School Music Administration During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Trauma, Loss, Meaning, Change, and Innovation

On Friday, March 13, 2020, the School District of Osceola closed its doors for Spring Break and did not open again until 3 weeks later in a digital capacity. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way teachers and students learned. The band, chorus, and orchestra classrooms were empty, and replaced with digital meetings with the need to unmute and turn cameras on. This study is an autoethnographic narrative of my life during the COVID-19 pandemic as a district resource for the teachers that I serve. While music administration has existed in many forms over the past 100 years, there are no definitive explanations of what the role of a music administrator looks like, or should be, especially during a pandemic. In this autoethnography I tell the story of how music education has been affected by, in what ways have teachers have had to adjust to, and how music education has changed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the lens of a digital student and music educator, I bring the correspondence and organic stories of teachers in my district to the reader with the hopes of understanding what I have lived through as a music administrator over this period of profound change and innovation in music education. The loss and grief suffered by teachers and myself shaped the way pedagogy changed and adapted for students who have also suffered loss and grief. Through this experience of trauma and loss has come change and a need for innovation. This innovation may come in many forms, not just in what is referred to as innovative practices in a classroom, but novel (to some teachers) ways to educate and reach students. This is my story