New programs put acoustic guitars in the hands of teachers and students
By Lissy Abraham
Acoustic Guitar Magazine, October 2001, Issue No. 106
Used with permission
To paraphrase Aristotle, "An education that doesn't include music is no education at all."
While many Americans agree with that statement, most public schools consider music an "extra" that gets short shrift. Mike Blakeslee, executive director of the National Association for Music Education, says, "There is such an emphasis on testing nowadays that teachers must focus entirely on subjects like math and reading. There just isn't enough time in the school day for many schools to have meaningful music programs." Music enthusiasts such as Will Schmid, Bill Purse, and Jessica Baron Turner have begun to challenge that notion with new guitar-oriented programs that bring music back into the classroom.
In 1994, representatives from Blakesee's group and two other organizations-, the Guitar and Accessories Marketing Association and the International Music Products Association-formed the Guitar Task Force for Revitalizing Guitar in Music Education. Focusing on grades 6 through 12, the task force's primary goal was to increase the number of students participating in active music-making, not simply attending passive classes such as music appreciation.
Bill Purse, one of the original task force members, says, "Typically, a middle or high school music program consists of band, orchestra, and choir, and about 20 percent of the student body participates. That means that, on average, 80 percent of the kids aren't getting any music education at all. We wanted to improve access to music-making for those students."
The ultimate outcome was an intensive, five-day workshop for middle and secondary music teachers. In the summer of 1995, the first of the jointly sponsored Teaching Guitar Workshops was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The workshops are now offered at six sites around the country (one is for music teachers of younger kids, grades 4-7). Each workshop accepts 25 teachers, and all attendees receive three units of graduate or continuing education credit. The program boasts about 650 alumni, virtually all of whom have subsequently added guitar to their schools' curriculums. (Before a teacher is accepted into the workshop, an administrator at his or her school must sign a contract to start a guitar program within a year and a half of completion of the course.) An estimated 200,000 students-about half of them girls-have been exposed to the guitar as a result of these workshops.
Most of the workshop attendees teach band, orchestra, or choir. About a third of them have never played the guitar at all, a third have some experience with it, and the rest are more advanced players. The comprehensive workshop syllabus starts with basics and covers such topics as strumming, improvisation, beginning solos, and beginning classical technique. Attendees learn an impressive amount of repertoire, as well as teaching methods and curriculum ideas. By the end of the week, even those who have never played guitar before can return to their schools and teach their own classes.
↑ Back to TopWhy Guitar?
According to the workshop organizers, the guitar is the perfect vehicle for getting kids into music, for many reasons. It's relatively inexpensive, compared to instruments like the clarinet and the violin, and it's appropriate for every style of music. Will Schmid, past president of MENC and the workshops' current chairman, says, "It's easy for kids this age to play songs on the guitar immediately, and it's also the easiest instrument to keep playing. It's like riding a bicycle: a student can play the guitar once a week or every other week and still feel competent."
One of the most important reasons for the guitar's success is its "hipness factor": it's a very appealing instrument, particularly to adolescents. "Getting middle and high school students interested in the guitar, and keeping them interested, is no problem," says Schmid. The guitar even reaches "at risk" students. "We've received letters from parents that say, 'The guitar class is the one thing that made my child want to go to school.'"
The guitar also provides a new entry point into a school's music program. A student who doesn't get involved in band or orchestra right away usually gets left behind. But an 11th grader, for example, can easily start taking guitar in school as a first musical experience.
Around the same time the workshops originated, several high-visibility committees developed the National Standards for Arts Education. Subtitled "What every young American should know and be able to do in the arts," the standards specify the level of competence that students should achieve in the arts by the time they complete high school. Again, the guitar does an exceptional job of meeting all nine of the content standards for music education. "Singing, playing, improvising, composing-all of these activities come naturally with the guitar," says Schmid. "Students are very motivated to write songs and make up solos, just like rock stars do." The guitar's conspicuous presence throughout history also makes it easy to achieve another of the standards, "Understanding music in relation to history and culture." While teaching the blues form, for example, teachers can discuss the birth of the blues in the context of African-American history.
Integrating guitar instruction into the classroom is one of the main focuses of the collaborative workshops. During the week, attendees prepare at least three lesson plans and present a final paper discussing how they will use the material in their own classes. When the teachers return to their schools, some start a new guitar class and others incorporate the guitar into an already existing music program. Says Schmid, "It's not a replacement for band or choir or orchestra; it's a complementary offering that can help bring new vitality to a school's music program." Many of the teachers claim that the new techniques they learned in the workshop have helped improve their overall teaching.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the workshop is that tuition and materials are free for attendees. The teachers must pay only their travel expenses and their room and board, which ranges from $180 to $500 for the week. Thanks to the generosity of some major music manufacturers, attendees receive a guitar and case worth $500 from such manufacturers as Yamaha, Fender, Taylor, and Martin and about $300 worth of accessories and teaching materials-a strap from Levy's, a Korg tuner, picks from D'Andrea, strings from D'Addario, books from Hal Leonard and Mel Bay, and so on. All the materials, guitar included, are for the teachers to keep. During the workshop, teachers can try out both steel- and nylon-string guitars and decide which is more comfortable for them.
The workshops have been so popular that in 1996 a higher-level class, called Beyond the Basics, was begun for teachers who have been through the first workshop and are looking for new ideas and resources. Teachers are so motivated to expand their guitar programs that they pay the $600 Beyond the Basics tuition themselves.
Back in their schools, the biggest obstacle the workshop graduates face is finding money for instruments and teaching materials. The workshops suggest strategies, such as applying for grants, getting parental support, and arranging donations and leases from local dealers. "Most music stores," says Schmid, "are very supportive of bringing more music into schools. Some stores have even sponsored teachers to attend the workshops. Retailers know that such programs are creating the musicians of tomorrow." NAMM provides major funding for the workshops. Last year, Sam Ash Music sponsored a site (paying the tuition for all 25 teachers), and this year Guitar Center and Mars Music are doing the same.
↑ Back to TopLittle Kids
What about younger children in elementary schools that don't have band, orchestra, choir, or a music teacher? Jessica Baron Turner, a music educator and award-winning author in Santa Cruz, California, has created a program that gives pre-kindergarten through sixth grade teachers the skills they need to bring guitars into the classroom. If you're imagining the teacher standing in front of the room with the only guitar, think again; these children are actually learning to play. And in many classes, the guitar comes out a lot more often than during the 30 minutes of designated "music time."
After several years of working in therapeutic and educational contexts with children, music making, and guitar, Turner went on to receive graduate training in the fields of psychology and learning disabilities. Her work blending these disciplines eventually led her to establish Guitars in the Classroom, a nonprofit program that operates under the auspices of the San Francisco Foundation Community Initiatives Fund.
"Kids who can't read yet typically aren't accepted into music lessons," says Turner. "But the greatest window for acquiring basic musicality occurs before age six. A four-year-old, for example, doesn't think about learning a melody-it's as basic as learning to walk. Once a child reaches the age of six, however, conceptualization overrides perception. The child starts thinking about what she's doing; she's no longer in a purely receptive state. So it's important to give children musical experiences when they're very young."
To help open the door to music for children during their most impressionable years, Turner came up with the idea of offering public elementary school teachers free guitar lessons. Starting with the premise that music is for everyone-not just "real musicians"-she designed an inspiring program for people with little or no musical experience or free time in which to practice ("the typical classroom teacher," says Turner). In 1998, the first Guitars in the Classroom pilot program took place in the Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California. Now the organization assists communities across the country in developing programs for teachers in their own local schools.
Typically, regional classes meet an hour a week year-round. In the first class, attendees learn how to hold the guitar and play an open G chord for a long time, hitting the strings with their thumb or a flatpick. They sing many different kinds of songs and learn to keep strumming with a steady beat. Anyone too afraid to sing aloud is encouraged to sing quietly with the group. The teachers play vocal games and discover that voices don't have to be "beautiful" to express music. Over time, people find their own voices and become more confident in their singing abilities. About 25 percent of the teachers play the guitar in their classrooms after only one lesson. Teachers come to the second lesson so excited-"I got the kids clapping and singing, and they loved it!"-that those who have yet to make the leap get inspired to break out the guitars in their classrooms.
The information teachers learn from these programs can serve as the only music experience children receive or be integrated into a school's already-existing music program. Teachers are provided with numerous suggestions for integrating music into academic lesson plans. For example, when a class of second graders is reading Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the teacher can introduce blues music, and children can write blues lyrics from Alexander's point of view. Songs can help students memorize scientific facts. Songs from social movements can be incorporated into history lessons. Music is also a natural for mathematics; it can teach children to count beats and recognize numerical patterns. In addition to enhancing the regular curriculum, guitars benefit classes in many other ways. Teachers can use songs to ease the transition between activities, to help students calm down or focus, and to encourage or discourage specific behavior.
Doug Breen, a teacher at Soquel Elementary School in California, had been teaching kindergarten for five years when he got involved. "I used to do a little bit of singing with the kids in class," he says, "but I had no musical background and I was too intimidated to do much more than that." Since he took a summer program, Breen has played the guitar regularly in class. "Sometimes the kids are too wound up to listen to a poem or a story, but they will always listen to a song and sing along," he says. He also finishes each day with a song. "When I take out the guitar, the kids sit down immediately and get ready to sing. Being five years old and in school for the first time can be an emotional roller coaster; the closing song provides stability and consistency. And it's a very positive way to end the day-the kids go home happy."
Guitarist Laurence Juber, a longtime GITC supporter, donated 21 guitars to Breen's school, and over the past year all the students have learned to play them in open-G tuning. "Children as young as three can play in open-G tuning," says Turner, "and as they progress, students make the transition into standard tuning." (SmartStart, a book and a video Turner created using this method, is published by Hal Leonard. A grant from Taylor Guitars provides free SmartStart books and videos to participants, but it is not a necessary part of the programs; teachers can use any method they like. A complete list of sponsors who have contributed merchandise is available at www.guitarsintheclassroom.com/company.html.)
During a typical 40-minute music class at Soquel Elementary, teacher Diane Bock splits the children into three rotating groups: one group plays guitars, one sings, and one accompanies on Orff instruments including bass bars and xylophones. (Orff Schulwerk is a popular approach for teaching music to children that teaches music the way we learn language, by making music instinctively first-singing, chanting rhymes, clapping-and learning to read and write it later.) "Children in all grades love to play guitar," says Bock. "They become comfortable and confident strumming and changing chords very quickly." At first Bock calls out the chords, but as the students become familiar with the songs they start to hear and feel where the changes occur. "We learn many songs in a short period of time," says Bock. "The children are always eager to play songs they already know as well as learn new ones. Even children who struggle academically stay in at recess or after school to play guitar."
Turner says that playing an instrument, even only occasionally, makes a difference in a child's musical self-esteem. One study indicates that kids who have no hands-on musical experiences between first and second grade go from thinking that they can "do" music to thinking that they can't. "When children start getting better at things like math and reading, it's critical that they also feel they're getting better at music," says Turner, or else they'll begin to define themselves as nonmusicians.
With GAMA's help, Turner is developing training materials to help anyone start a regional GITC program, which requires both a facilitator and a guitar instructor (although the roles could be filled by the same person). The instructor should be a solid intermediate player and a kind and patient soul who enjoys making music with others. "Teachers with adult beginners as students must be gentle and supportive," Turner cautions. "They have to like singing and teaching general music skills so they don't feel frustrated with reviewing the same chords each week. They have to be more interested in the process of teaching than in the sophistication of the musicianship.
"The guitar helps give something back to teachers; it brings joy into their classrooms," says Turner. Even more importantly, it provides children with essential exposure to music.
↑ Back to TopResources
GAMA
Guitars in the Classroom
www.guitarsintheclassroom.com
MENC
www.menc.org
Bill Purse
Pittsburgh MENC/GAMA/NAMM Teaching Guitar Workshop
(412) 396-4939
maestroBP@aol.com, koch@duq3.cc.duq.edu
Will Schmid
MENC/GAMA/NAMM Teaching Guitar Workshops
(800) 393-3655
willschmid@aol.com.
Copyright © 2001 Acoustic Guitar Magazine
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