PAVE During the Pandemic: How Arts Students are Learning Virtually

Nila Roper

Almost all students and teachers have been impacted by the coronavirus in some way, and New Rochelle High School’s PAVE program was definitely not exempt from the challenges brought forth by online learning. PAVE, which stands for “Performing and Visual Arts Education,” is New Rochelle High School’s special arts program, which offers six different forms of art: dance, band, orchestra, visual art, singing, and theater. Most PAVE classes meet in the morning during a zero period from 7:30 A.M. to 8:10 A.M. and also have a separate elective course that takes place later in the day. The program was established in 1999 with the goal of “empowering [students] to become leaders in the arts by developing their creativity, theatricalism, self-esteem, respect, mind and body, and their role as artists,” according to the NRHS website’s PAVE profile. However, developing one’s role as an artist can be very difficult when the entire class is separated and everyone is behind a screen. I spoke with students from each of the six PAVE classes and asked them what projects they’re working on, how their classes have changed, what has been difficult, and how they feel about the experience. 

PAVE Dance

For PAVE Dance, class has pretty much maintained its normal structure. The sophomore and junior AM class, also known as PAVE 3, still starts the day with a warmup, stretching, and an ab workout. After that, the class has a lesson in whatever unit they are working through, which is currently the French terms unit. I asked Angelina Brown, a PAVE 3 student, what she thought about dancing virtually, and what difficulties she’s experienced. “I feel like we move A LOT slower with learning new material, and making sure everyone remembers it makes it even longer. Learning directions can be really difficult, and making sure everyone is on the same page is extremely time consuming,” she said. In addition to communication issues, online learning has also impacted the way dancers perform and the effect of their dancing. Brown explained,  “...dancing and especially performing require you to have a certain presence. Even in the studio, having each other present and learning together does so much. Performing wise, it is SO much harder to be as present and get the attention of the audience compared to if it was in a classroom or on a stage.” In addition to these difficulties, students have to deal with spatial constraints, interruptions like wandering pets and interrupting parents, and tech issues, especially laggy Wi-fi. The laggy Wi-fi is one of the biggest challenges, as it can make dancers look like they’re off the music while rehearsing, and makes it difficult to figure out counts when choreographing. Dancers are frequently facing different directions, using different legs or arms, or moving different ways. 

PAVE Band

In PAVE Band, students are working on projects in small groups, with each group playing a certain piece. I asked Leah Shefferman, a PAVE 2 student who plays the drums, about her experience. “We usually also work on small group pieces when we’re in person, but it’s so much harder virtually because you can’t really communicate with each other in the same way. Also, every person has to record their part individually, then someone in the group has to put all the recordings together into one piece using an audio editing software, for example, GarageBand. Figuring out the technological aspect and how to do that has been a challenge,” she said. In addition to challenges with technology, Shefferman said that virtual learning has also impacted the sense of community that PAVE usually has. “It’s definitely not an ideal PAVE experience, especially because something so special about being in PAVE is being able to play together with other people who also love music. That same connection is really hard to translate virtually, when everyone is recording their parts separately. I think it’s the best we can do virtually, but it’s definitely not the same.”

PAVE Orchestra

In PAVE Orchestra, students are also working in groups. Akshara Koottala, a violinist and violist in PAVE 4, told me, “Ms. Stancarone, our teacher, has assigned us a new project where we all work together as mini ensembles of around 3-5 people... At the end, we record ourselves using SmartMusic as a backtrack and then stitch together all the individual parts to create this cool, full orchestra piece.” SmartMusic is a program that allows the students to record and submit scales, as well as other things relating to music theory, and the use of this program has been a drastic change to their curriculum. PAVE Orchestra students normally just learn scales and then move on, but their teacher “has really prioritized perfecting the fundamental parts of music and building from there,” according to Koottala.  She added, “To be honest, I think orchestra is definitely the class I miss the most being in person because everything has changed...playing by yourself is never going to give you the same joy or satisfaction of playing in a full orchestra. I really miss the excitement and chaos of preparing for concerts and the thrill of performing on stage.” On the positive side, Koottala does appreciate having the time to work on solo music and music theory, which she says she usually disregards when in school, and she feels that her orchestra teacher is trying her best to keep the sense of unity with their projects.

PAVE Visual Art

In PAVE Visual Art, students are starting their pop art unit. When I asked PAVE 3 student Sierra Vacca about her experience, she told me that the class structure itself hasn’t changed much, but that the class feels a bit uninspired, and that it dulls in comparison to her previous two years. “All year, we have been reading excerpts from Tom Wolfe’s ‘The Painted Word,’ which is a book that goes through the history and development of art. After reading each chapter, we try to create a piece of art in the style that the chapter focused on,” she said. Vacca told me that the lack of social interaction has definitely worsened her experience. “I think the most notable difference with PAVE being fully virtual is the fact that we are cut off socially from each other. Being a third year PAVE student, I have built some amazing relationships with the people in my PAVE class. Although I appreciate the few extra minutes of sleep in the morning, there is something about being behind a screen, sometimes without your camera on, that makes the experience seem fake. Despite the difficulties, Vacca commends PAVE Visual Arts teachers for the availability of supplies, which she and her fellow classmates have been able to pick up from the high school. She has never felt that she won’t be able to complete a project because of a lack of supplies, and feels that her teachers have been incredibly helpful in that respect. 

PAVE Vocal

In PAVE Vocal, students are working on the song “Joyful, Joyful” from the movie “Sister Act 2.” Fairuz Saleh, a PAVE 3 student, feels that the class is very different, and much less fun. “...it gets so boring, especially when [our teacher] has to divide his time with each section,” she said. In a class that relies so heavily on singing together as a group, their teacher Mr. Jutt has had to get creative and combine students’ recordings like in PAVE Band and Orchestra. “We have to send him recordings of our voices, and then he tries to sync them together… it sounded okay this year, but it’s not the same, and I think if we had more time to rehearse together and get to know each other’s sound it would’ve sounded a hundred times better.” In addition, students can’t perform at a concert like usual, which is very disappointing, as it usually gives students the opportunity to showcase what they’ve been working on for several months. “I would say overall people are less motivated… Usually people just feel a little more energetic going into class, but not anymore. People don’t take it as seriously, I guess,” Saleh added. However, she feels that their teacher, Mr. Jutt, has made the class feel as normal as possible, and has done a great job. “Kudos to teachers for making all that happen and virtually trying to manage like 70 to 100 kids each day. That’s a lot of work, I get it. [Mr. Jutt] is very vigilant, so I think that also helps in keeping the morale up and making it like a normal chorus class, rather than everyone being on the couch doing nothing.”

PAVE Theater

In PAVE Theater, students just finished a project involving two-person scenes. Skye Hill, a PAVE 2 student, spoke of the difficulties she experienced. “We had to adapt our scenes to Zoom, couldn’t do as many movements as we usually do, and had to create new movements for Zoom. For example, if there was a kiss in the scene, we had to adapt by doing something else like grabbing a glass of water. So this situation creates a lot of difficulty with creating cohesive scenes that have movements that actually flow and make sense,” she said. Communication and being productive is also much harder, according to Hill. “We also did another project where we had to create our own costumes, sets, and character backgrounds based off of a 10-minute play we read. This situation was especially hard because we had to work in groups. For me, group work is already difficult enough in person, but on Zoom when people turn their cameras off and mute themselves, it is very hard to communicate… Overall, the virtual experience has been pretty rocky and has taken away from a lot of the fun that PAVE usually is.” 

If there’s one thing that’s for sure, this pandemic has challenged PAVE students to a whole new level: they have had to produce art like normal in circumstances that are anything BUT normal. However, there is always a positive side. Students are pushing themselves and learning how to adapt and grow as artists, despite the difficulties. After all, the show must go on!