School Music Classes Change Their Tune In Coronavirus Overhaul

Classrooms in New Hampshire have changed dramatically to reopen safely in the pandemic, and some of the biggest changes are in music class. Gone are the days of belting out songs shoulder to shoulder, sharing music stands, and swapping instruments. Instead, as NHPR’s Sarah Gibson reports, some schools are following new protocols to bring music back but keep COVID-19 risk low.

In band teacher Ian Nelson’s classroom, there is no such thing as a “new normal.”

“We’re taking each thing that you would take for granted and trying to find a solution to that problem,” he says. “Every day is pretty much a whole new adventure.”

Nelson’s classes at West Running Brook Middle School in Derry reopened in a hybrid model, with cohorts coming to the school a few days a week. His classroom, once full of students goofing off and playing instruments into each other’s faces, hums with air purifiers and has about a third of the students it did before the pandemic.

Without these kinds of precautions, music classes would be risky. Singing or playing an instrument requires lots of breath, sending out spit and small respiratory droplets (aerosols) that could contain COVID-19 and float in the air for hours.

This summer, a group of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and University of Maryland – chaired by the College Band Directors National Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations – began studying how COVID-19 could spread among performing artists.

Read the rest of the story at NHPR’s website.