This past academic year, I got the opportunity to participate in a pilot program called Side by Side Teaching. The concept is to pair a Denver Public School Educator with a Youth on Record Teaching Artist and co-teach a class. Through this program we learn our individual strengths as educators and go through professional development together in order to challenge and grow with one another. 

One of those classes was the Art of The Music Video co-taught with Levi Arithson from Rise Up Community School. In this class, we created objects of reflection and analyzed music videos throughout the semester, learned about poetic devices, created music, recorded a poem, and planned/shot music videos! It’s incredibly rewarding to see the students’ hard work manifested into a tangible channel of expression! They learned the navigate both Ableton and Final Cut Pro software. Someone asked me recently why Art is important, and I realized it is because we generally ask Youth to only bring parts of their life and by doing that would be asking them to be lesser versions of themselves. When we ask a student to be vulnerable, or to be honest and bring their whole selves into the classroom, they learn there is strength in opening up and inviting all of their experiences to be shared with one another. 

You can check out the students’ completed music videos here.