After last year's difficult transition from Anthony Bowen to Capital View, Tim and I decided that we'd have to do some planning at the beginning of the year to make sure everything went smoothly and that every Melodian and student benefitted from the Melody experience. Sooo, we took some time out of our busy lives to hold a meeting for returning members to discuss our goals. We pretty quickly accepted that the individual performance lesson model wasn't going to work at Capital View, but we rewrote our mission statement and decided to include more elements of "musical importance" to our lesson plans. After about an hour of interesting conversation and planning, we conducted yet another meeting (I know, right?), this one for new members as well.
At the general meeting, we established our new lesson plan model. Each week would have a theme related to music theory or music appreciation - rhythm, melody, musical genres, world music - that would involve an instrument demonstration (and, for the older kids, an introductory lesson on that instrument) and other activities related to the theme. For example, "rhythm week" featured a demonstration on drums, at which point we broke into three groups: drum basics in the conference room, conducting in one half of the main room, and "Drumline" in the other half of the main room, where we talked about the importance of the conductor and the different kinds of rhythms Mr. Mariah Carey and his friends played.
It went smashingly! While not every week was hit out of the park, in general we had much more control of what was happening than we did last year, and I think the kids got more out of it, too. I know that plenty of the highlights of my own very stressful fall semester were Melody-related.
Spring semester brought a new excitement. In my never-ending quest to earn enough credits for the music minor SFS-ers are not allowed to have, I took a class with Professor Anna Celenza, chair of the Department of Performing Arts (DPA). As luck would have it, part way through the semester she started thinking seriously about social justice and what DPA's doing to promote it. She cancelled class the Tuesday before Easter and asked each of us, instead, to schedule an appointment to talk with her about the subject. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I found out she wasn't familiar with us (shocker! someone else who doesn't even know we exist!) and, moreover, was really interested in learning about us. The plot thickens.
All right, since I don't think anyone reading this doesn't know the way the story ends, she came with us to Capital View, wowed us with her ability to stick behind us through tricky DC traffic, met the kids and the YMCA staff, and let us know that there's money in the DPA budget and that if we need some, we can have it.
Now, in general, it's people and creativity that we need most, especially at Capital View. Money, however, is always nice, especially since our resources have been stretched pretty thin (the rainforest drums have definitely seen better days...) Moreover, with more funding and some good recruiting, the option of going to both Capital View and Anthony Bowen is open. As a person who's always been all about band and the benefits of music in education, I am really excited about reaching more kids. In short: I think things are looking good for next year!
Hearts and kisses,
Eileen
