Things to Help Us Connect

I am Wyeth, and I teach music at both the elementary and the middle school/high school campuses. I also teach chess and team games.

In Guitar, Bass, & Ukulele, we generally start by playing a scale. So far we’ve gone through all the diatonic modes of the major scale (one scale being based on Do, one on Re, one on Me etc.) and are now making our way through the pentatonic modes. Different musicians get varying degrees of use out of learning scales; I myself hardly touch them, but I think early on they develop interdependence of the fingers, as well as muscle memory and intuition for where the “good notes” are. After we finish playing our scale as a collective, I have students split off and focus on individual projects. Many students start by playing the songs of their favorite artists, and once it becomes apparent how universal many of these progressions and techniques they are using are, it’s natural for them to want to create music themselves. Learning to play the things you like is a very personal thing, and I discourage other students from being judgmental of what someone likes because, at the end of the day, my goal for them is simply to engage with music as much as possible, whatever that may be. We also have a couple multi-instrumentalists, so recently at the end of class we've been playing together as a band. It’s one thing to be able to play through a piece by yourself, but playing in a group forces you to really listen to the other members and keep a consistent meter.

In Songwriting, I’ve been introducing students to different methods of getting ideas out of their heads and making them tangible. A couple of the students make frequent use of a looper pedal to immediately hear their ideas back and layer different parts on top. One of the students is creating an EP for a capstone project, and I’ve helped them get acquainted with the DAW (digital audio workstation) Cubase. That student is focused on making sample-based music, so it’s important to be able to import files as well as have access to effects like AutoTune. A couple of the students aren’t experienced musicians, so my focus is to get them acquainted with the basics of the guitar, which I think is more accessible and less intimidating than the piano.

I’m also co-teaching a Team Games class with Adam. It’s important to have the opportunity to blow off some steam at the end of a day, and I’ve had a blast playing all sorts of different games with the students.

Because it’s a big class, my biggest challenge is getting everyone on the same page about what game we are going to play. I’ll often bring in a couple options for things we can do, and the students will vote on what they want to play. My favorite game we played was a customized variant of kick ball in which we had three teams and would have one team kick while the other two teams fielded. This made it significantly more challenging for the team being pitched to, which is part of the fun of those types of sports.

There is something exciting about teaching a class with a big age range as it forces students to engage and interact with people they normally wouldn’t. A four year age gap becomes less prominent the older we become, and it’s a skill to interact across age differences without older folks being condescending or the younger ones coming across as immature.

Finally I’m teaching a chess class. One of my favorite things about chess is that unlike other activities, one does not have to be in close proximity to another individual to play a game (participation in online chess has increased exponentially since “The Queen’s Gambit” and COVID-19).

This means that one can hone skills during rain or shine, in the company of others or by oneself, and even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Additionally, I think chess is resurging because, in an era where social media has made everyone increasingly more isolated from one another, chess has provided a platform where all you have to do to find community and form authentic relationships is gain competency at a game from which neither money nor status can give an individual an advantage. A good chess player is forced to be accountable and reflect on their mistakes when they lose and have the self-discipline to stick with the game through periods of difficulty. This is why I think chess is an extremely powerful social tool. It’s played all over the world and it selects for individuals that have these positive character traits, and so if a student gets good wherever they end up in the world, they can easily plug into a community of high character individuals. In the class itself, we’ve covered some of the games and lives of various international and grand masters such as the Polgar sisters, Paul Morphy and Emory Tate.

To expose students to more advanced tactical patterns, we’ve been playing Puzzle Jeopardy! wherein I compile chess puzzles of different themes in order to help the students hone their pattern recognition. Every Friday the students face off against one another in two round tournaments, and I tally the points to keep track of each individual's record. The game invites a lot of different approaches and I think the competitive aspect really motivates some of them to improve, whereas some pay no mind to their opponent and focus on their own ratings and trying to reach specific goals.

I’m having a great time teaching all these classes, and I certainly feel that the skills these kids are learning from the rest of the staff—and hopefully me—are setting them up to live adult lives with an understanding of what they truly care about. And I honestly believe that if that is all one has, that is enough.