Music for all

After School Arts Program seeks to inspire low-income students, engage community

Wade Spees
The Post and Courier

This trumpet, the first instrument donated to the After School Arts Program, reflects the grounds of Johns Island Presbyterian Church, where the new program will be held.

The Charleston County School District will have to make do with $150,000 less this school year, even as educational and administrative demands increase.

For the artistically inclined on Johns Island, this could mean a shortage of musical instruments and limited arts education classes. During a budget crunch, arts programs are typically among the first to feel the pinch.

But a creative team of educators, spearheaded by the music director at Johns Island Presbyterian Church, hopes to offer a stopgap solution. The After School Arts Program, now in its organizational stage, is designed to provide learning opportunities to Johns Island's low-income students who otherwise would have little chance of playing a note or dancing a grand battement.

Public school arts education offers opportunities for students to join orchestras and bands — if they have an instrument to play. The new after-school program will lend donated instruments to students taking private lessons, Eric Johnson said.

Johnson, music director at Johns Island Presbyterian, hopes the initiative will attract students who want to pursue the arts but can't afford to do so. Modeled after the much-admired W.O. Smith Nashville (Tenn.) Community Music School, the program will charge 50 cents for a 30-minute lesson with a qualified volunteer.

But Johnson expects many students to stay for all three hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, to attend classes and play in an ensemble. Tuition for the entire afternoon will be $1. Johnson said anyone who qualifies for the school district's reduced-lunch program is eligible to participate in the After School Arts Program.

"We would really like to see arts opportunities made available to all residents of Johns Island," he said.

On Johns Island, where residents are either "super-affluent or extremely impoverished," he said, the need for an after-school arts program is huge. The Charleston metropolitan area boasts a number of excellent arts instruction programs, but most are out of reach for low-income students, he said.

The new program, now in search of volunteer teachers and donated instruments and supplies, will offer classes in music, dance, drama and the visual arts. Classes will be held at the church and Chautauqua Day School, whose director, Kathleen Allison, will serve as a program volunteer and coordinator.

Allison said she has seen firsthand how arts education improves confidence and learning among young students. As a dance teacher at the Moonstone School in Philadelphia, and now as director of Chautauqua, she has focused on the connections between the arts and subjects such as math, science and language. Students learn to apply their knowledge to other disciplines, she said.

"A child who takes dance is a child who can do physics," Allison said. And a child who can read the universal language of music develops confidence and self-esteem. "These are valuable tools that all children need but very few people can teach."

James Brautheimer, fine-arts learning specialist for the Charleston County School District, said the area has a vibrant arts community whose members tend to come together when children stand to benefit, even if individual groups are struggling financially.

"Everyone comes to the table when kids are the subject," he said.

Recently, Brautheimer started an arts roundtable involving community arts organizations and district officials. "We're trying to throw as wide a net as possible," he said.

The idea is to foster communication and find ways to expose more children to the benefits of an arts education, Brautheimer said. In the short term, roundtable participants expect to establish tangible goals, set up an administrative structure, define curriculum standards and build public-private partnerships, he said.

County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley made an appearance at the first round-table meeting. She stayed for an hour and a half, listened to concerns and indicated that arts education was an essential aspect of a well-rounded education, Brautheimer said.

Arts education gets short shrift in public schools in part because the schools are being asked to do more than ever, even as funding remains flat, he said. In the 1950s and 1960s, for example, teachers did not have to provide health and sex education or after-school classes. Education was then a more basic enterprise, Brautheimer said.

But public schools now are responsible for educating students on a broader range of subjects. When funding doesn't keep pace, something has to give, he said. Schools increasingly focus on teaching to just two of eight human intelligences, as defined recently by Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at Harvard University. Those are linguistic and mathematical/logical skills.

The rest, which have to do with movement, music, nature and psychology, are often someone else's concern, Brautheimer said. He welcomed the new after-school arts initiative as a way to fill in some of the pieces missing in public education and to engage the community.

Tara Pinckney, band director at St. John's High School and Haut Gap Middle School, said she hopes the arts program for low-income students will provide her with more musicians for her ensembles. The two bands have about a dozen members each.

Pinckney has been attending the organizational meetings and providing Johnson, Allison and others with ideas. The two biggest problems, she said, are lack of transportation and lack of quality instruments.

Many students are interested in learning music but have no reliable way to get to and from after-school band practice. And while her schools have a supply of instruments for students to use, many are in bad shape.

"There are some really good players, but they can't reach their potential because the instrument held them back," Pinckney said.

On Johns Island, there are many children who might excel in the arts if given a chance, she said.

"That's the hard thing: to find something kids can be interested in, and have it available to them."

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.