OUR STORY
Keys 2 Success was founded by Jee-Hoon Krska a Juilliard-trained classical musician with a doctorate in Electrical Engineering from MIT who wanted to provide the young children of Newark the cultural enrichment available to her own children, growing up in a privileged suburban community.
Launched in 2016 with 12 students at the South Street School, which draws students from Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood – including Pennington Court public housing – K2S now teaches 100 students during the school year and in the summer program also held in Newark.
El Sistema
Keys 2 Success Program is modeled on the internationally renowned El-Sistema music-education program, devoted to bringing music education to disadvantaged communities as a vehicle for social change. Through our focus on the keyboard, each student develops 1) a conceptual framework built on music theory training 2) musical and ensemble skills, and 3) performance opportunities to develop self-confidence and poise while gaining exposure to the world outside their community. Combining these three components, the program offers a comprehensive basic musical education on par with that offered by private music schools.
Research on the El-Sistema program indicates that early involvement with Sistemas reduced the risk of children joining gangs by giving them an alternative group to belong to. These inclusive music programs provide a sense of belonging to a community and the larger world. Research indicates that social exclusion shadows poverty, and isolation in turn affects emotional well-being. This, coupled with the research findings that a key reason for gang membership is the psychological drive to belong to group, suggests that there is a real need for a program like K2S (Tunstall, Tricia & Booth, Eric. "Playing for Their Lives: The Global El Sistema Movement for Social Change through Music" Stanford Social Innovation Review, Standford University, September 13, 2016, pars 7-13). K2S reaches the lowest socio-economic group in Newark (household of four income below $28,600) at an early age with classical music education. A network of caring adults deliver enriching educational opportunities while simultaneously building a sense of belonging to a community of musicians.
Keys 2 Success takes the El Sistema model and adds another layer to it. In believing that music is a vehicle for social change, our objective is not just to elevate the achievement of the lowest socio-economic group, but to change perceptions across various socio-economic groups to engender true inclusion.
Breaking Down Barriers
The El Sistema school of thought is unlike most mainstream classical music programs that are built for the affluent majority to thrive in and bring in the socio-economically disadvantaged with scholarships and transportation. Therefore, these programs typically attract the "cream of the crop" minorities. While valuable (the founder of K2S herself has personally benefited from these programs), these programs fail to reach the children born into generational poverty because their set up is culturally too foreign and intimidating.
K2S is designed for the generationally poor living in Newark’s public housing projects. Our program gives such children priority, keeping their numbers to at least 30%, and seeks to bring out the best in children who are often typecast as challenging. The program also attracts the relatively better-resourced immigrant community in the Ironbound. Initially, there is tension in this intersection. Yet a group bubbles to the top that embraces this diversity, creating a truly inclusive environment, and serving as a motivational model for the other children. Through a healthy competitive spirit that drives dedication to their music practice to do better than the other, the children break down social and cultural barriers that have historically existed in Newark’s neighborhoods. What comes as a surprise to the observer is, first, the cross-cultural respect and camaraderie, and next that given the attention and resources, the children’s achievement becomes independent of their socio-economic group. These outcomes are not limited to a few students, but extend to the majority of the program participants, making us hopeful that with the right approach, the potential to strive and thrive can be transferred to academics and other areas of life.
Connecting Communities
One of the most unique and powerful aspects of Keys 2 Success is the ongoing creation of connections between our Newark students and communities from surrounding counties. By involving volunteers in mentorship, instruction, and philanthropy, both communities and the organization have been able to thrive through difficult times, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consistency is key when working with a population of students whose lives are often upended by forces outside their control. For example, Newark Public Schools have twice the teacher turnover rate than the New Jersey state average. Partnering with organizations and individuals in surrounding counties has allowed Keys 2 Success to provide ongoing support to Newark students through mentoring and instruction. This pool of volunteers has a genuine concern for our students and believes deeply in the Keys 2 Success mission and vision. Keys 2 Success is also grateful for the many parent and local volunteers from Newark who provide an opportunity for instant personal connection with the students. These volunteers, combined with a strong and growing board, are a part of how Keys 2 Success was able to continue to thrive with little interruption to instruction and services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Volunteers include high school students, retirees, and all ages in between. The younger generation of volunteers benefits not only from learning professional skills, but also through connecting with younger students who are different from themselves. By providing a mentorship role to students, Keys 2 Success encourages a positive attitude change and fulfillment. Volunteerism for retirees has even more benefits; Studies have shown that retirees who volunteer have “significantly higher degree of life satisfaction, stronger will to live, and fewer symptoms of depression, [and] anxiety” than those who do not (Hunter & Linn, 1981).
One example of this established bridge between the communities is the Pen Pal program. Inspired by adult volunteers who wrote “fan mail” to the young pianists during the pandemic as a way to encourage the students, Keys 2 Success students have now partnered with high school students from the Union County Vocational-Technical School newspaper club to create an official Pen Pal program. The adult volunteers now assist the Keys 2 Success students as they write letters to their high school penpals. The high school volunteers have become a pipeline for Keys 2 Success interns as well.
Fostering Equity, Economic Empowerment, and Social Justice
In the ongoing Black Composers Series Project, K2S aims to inspire students, support professional musicians of color, and bring awareness of new and rising talent to the Newark community and the classical community at large. The 2021-2022 portion of this series will also include the production of a video following students through the composition, rehearsing, and recording process.
According to a 2014 study by the League of American Orchestras, less than 2% of musicians and just over 4% of conductors in American orchestras are African American. Composers in the classical realm also remain largely White. While it is not the organization’s goal for all students to become professional classical musicians, a long-term goal remains to prepare both students and the classical world for a more racially diverse community. The Black Composers Series has a long-term goal of creating a change in attitude, perception, and skills for students and their communities at large.
Short-term anticipated student outcomes of the series include increased knowledge and skills regarding the composition process, performance skills, and familiarity with orchestral instruments. As Keys 2 Success’s core tenants include a focus on equity, students will also discuss and analyze how differences in race are perceived in their local classical community and beyond. Keys 2 Success faculty, staff, and volunteers have received professional training on racial issues and incorporating social-emotional skills in the arts. Therefore, further anticipated student outcomes include increases in positive self-perception, confidence, self-efficacy, and trust in themselves, involved adults, and the classical community at large.
Building STEAM
We reach out to the urban children within Newark to create educational and social opportunities to promote STEAM-based (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) learning with the ultimate objective of developing the whole child. The K2S program focuses on the arts – specifically music – as engagement with the arts is known to improve memory, language skills, confidence, and social and emotional development – a springboard for higher-level STEM learning (Chordia, Parag, "The Magical, Musical STEM Connection" US News & World Report, May 9, 2014, pars 7-10).
The connection between math and music is widely recognized. There is a strong correlation between learning music and spatial and temporal reasoning that is called upon to understand mathematical and scientific concepts. Learning music draws upon and reinforces math skills: counting, rhythm, scales, intervals, symbols, harmonies, time signatures, overtones, tone, pitch are interconnected with fractions, ratios and patterns. Further, music provides a framework to understand abstract concepts (such as sinusoids and harmonics) making them concrete and fun. In support of an early childhood music program, brain-imaging studies have shown greater changes in brain structure in individuals who began music education earlier rather than later (Hetland, Lois "Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning", Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol 34, No 3/4, 2000, pp. 179-238, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3333643) .
At least six of the multiple intelligences defined by Howard Garner in Frames of Mind are harnessed for sustained periods when making music: musical (e.g. to think with timber, tones and melodies), visual-spatial (understanding spatial relations such as those depicted on the keyboard), bodily kinesthetic (fine and gross motor skills are required in fingering), logical/mathematical (e.g. to discern patterns, note values, part-whole relationships), communication (e.g to communicate between student and teacher, performer and ensemble, performer and audience), and interpersonal (e.g.to express emotion through sound). Through this exposure, students begin to have an intuitive understanding of their preferred learning style/strength – this sense helps them within the classroom.