Jana Fallin, Kansas State University

As a new faculty member at Kansas State University eight years ago, I attended a Rural and Small Schools conference held on our campus. To find that no arts events or sessions were scheduled for the program disturbed me. Children in rural and small schools also have needs for the arts.

After meeting with Associate Dean Dr. Jerry Horn, the director of the Rural and Small Schools Conference, I quickly learned that I was not the only person with these concerns. Dr. Horn had conducted a survey of administrators of rural and small school districts. From this survey, he found that the second item listed under "needs" was arts experiences and education for students.

Conversations with Dr. Horn revealed that many rural and small schools can't attract teachers due to the location of the school. This is true even for those districts which have special funding allocated for this purpose. Because of the distance involved, attendance at concerts and other arts events is quite limited for the students in these districts.

Kansas has a large number of these small districts as do other Midwestern and Upper Midwestern states. Often one music teacher is hired to teach all the music education curriculum within the district. Meeting this need through distance education was challenging for me.

Kansas State University houses the Regents Educational Communication Center (ECC) in Bob Dole Hall on the main campus. This state-of-the-art facility is capable of producing televised learning situations through satellite links to schools and buildings equipped with fiber optic connections. It was a logical step to take advantage of this center which could produce music education opportunities for students in these rural areas.

Dr. Horn secured a grant with which I was able to develop a music in-service training session for teachers. Eighty teachers in eight states participated in the in-service. During the development of this session, I had the experience to learn about teaching through a TV monitor. Additionally, I presented music sessions for two years at the Rural and Small Schools Conference.

As my interest in music education as distance education continued to grow, I conducted a survey of music educators who had attended the K-State Summer Music Symposium. (The results are published in the 1992 Southeastern Journal of Music Education.) From this survey, I learned that over 95% of the teachers polled would utilize concerts presented through distance education. Many of the teachers are from rural and small districts.

In providing music events and experiences for students in rural areas, my next step was the development of a concert experience. The ECC provides grant opportunities to faculty interested in using the facility. I received a grant to develop a concert series which would be shown at rural and small schools settings.

In the designing the concert experience, a decision was made to use a group of children involved in a violin project at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School in Manhattan, Kansas as the performing group. Several reasons influenced this decision. The violin project was innovative in itself and needed to be documented. An elementary classroom teacher using the Multiple Intellegence writings of Howard Gardner designed the project. Every child in a multiage classroom from kindergarten to third grade was given a violin provided by Hume Music Company of Topeka as part of their regular curriculum. A violin teacher was hired and spent an afternoon per week with the class. Exciting results were discovered in all areas of learning. This concert could be providing documentation of an exemplary school project.

Another factor in the decision was locating a performance medium which would appeal to elementary-age students. Children watching the concert hopefully would enjoy seeing their peers as performers. Additionally, the group of young violinists were convenient to me. Logistics were easily worked out involving transporting children to filming sessions, getting permission requests signed, and working with the teachers in the project.

In writing the script, I wanted to use an idea which would pique the interests of the viewers and not just another filming of a live concert with different camera shots of various performers. Using the concept of environments as the central them became the focus. The concert film begins at school, an environment children know well, where the violinists are preparing for the concert. Then we use the environment of nature, a place not always associated with concerts, where we see the children playing their violins on the Konza Prairie. The Konza is a virgin prairie reserve near Manhattan where research is conducted on native grasses and plants of the plains. We end the film with the concert at the Columbian Theater, a restored historic theater in Wamego, Kansas.

The script which is read by children on the film was the result of suggestions from children's writings. The effort was to produce a film which would be an art work in itself, and also a learning experience for the viewers. Completion of the project involved many hours of filming and editing. Several hours worth of tape were cut to produce a product under fifteen minutes in length. Editing is a tedious process requiring multiple viewings of sections of film. The most demanding process is arranging the edited version into a sequence which flows well and is meaningful to the viewer. A talented young man who worked for the ECC, Steve Fanzler, provided the technical help for the final stages of the work.

The decision to make the concert into a video to be sent to teachers rather than as a satellite uplink was propelled mainly by funding, or the lack of funding. Also, the desire to get as many students as possible to see the film was a deciding factor. The director the the ECC, Mel Chastain, felt by using a video format we could get the tape to many teachers who wanted to use it and could continue the research. Distribution of the concert video along with a questionnaire to be completed by individuals using the film will bring closure to the grant. Hopefully, data collected through the questionnaire will lead to related projects dealing with meaningful concerts for children.

The grant written to produce a three-concert series for satellite has become a one-concert experience on video. This distillation process has served as a wise teacher for me. The result of the learning hopefully will be a useable product for teachers in many schools. In the meantime, I continue to pursue my interest of providing quality music education for rural and small school constituents and for other interested viewers.