For the past eleven years I have been designing and implementing my own programs and curriculums for the pre-kindergarten right up through sixth grade age groups.
The preceding 11 years ('85-'96) included creating both a guitar program for 260 students a year, (yes, you read that right) and a keyboard program following. (Yep, 260 again.)
Well, in short, it worked. I developed an approach which enabled over 90% of my students to perform a large spectrum of guitar chords, several guitar patterns (riffs), and melodic playing as well. The 10% who did not succeed, failed, I believe, only because they WOULD NOT make the effort.
I developed a similar model for the Keyboard program, but something else began to develop, almost within the first week.
One by one, students from each group of 48 would come up to me before or during class, asking if they could perform a “solo” piece on my teacher’s acoustic piano in the front of the room, which I would instruct from.
From the outset, the students were taking the chords and patterns I had taught them, and they were now COMPOSING piano music that was their own. These "solos" became part of our music period, needing serious blocks of time, especially when there were 9 or 10 hands going up at the same time, all volunteers with something new, ready to go.
Can you imagine my thrill with all of this, and witnessing the same thing in all six groups? A variety of musical styles from all regions of the world, jazz, baroque, classical, impressionistic, Chopin-like romantic styles, ragtime, blues, ethnic folk music suggestive of Asian, Russian, Arabic, Hispanic, and, well, American! It was a potpourri of any and everything.
People didn't know what to compare it to. I would invite school administrators to come in and witness what was happening. Even Rudolph Giuliani. the then Mayor of New York City, possibly heard about it from his wife, Donna Hanover. She was with me, witnessing this phenom in action. It clearly wasn’t your conventional school band or chorus.
My seven years that followed on the elementary level found me desiring to shift towards Drama and Musical Theatre. For one thing, I had no music room, and the children had no access to instruments. So I encouraged the playwriting and skit development which opened up a new genre for me to cultivate more of that “creative fruit” I was applying the "green thumb" towards.
Producing and Directing Summer Theater camps were another part of my professional work right until Karen and I heeded an unanticipated call to relocate up to Vermont. Spurred on by a long range vision for a Creative oriented Theater Arts center one day in the future, we moved in August of 2004, commencing this new chapter in our lives with the commitment to build new programs, with all we had to give, within the Castleton Hubbardton area of central Vermont.
A great surprise to me was a flood of inspiration, since moving to Vermont, that is “driving” me to pursue my OWN creative projects, in addition to my development of student work that I have described in my “Out of the closet” blog of June 29, 2007. (Is there something "special" in the air or the water, here in Vermont?
What I haven’t discussed until now is the fact that 4 and 5 year olds, volunteer to come up to the piano, standing, not sitting, and proceed to “make” music. Yeah, pretty much like what I've been talking about up until now. There are children that only need encouragement and a little bit of guidance. Then they improvise a story, on the spot. They sing the story while accompanying themselves. They might be matching their melodic creativity to the accompaniment, finding the same key. Or they are expressing in the accompaniment the theatrical mood of the story they are singing. Others who are not quite ready to sing are telling stories through their fingers.
You’ve got to see it to believe it.
And if my guess is right, based on what I witnessed in New York City, the children will absorb what their more adventurous classmates are doing, and they will follow, doing the same. I can pretty safely predict that most of them will be singing and playing their own improvised musical stories.
At ALT we will rely on that same “green thumb” that has brought success in the schools we have given ourselves to over the years. And what time constraints I've always had to work under. But not here at ALT. We'll have plenty of time. Finally! Time! Wow! Now, as long as the thumb stays "green". So hopeth Karen and yours truly.
Until next time. Leslie
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1 comment:
Hi Mr. Klami et al.
Just wanted to let you know that I was a student of Mr. Klami's in the late 80's at McKinley JHS. He was a wonderful teacher and developed a wonderful program. I play guitar to this day and he was my first itnroduction to the instrument.
That aside those who failed were not because of the music program. The ones who failed had outside influences that affected their ability to grow and cope within a school framework. Everyone is familiar with the inner city stories.
I just hope that I can serve as an artificact and say that I was a product of those same factories. Made misteps and course corrections. I suppose we all have choice in life. For myself, I searched the internet to see what "Mr. Klami" with the rocking Black Beauty Les Paul was doing. From Kindergarten to getting my Master's Mr. Klami, taught one of my most favorite and memorable classes ever. I only wish that I never learned to cheat playing a G major chord using an index finger, to this day I have never been able to break out of the habit and it makes for certain other techniques more difficult.
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