Graduate students from Setnor spend three weeks training with James and Coggiola on how to use the equipment, before taking the helm and leading campers at the summer session. After the students learn how to use the studio equipment and practice recording on it, a band comes in to perform with them their final week. Sophistafunk — a Syracuse-based band composed of some of Abbott’s former students — has spent the last four summers working with MTAP.
While the core message of the program has remained the same, Abbott said the biggest change has been the cultural shift in how individuals and administrators alike think about what is truly considered “inclusivity.”
“The way we teach the course, the way we do the camp, the process that we bring the graduate students and then with the campers through, a lot of that is the same,” Abbott said. “The thing that’s a little different now is that I don’t think it’s as revolutionary anymore.”
When Abbott first began the program, inclusivity was not on the forefront of education curriculums the way it is now. The concept of integrating special education and music garnered blank stares from many people Abbott encountered.
But campus is not the same environment it was a decade ago, he said. MTAP rose in prominence alongside another differentiated education program —InclusiveU — and has since opened up the SU community to members who would not previously have been accommodated for.
“It was interesting how the trajectory of the access project program came as the seeds of the InclusiveU were being planted here,” Abbott said. “These last couple of summers, we’ve had a couple of students from the InclusiveU there as campers, too.”
The importance of these education plans, Abbott said, was not to ostracize students with special needs or pigeonhole them into one learning method. If anything, the program is designed to acknowledge the differences in the learning process and adjust accordingly.
“I’m used to people who learn differently than I do,” he said. “I think having someone like Alex and this project … it’s made me really watch for those moments when I can make something better for a particular person. I never hesitate to do that.”
For this group of students, music is so much more than a hobby. Every camper, Abbott said, has an “incredible, deep, profound love for music.” When working with professional musicians such as Sophistafunk, Abbott said that love turns into Beatlemania.
“To see the looks on their faces when they walk into the studio and start working with them, it’s a mind-expanding thing when they’re there and they’re performing,” he said. “It’s very gratifying to see and to know that it has that level of impact.”
Not every student starts out with that sense of unbridled passion on full display. Some people, like Alex, freely show off their encyclopedic memory of Radiohead’s discography for anyone who asks about it. But some students can take longer than others to fully immerse themselves in the program.
One student was quieter than some of the others, more withdrawn and less interactive. But Abbott could see in his eyes an attentiveness and a close observation, despite his lack of participation.
As they were preparing to record the first of their songs, the student walked up to the bongos, sat down and played — in perfect rhythm — to the entire track. Abbott and his colleagues in the control room sat back in their seats, in complete awe.
Maybe he would not have discovered his passion for percussions, save for MTAP. But the what-ifs did not matter in that moment, Abbott said.
He said individuals with disabilities are 99.99 percent the same as their peers. For people too often defined by their .01 percent difference — in that recording studio, the student found his home.
“For someone who’s ridiculously talented at it,” Abbott said, “it just pours rocket fuel on him.”
Cover photo courtesy of Natalia Russo
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the department who told Alex he was no longer allowed to participate in art and chorus classes was misstated. Alex was told by the special education department. The Daily Orange regrets this error.
