Schools as Places of Possibility
By Alex Chadwell, Learning & Partnership Programs Manager
March 2023
My career as a teaching artist has taken me to a lot of different schools over the last seven years and every time, without fail, the first thing that hits me is that faint, sweet, rancid, and moist smell of wasted food and dish soap. As if predetermined, the smell always finds its way to the front door from its origin in the cafetorium (that cleverly designed multipurpose room that combines the cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium). Instantly, it activates the part of my brain where some of my earliest memories are saved. It’s an evocative odor. When I was in kindergarten it made me nauseous to the point of vomiting, crying, or wanting to go home, or a combination of all three. The school nurse thought I might be lactose intolerant from the milk cartons that were served every morning. The school counselor eventually correctly identified it as a physical manifestation of anxiety.
Now when that first whiff hits, I am overcome with a sense of possibility. I’m overcome because now I see schools as places of joy, creativity, community, expression, love, and learning. I didn’t always see them as such. It wasn’t until a few years into elementary school that I found my footing and began the lifelong process of constructing my identity. It was during this formative time that my passion for music and my worldview began to fuse together into an artistic identity. I treasured the possibility of creating myself, of being unique, of being an individual, of seeing myself as a knowledge generator, of cultivating an anti-deterministic view of life, of constructing an agentive identity, and of realizing my creativity. By the end of elementary school, I had claimed the identity of “musician.”
I still cherish the possibility of creating myself. I still cherish it because it’s what keeps me going. It’s how I continue making meaning in my life even when it feels like there isn’t any left to be found. When I feel down, helpless, or not good enough, I encourage myself by focusing on a future yet to come that I will be instrumental in making. It’s not a magical remedy. It’s not a panacea. It can, and often does, get buried beneath the heaviness of life, but it is never quelled to the point that it is extinguished.
This worldview, the kaleidoscopic lens through which I see and make sense of the world, is a continuously malleable perspective that is crafted by the core beliefs and values of the society and cultures I exist and participate in, of the communities I was and continue to be part of, and of the convergence of my many identities: cisgender, heterosexual, white, American, Pennsylvanian, culturally Jewish, millennial, middle-class, male, artist, creative.
One of the core beliefs underpinning my particular outlook is that I play an essential role in the ongoing creation of the life I want to experience and the world I want to be part of. It is an acknowledgement that my reality is not predetermined and my reality is not fixed. It is an affirmation that I have agency and ownership over my existence, within the context of a larger, collective responsibility. This belief is what teacher and educational philosopher, Maxine Greene, termed “social imagination.” She defined it as, “the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficient society, on the streets where we live, in our schools.” Greene posits engagement in and with the arts as a powerful mechanism to catalyze and strengthen one’s social imagination. I agree that there is a deep interrelation between social imagination and an artistic identity. I believe that my future-focused and creation-centric worldview is shaped considerably by my identity as a creative person. My work in schools is grounded in the conviction that making and experiencing art transforms students’ worldviews. Everybody doesn’t need to identify as an artist in order for this transformation to occur. Frequent aesthetic experiences support all students in seeing their lives as works of art to be made, refined, and celebrated.
I believe in a world where when students walk through the doors of their schools and that whiff of soggy food and dish soap hits their noses, they are overcome with a sense of possibility, not nausea. Music, and all arts disciplines, in schools has the remarkable ability to transform schools into places of joy, vibrancy, and possibility.
bell hooks’ book, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, has had a tremendous influence on my work as an educator, facilitator, and artist, as I know it has for so many others.
She concludes the book with an inspiring vision of what could be. “The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
Greene, M. (2000). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the Arts, and Social Change. Jossey-Bass Publishers.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge.
ABOUT ALEX
Alex Chadwell (he/him) is a musician, composer, teaching artist, facilitator, and administrator originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and currently based in Lexington, Kentucky.
As a teaching artist, he has designed and facilitated residencies, workshops, and classes with Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, the Center for Arts Education, Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra, Highbridge Voices, the New School's College of Performing Arts, the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program, PrimeLife Arts Learning, St. Nicks Alliance, and the Southeastern Theatre Conference. In the summer of 2021, he was selected to participate in the Arts Education Partnership's Arts and Literacy Thinkers Meeting Series and currently participates on their Equity Working Group.
In his current position as the Learning and Partnership Programs Manager at the Lexington Philharmonic, he is developing and implementing programming that is centered around the belief that all people should have opportunities to be invited and supported in individually and collaboratively creating art that examines and/or reflects their experiences, values and perspectives. Prior to joining the Lexington Philharmonic, he worked as an administrator at The New School's College of Performing Arts.