Voice instructors adapt to teaching in a pandemic
Students participate in vocal seminar while wearing masks and practicing social distancing. Photo courtesy of Professor Bakara Nkenge-Hinds.
As Bakara Nkenge-Hinds sits down at the piano to begin her first lesson of the day, a mask covering the instrument she has spent years perfecting and a plexiglass barrier between her and the student, one thing is clear: this is not the way she envisioned her first semester teaching at Trevecca Nazarene University.
Nkenge-Hinds, an adjunct voice instructor, is well-prepared for the job of training vocalists on a college campus, but nothing could have prepared her for the challenges of teaching students in the middle of a global pandemic-- a pandemic that is riskier for singers because of the airborne-nature of the COVID-19 virus.
“Bei...