her sibling sometimes as he rotates between his mom’s, dad’s and grandparents’ houses.
“If I woke up in the morning, my dad would be in basement working out. I have this wonderful house and this wonderful family. I have toys and a TV and a living room to do flips in,” Corinne said. “This year is not so lonely.”
