pInstruments for Equity & Inclusion in Music Education

Rich and Adam from pBone Music spoke to Traci Prescott, Fine Arts Coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools, and how they have embraced pInstruments in their schools.

Rich Breske: Thank you for joining us today. We're here with Traci Prescott, the Fine Arts Coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools. She has graciously agreed to talk to us about the Fine Arts programs at Indianapolis Public Schools and how they've incorporated pInstruments in every elementary school in the district.

Traci, thanks for joining us. Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background, and a quick summary of how you got where you are.

Traci Prescott: I have been teaching for 32 years. I came into this role in June of 2023. And before that, I taught elementary general music. I taught middle school and high school band. I taught middle school orchestra. I feel like I've pretty much done it all and paid my dues in about every way I could except for choir.

Coming into the role here in Indianapolis Public Schools has been really fun. I came in at a perfect time when we were finishing up COVID relief funds, as well as reorganizing our entire district into a zone model, replicating some of our more popular models like International Baccalaureate, Montessori, and STEM.  There's been a lot of change in the last year, including putting pInstruments into all 34 schools.

It's been exciting, and the teachers have really latched onto the pInstruments and the ease of using them. In fact, we're ordering even more!

Rich Breske: That’s great.  You wanted to include pInstruments. What issues were you trying to solve?

Traci Prescott: Our issue was that we had elementary schools over here that had full sets of xylophones, full sets of ukuleles, boomwhackers, guitars, all kinds of things and then we had schools over here that had like a box of rhythm sticks and some old triangles and sound blocks.  We had a great disparity in our corporation with haves and have-nots. The goal was to have every single music room in this district with everything they needed so that instruments and equipment were not the obstacle to their teaching. 

Rich Breske: And so how did pInstruments get added into that list? 

Traci Prescott: As a former band director / elementary general music teacher, I saw that these would give the kids some experience on band instruments before they even get to middle school since we were moving the band, orchestra and choir programs to middle school (and out of elementary).

We had a PD day and I had all of the pInstruments there. Teachers were enamored with them as well wiht the cost level where they were and the quality. We did a little experiment at one of the PDs where we had a metal trumpet and a pTrumpet behind a screen, so they couldn't tell which was which. Honestly, most of them could not tell the difference. Even people who play trumpet, that day couldn't tell the difference between the two, which was really kind of cool too. 

Learn more from Traci about Indianapolis teachers' first experiences with pInstruments.

Reaching Hispanic Families in Indianapolis

Rich Breske: Tell me a little about, about your Hispanic outreach, that culture, that genre. How did this PD and pTrumpet help with that? 

Traci Prescott: Well, the big thing is looking at the demographics. Within the next couple years, we will be more than 50 percent Latino in our population, and those numbers have exploded in the past 10 years. Historically, we were demographically more black. Now the city is changing, the outlying counties around our city are changing and we are moving more towards being 50 percent Latino.

It is really important to support this movement in fine arts, making sure that we are connecting with our Latino students, since they're going to be the majority of the ones sitting in our classrooms. 

I brought Ramón Rivera in because when I took Ramón's session at Modern Band Summit two years ago, he taught me how to connect better with Latino students. The mariachi and the pBuzz thing were a super big added bonus, but teaching and connecting with Latino students was really the reason why I brought him in. And the teachers in the feedback mentioned how he was so helpful in teaching them ways that they could connect with their Latino students. 

Rich Breske: Sure. And that's really important from our standpoint too, because it's not about the instruments, it's about the students, the families and their cultures, whether it's mariachi, Cubano or other Latin styles. Horns are used significantly in a lot of different genres. If we can make those more accessible, and that gives the teacher a better chance to connect.

So where do you think things are headed now? Any surprises?

Traci Prescott: A lot of teachers changed what they had planned to do at the beginning of the year and moved to using pBuzz. They felt like it would engage the kids so much more. For some schools, this is the first time in a number of years they might have had music classes.

So obviously the teacher was looking for something to hook them right away and get them interested in enjoying music class. pBuzz really seemed to be the thing that they thought would do that. And now that we are - what we're in our fourth week, maybe third or fourth week of school, that absolutely has happened.

So that's really neat to watch because it was definitely a good investment, to put the money into putting all those in there because it's really revolutionary for some of the teachers who have been teaching for a long time. This is something brand new for them. So that's kind of fun. But then the teachers who are brand new to teaching, the pBuzz is just so accessible for them that they are having a great time with that one.

Learn more from Traci about students’ first experiences with pBuzz in the elementary classroom.

pInstruments Contribute to Success in Band

Rich Breske: The district has also invested in more traditional band instruments. One of the things that we've seen, multiple times, is that when the elementary programs include pInstruments, more students want to join band as they go forward.

Even from a beginning band standpoint, some schools use the pInstruments to get started and save the metal instruments for once they learn how to not, for example, drop the slide.

Traci Prescott: There is another great band benefit about having these at the elementary level.  At the beginning of each year, my colleague and I were going to some of the middle schools to help with instrument testing, to help kids figure out what instrument they want to play in beginning band.

You always have a handful of kids that say: "I want to try the clarinet." Then they struggle to make a sound. "Okay. I want to try the flute, and struggle to make a sound on that. "Okay. The saxophone"... they don't get a good sound on that either. But when you get to the trumpet, if they've come up with this pBuzz or the pTrumpet or the trombone in the elementary level, I know they're going to be able to make a sound on something because they've already done it.

It's always heartbreaking when I get a kid that just for whatever reason cannot make a sound on anything. You know, I see that happening a lot less as the elementary teachers are using these instruments because at least they will have a brass experience, and then you have lots of options about what instrument to put them on if they want to go with band.

Rich Breske: That's awesome. Give the kids the opportunity to be successful. That's all we're trying to do. 

Traci Prescott: We've reopened two of our middle schools this year and we put band, orchestra and choir programs in all seven middle schools. This is the first time since I've been here that we have had band, orchestra and choir offered at every single middle school. It is not even just specifically thinking about band, but just getting them excited about music - whether they choose band or they choose orchestra or choir, everything is an access point and especially when you show our Latino students, "We value mariachi. We value your culture. We value your language." That is going to connect with them and they're more likely to join one of the three ensembles when they get to middle school. 

Rich Breske: I do have a question about your band teachers. Often the band teachers are not receptive to plastic instruments. And it's fair because there have been bad plastic instruments.

Can you tell me a little bit about this experience with the band teachers?

Traci Prescott: We have a lot of new teachers because we just opened all these programs. For a lot of them, the PD day was our very first day of school for teachers. There were some of them that I had never even met. But I know there were some of them coming into this thinking, "Why are we getting these plastic trumpets?" There was just a lot of skepticism coming into it.

But then once they got going on it, I don't think they thought anymore about it. Now,I think that everybody in our band positions would agree that those would be perfectly fine to substitute if we did not have the funds, if it means that we have kids who can no longer play in our ensembles because they don't have an instrument, it would definitely be a great option for us to explore. I don't think anybody would be like, "Nope, sorry. We're not going to take you in band, cause we don't have enough instruments, because we're only going to buy these expensive brass ones." I don't think anybody would be that way now that they've experienced them. 

Rich Breske: I think that's appropriate too, because we all want to see the kids play on high quality metal.

Traci Prescott: Absolutely! 

I don't know whether you know this. Last school year, we have one high school that teaches a class called Fine Arts Connections, where it's a basically a freshman elective and it's an elective that most freshmen take because it fulfills their fine arts requirement for our diploma program in Indiana. In that class, they cycle through a semester or nine weeks of band nine weeks of theater, nine weeks of piano and then, nine weeks of art. 

Last year, they purchased about 30 of the pTrumpets and now, because of that class, a lot of those freshmen kids, when they scheduled for their sophomore year, they joined a band because they realized, "Oh, I can play an instrument. I can do this." They ended up signing up for some of our ensembles after that experience, which was really cool to see, too. 

Rich Breske: That's cool. That makes that class even more valuable, for everybody. 

Adam McCulloch: How would you advise another district if they were going through this decision-making process themselves, if they were wanting to introduce some of our instruments into the classroom?

Traci Prescott: Yeah, I think the first step is getting the opportunity for those teachers to have them in their hands. That's the biggest piece of it because I was even skeptical, and I'm a flute player, I was skeptical when I first looked at them thinking "How do these sound?"

Well, then when we played them and, "Okay, it sounds just like a real trumpet without the price tag of the real trumpet", so I just think if you're seriously looking at increasing access in your district to have more kids be able to play instruments. I don't know why you wouldn't look at these as an alternative.

You don't have to worry so much about the damage happening. We have name brand metal instruments at the high school level, but the high school directors are afraid to give them to beginner students. They don't know if they will take care of them. So these pInstruments are a great option for them because we can still get them started, but not have the worry that a $3000 trumpet might get dropped and, you know, it's done.

Rich Breske: We do thank you for the comments, Traci, and obviously thank you for spearheading this experience. I'll say thanks from pBone Music and I'll say thanks for the kids.

Watch Traci’s Full Interview.