ON CAMPUS
Millsaps matches piano lessons with service learning project for youth Rachel Heard’s students become piano teachers. BY JESSE CROW
got it!” Kayla said excitedly with a glimmer in her eyes after she played the beginner piano exercise “Men From Mars” correctly the first time through. Kayla is one of eight fourth- and fifth-grade students who came to Millsaps College once a week earlier this year for an hour-long piano lesson. She participated in Project Innovation, an after-school program in the North Midtown neighborhood of Jackson. Students from Dr. Rachel Heard’s Piano Pedagogy II class taught piano lessons as the service learning component of their practicum-style class. The students from Project Innovation received 10 lessons during the spring semester. Heard, along with Director of the Faith and Work Initiative Dr. Darby Ray and Director of Project Innovation LaTanya Dixon, arranged the lessons. “Professor Heard and I worked together a couple of years ago to connect a couple of her piano students to children in Operation Shoestring’s after-school program,” said Ray. “What is new this time is that we now have a piano lab at Millsaps, which makes it possible for us to teach eight kids at a time.” The class began with Heard sharing the topic of the day and what they would study. Student teachers and Heard then paired off with the children, one teacher for every two students. New material was introduced to the students, and they worked on learning new solo and duet pieces. After the students practiced
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their pieces individually, the class played them together or in pairs. Heard’s students gained experience in the field of teaching an instrument, and the students from Project Innovation developed skills and talents by learning to play a musical instrument. “The keyboard lab has a special control box which allows me to listen to the children play individually while observing the Millsaps students as they teach them,” Heard said. “Since I am also teaching two children during the class, the Millsaps students can observe my teaching of elementary-age beginner students. Following class, we briefly discuss how the class went.” Project Innovation students concluded their instruction with a recital for family and friends. Heard and Ray hope the program will continue. “Professor Heard’s piano pedagogy students will always need piano pupils, and of course there will always be kids who could benefit from music education, so in that sense the program will endure. What we’re not currently able to do, however, is keep the instruction going with a particular set of kids,” said Ray. “A child might get a semester’s worth of great piano instruction, but that might be the only instruction they’ll ever get. Right now we are able to get the ball rolling, but we can’t really keep it rolling over the long run.” Heard teaches the Piano Pedagogy II class in alternating years, so the next lessons will occur in spring 2013.