North-Grand High School Music Director Fabian Lopez Advocates for After-School Programming

Posted Monday, November 11, 2024

Midnight Sweaters following their performance at the CPS Reverberate Festival 2024.

At North-Grand High School, we use music classes as a catalyst for academic and social change and development. As an example, students are expected to maintain good standing grades across all subject areas and be an active participant of the academic community. Music students also hold one-another accountable and support each other to achieve at higher levels. At times, frequent absences in student attendance can be an issue as result of uncontrollable situations that may be affecting them at home. Students in our music program are challenged to come to school more regularly and make their education a priority. We do this in a number of ways but constant communication and check-in’s are conducted with students to see what their academic needs may be, and to continue to support their involvement in the music program.

Our Music program is a place for students to have a safe space to express themselves and voice their concerns. We pride ourselves on having this space available to meet the needs of students’ emotional learning needs. Additionally, students learn to work together as a team and take on leadership roles within the band program. Leaders assist and work with their peers to resolve conflict and cater to the social needs of the band. Several of our students often have deep traumatic home life experiences or deep financial troubles that often conflict with their learning environment. Having the proper resources to help students and their families in this way is often a challenge. More attention and resources could be used to help families with the tools needed to cope with the social-emotional needs of students.

Over time, the Music department has built a small community of parent and alumni engagement that contributes to our overall success as a music program. We often have students who return as CPS volunteers who give their time to work with current music students in after-school programming, attend field trips with our students, and mentor graduating students. A majority of our students come from outside of the immediate neighborhood. As a result, expanding our parent engagement can be at times a challenge. We need more activities and events directed to parents to help engage them with our school and invite them to become more involved and have more resources to educate on the reasons why school is important. We also need to increase the amount of events that are multilingual so that parents feel that this is a safe and inviting space to come to despite any language barrier that may exist.

As an arts department, we would like to see more professional development and opportunities to work with multiple artists across the city with the goal being to expose our students to the rich amount of art that already exists in the City of Chicago. So many of our students believe that access to quality performance spaces, galleries, and other arts spaces are beyond the reach of the everyday Chicago Public School student. With a partnership like CAPE, we can bridge the gap to allow students to help them feel like this is their city too and they can access some of the most amazing and tangible art that the City of Chicago has to offer. Having more professional spaces for students to perform and see professional performances as a method of learning how to be an artist, would be a much needed goal.

Midnight Sweaters’ first encounter with CAPE in Summer 2023, with teaching artist Nick Meryhew and NGHS Music Director Fabian Lopez (both on far left).

Midnight Sweaters began in the 2022-23 school year as an after school program that was not initially affiliated with CAPE. The first time it was held in collaboration with CAPE was in the summer of 2023, and as such throughout the school year there were varying degrees of student buy-in to CAPE’s inquiry based learning philosophies and culture. On the micro level, there was a period of slight growing pains (with some students more than others) as they acclimated to having two teaching artists in the room.

The opportunity to perform at the CAPE gallery for Teen Night in Spring of 2024 was a symbolically important invitation for Midnight Sweaters to more actively participate in the CAPE community, to witness the work of their peers, and to socially connect with other teens pursuing music and art making in similar contexts. CAPE has been a transformational partnership for our Music program students because it helped to foster a larger push towards collaboration of multiple artists and teen musicians.

The Midnight Sweaters performing for fellow students during Teen Night 2024 at CAPE in Bridgeport.

Midnight Sweaters performing at NGHS’s hispanic heritage month performance. Students chose music in Spanish by Mana and Mon Laferte.

Having CAPE as a partner helped the Midnight Sweaters and the school music program grow and enhance at a faster rate than not having any partnership at all. Having CAPE as a partner also opened the opportunity for more students to be served and for us to work in tandem with artists that have expertise in certain instruments. As a result, the partnership with CAPE was reminiscent of a high level “conservatory style” type approach where students could really take a deeper dive into their instruments and learn from multiple artists.

The continuation of the after-school music programming is essential for North-Grand HS. The Midnight Sweaters, as well as many other students, will benefit from sustained investments in after-school programs that build community and are deeply engaging for students. In addition, the faculty would also love to be able to collaborate with a range of teaching artists across the arts disciplines in order to connect North-Grand’s arts curriculum with Chicago’s diverse and innovative arts community.