Lively conversations filled room 253 in the Clayes Performing Arts Center as music majors gathered on Jan. 28 for the first art social of the semester, hosted by the National Association for Music Education and the American Choral Directors Association.
The clubs collaborate occasionally, and both aim to build community and share valuable information that one may not find in the classroom to help students feel better prepared for the future. While both clubs focus on teaching members practical skills, they also make an effort to incorporate a lot of fun and social events.
This semester’s art social featured stacks of colorful construction paper, boxes of crayons, along with pizza and cookies.
“I feel like not everyone is going to end up doing art, but it’s a nice excuse to hang out,” said the president of CSUF’s ACDA chapter Kaitlin Chheng, a fourth-year choral music education major. “It’s a therapeutic thing, especially when we’re all stressed with the semester, even though it’s barely started. So it’s kind of nice.”
Organizers arranged the tables so that members could sit in groups of four or six. During the three-hour event, some students played hangman, sketched characters from memory, or drew things that inspired them. While others spent the time catching up with one another and meeting new people with similar majors or interests.
Although NAfME and ACDA share similarities, the two clubs appeal to different branches of the music industry and different niches. NAfME’s main demographic is music educators. They cover music-related classroom topics such as budgeting, creating a parent organization and starting a beginning band or choir. They’ve also had speakers such as Colonel Nowlin and Beverly Berryman share their experiences as music educators, where to find jobs and contacts for students to reach out to.
ACDA is more choral-focused and meets weekly. They mainly focus on professional development, and at the end of the year, they put on a concert that is student-led and taught.
This semester, they will have speakers covering topics such as how to create and sustain a multicultural learning environment, what it’s like working with Title I districts and trauma-informed teaching.
Rekha Michael, a second-year bassoon performance major, came to the event with some friends and hopes to learn how to teach people better.
“Although I’m a performance major, I’m hopefully going to be teaching people how to play the instrument and expand my knowledge on teaching others,” Michael said.
The social was a huge success as 10 boxes of pizza were devoured, a couple of cookies were left over and many connections were made.
“We’re all kind of weird, but I mean that as a really good thing. I think we’re all very passionate about music,” said president of CSUF’s NAfME chapter Drake Bolt, a fourth-year instrumental music education major. “If you are voluntarily giving up a Wednesday night to come and hang out and talk about music, that means you must really like it. Everybody who comes to these meetings are very passionate about music education and really want to succeed.”