Tuesday January 06th 2009, 2:13 pm
Filed under: Education
There’s still hope for students whose school music programs have gone the way of the buffalo (or who would prefer rocking out as opposed to Little League or soccer practice). The Paul Green School of Rock Music teaches kids not only music theory and how to play their instruments, it also teaches kids the fundamentals of performing in front of a live audience. The idea being, you can’t have a rock show without (a) an audience, and (b) crazy lights and a fog machine.
And, really, most kids are learning to play an instrument for only one of three reasons:
(1) Their parents are making them.
(2) They hope someday to perform with a world-renowned symphony and maybe have a stunning violin solo.
(3) They are biding their time learning guitar in the standard guitar-learning setting until they can absorb enough guitar knowledge and gather enough of their middle school friends to finally get their band going so they can be ass-kicking rock stars on tour with roadies and groupies by the age of 21.
Aspiring rockers can enroll in any of the three semesters throughout the year. Students can learn how to play the keyboard, guitar, drums, or bass, and take voice instruction. Every week, students participate in a 45-minute lesson and a three-hour group rehearsal. The school also offers summer camp sessions where students get lessons in recording their own music and marketing.
Mr. Green grew up playing guitar and bass. He taught music lessons and played gigs to pay his way through college. Ultimately, his lessons turned into jam sessions when he asked his students to collaborate with him – and play the music they were individually learning. That’s when the idea for the school emerged. In 1998, Mr. Green opened up the first School of Rock in Philadelphia.
Now, 10 years later, there are 45 schools across the country, with 20 more schools set to open.
Seattle has a School of Rock should my kiddos ever want to test their rock-star mettle.
The idea of attacking something monumental is usually so overwhelming, none of us wants to even begin. When staring a blank dissertation or thesis in the face, most mortals would happily volunteer to do Sherpa duty for a climber up Mt. Everest. Or chew glass. Or shove ice picks under our fingernails. Pretty much anything but having to sit and write something intelligent (even intelligible would be good).
The guest post The Graduate Educator has up about good advice to follow regarding the writing of a dissertation reminded me of this story of my stubbornness being vainly pitted against my Dad’s. (I lose).
During the spring semester of my sophomore year at Cal State, I spent the term in New Zealand and Australia. One of my courses was an independent study course for which I had only to do some research and write a big fat paper on the marine ecology of the South Pacific. I’d done the research–literally up and down the two islands of New Zealand in every city and university library along the way.
I arrived back in the States with a huge pile of Xeroxed pages (it was the 1990s, and the “Internets” weren’t so much). All I had to do was read through the pile and spew out the information in a new and interesting form for my biology prof. It was May, and the paper was due by August. I hadn’t had a break from the academics all term, so I was ready to not think and to start making some money at my summer job, working as an electrician’s apprentice with my Dad.
Too bad for me my Dad’s a total workaholic pain in the ass (I come by it honestly, it seems). He found out about the unwritten paper, and despite how much he needed my help, he told me no job until the paper was written and he’d proofread it for me. I was pissed, and spent at least three days ranting and stomping my drama-queen way around my Mother’s house, waiting in vain for my Dad to call and tell me he’d changed his mind. That never happens, by the way, and at age 20 I should have known better.
By Day Four I’d realized the ranting wasn’t getting me anywhere (he lived in a different house in a different town, so it’s not like he was having to listen to me yell) so I sat my ass down and started. It sucked. Sitting down with the objective of writing an entire paper is asinine. I lost a few more days of my money-earning summer vacation figuring that out. Around 2 a.m. on the sixth night I’d had the life-altering epiphany that if I broke the whole project down into manageable sections, I could kick each section’s ass easily.
I disassembled the entire mountain of suffering into viable bits, and every day I just wrote about that bit, paying no attention to good writing or perfection. I just spewed until it was done. And then, when I felt no more pressure and the mountain was decimated, I relaxed and did my editing and rewriting. And then[italics] I called my Dad and told him to come over to Mom’s house and read the draft. I still have the copy he edited. In red pen. Jackass.
I got an ‘A’ on the paper. And for the record, my Dad’s a total pain in the ass, but he’s also one of the most amazing humans on the planet. And, as he still feels the need to point out whenever this incident is recalled, didn’t I learn a valuable life lesson about getting sh*t done?
A perfect addition to the previous advice post regarding letters of deferment is Sam Jackson’s letter to high school seniors dealing with early action/early decision letters. He has excellent advice for any and all seniors trying to survive their final year of high school without imploding due to the stress of college admissions, the pressure of senior year coursework, and the painful task of summoning enough focus, energy, and giving-a-rat’s-assedness to finish the final lap.
And should you receive a rejection-flavored letter, please keep in mind that even Andy Warhol was rejected a time or two in his life.
Here’s another entry for my List of Reasons Why I’m Justifiably Pissed About the Lack Of Time Machines: the Blue Man Group started an elementary school. And if you know anything about elementary school, then you’ll be up on the pertinent info regarding age restrictions for enrolled students. I was eligible in, like, 1980 to attend the Blue School’s kindergarten. So you see why I need a damn time machine.
The school itself sounds amazing, and I really want a do-over so I can attend. But possibly more wonderful than the school is the reason for starting it up in the first place. The founding members of the Blue Man Group– Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton, Chris Wink—started their oddball performance group as “sort of a support group for people whose creativity had been all but squeezed out of them by education,” says Wink. “At one point, we asked, What if there was a school you didn’t have to recover from, that didn’t make you question the idea of being creative?”
image credit: NY Post
The Blue Man philosophy plus the Blue Man Group bank accounts added to the appearance of Blue Man Progeny equaled the formation of The Blue School. It’s a private school in Manhattan, so it’s not cheap. But it’s imaginative, has a good soul, AND it’s an accredited school. I’m happy and am thinking good thoughts for the kiddos who get to go. I hope they understand there will be nary a sympathetic ear should they ever bitch about their elementary education.
Further Reading and Viewing:
Jane Hart over at the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies has compiled some great lists for e-learning tools. The lists are geared more toward educators, but I think a decent majority of the items are relevant for students as well, especially grad students who spend their days walking that line between penniless student and underpaid educator.
Is it better to be rejected by a college outright, or to receive a letter of deferment? Oooh, hard to say. On the one hand, you haven’t been denied entry to Shangri-La (yet), but you haven’t been asked to make yourself at home, either. And there’s the matter of being in limbo and not knowing where you’ll be going, which makes planning everything else in your life irritatingly difficult.
Allen Grove has some exemplary advice for any prospective college student currently trying to find their way in the Land of Deferment Limbo. Keep your chin up—you’re bound to get in somewhere because you applied to more than one school, right?
Arne Duncan is the new education guy. In my reading up on him, he sounded neither super great nor overtly evil. He seemed a little in the middle. Every damn news article was sure to mention the basketball thing (he played professional basketball in Australia for a while after college, and these days plays pick-up games with Obama), and the CEO of Chicago Public Schools thing (always adding that his is the third-largest district in the U.S.).
Duncan is big on teacher accountability and on shutting down schools that aren’t getting the job done. He supports the facets of NCLB that aim to improve teacher and school accountability and the gathering of data that show how well the students are learning/being taught. I’m with him—for the most part—on that stuff. I’m also in agreement with Mr. Duncan that the NCLB act is too rigid and that one single set of rules doesn’t work well for every school in the country. Duncan wants to improve schools, but he sees that the NCLB—as it’s written now—isn’t conducive to that end.
It makes me happy that the new Secretary of Education was pissed about the NCLB act way back in 2003. If that weren’t enough to make me a believer, two blog posts I read about him tipped the scales for me. I’m only going to link to one, because I’m not (wo)man enough to deal with finding a burning cross on my front lawn should I anger this particular blogger. You can look for the post yourself; just Google these two magic phrasings: “Education Secretary Arne Duncan” and “Exposing Liberal Lies.” It’ll come right up. Good luck. I saw no light at the end of the tunnel while excavating the blog so I turned back.
The blogger in question, who also wrote an entire post about the erroneousness of global warming, dislikes Duncan because he spoke out in support of creating a gay, lesbian, bi and transgender-friendly high school. Duncan felt that these students needed some extra support, especially in light of the fact that teens dealing with sexuality questions and issues have disproportionately large numbers of drop-outs, homeless and runaways.
Knowing that Arne Duncan put his neck out there to support kids who are unpopular at school, at home, and with most of the religious right in this country made me want to sit in his corner. Only someone who was truly interested in the welfare and education of students in his district would support something that would make him popular only with the kids in question. It was ballsy and kind, which I will always support.
And since it’s not enough to support a gutsy nice guy just because he wants to alter the NCLB act and is not well-loved by people who don’t believe in hard science, I also needed this to tip the scales completely in his favor: Steven D. Levitt from Freakonomics had wonderful things to say about his firsthand experience with Arne Duncan:
Freakonomics readers will remember Arne as the hero of our chapter on teacher cheating. He was head of the Chicago Public Schools when Brian Jacob and I were investigating how teachers and administrators were doctoring standardized test sheets.
With seemingly nothing to gain and much to lose, Arne embraced our results, even allowing us to do audit testing to confirm our hypotheses. Eventually, a handful of teachers were fired.
Since then, I’ve interacted with Arne a few times, and in a variety of settings. I always walk away dazzled. He is smart as hell and his commitment to the kids is remarkable. If you wanted to start from scratch and build a public servant, Arne would be the end product.
