As a teacher at Bridges Academy, one of my tasks is to identify a student’s strengths and passions so that I can tap into those to help the student be more engaged and shape his/her own learning. Sometimes discovering those passions happens in unexpected ways.
Every year Bridges has a beach day, where all the students and faculty spend the day by the water swimming, playing games, barbecuing, and having a good time. I always bring some drums and set up a drum circle for students to play in. In 2016, this smiley kid showed up. He hadn’t been on my radar, but there he was in the circle playing the drums, and I saw that he had music inside of him. I invited him to the drum circle class, and at the same time I became his humanities lab teacher and his coach in Bridges’ Young Expert Program (Badges), which gives students the opportunity to pursue individualized learning in an area of interest.
What we had is a high school student who hadn’t previously expressed much interest in music or performance, though he had participated a little in the drama program. His profile was that of a young man with autism who encountered significant struggles in the classroom while also dealing with anxiety. Previous efforts to identify a passion to pursue within the Badges context had mixed results.
I noticed that in all his free time, the student — Colby — was watching YouTube clips of sports announcers and so the light bulb went off and I said to him, “Colby, do you know what would you like to do as a career?” and he said he wanted to be a sports announcer.
So we clear the path for him to do some announcing at the home basketball games, and since then his mother has gotten him a voice coach and he’s taking voice-over lessons. He is working on his announcing voices and character, and animation and commercial voice-over work. So for Badges, his project now is going to be an audio demo reel. Colby has written a script of the different scenes that are going be in his demo reels: hockey, baseball, basketball, he’s going to do a section of commercials where he does the voice-over, and the last scenes might be him telling jokes or something ridiculous.
“He’s actually learning how to play drums now … and he’s soaring. He loves it — it’s made him feel much more confident and positive about who he is.”
Colby wrote a script. The next part was for him to start pulling sound effects because in addition to recording his voice, he’s going to have to do the sound effects and the sound design for the reel, so that’s tying into his some of the other work I’ve been doing with him — helping him learn how to produce music and compose music in Logic Pro. Then another step is music supervision. He’s thinking about the scenes on his demo reel and he’s going to pull music in to play under the scenes while he’s talking.
With that, he’s actually learning how to play drums now – partly so he could perform his own rim-shots after cracking jokes. We practice once a week and he’s soaring. He loves it — it’s made him feel much more confident and positive about who he is. He also now is playing percussion in one of the school rock bands. These are some of his gifts and we’re just trying to bring that out.
So this Badges project, stemming from one happenstance interaction on the beach, sees the student engaged in writing, recorded and public performance, and music creation, curation, and production, all while experiencing increased confidence. This varied skill set is being employed to achieve a concrete goal that potentially will have college and “real world” implications for him.
The students can show us how to best teach them. We can use that information to provide the avenues and framework within which they can enjoy learning.
Sometimes in some of my private lessons with Colby — especially on the drums — I’ve had goose bumps. I get the chills because I’m seeing him flying. He’s soaring, and to see his progression — it takes him a long time but there’s growth every week, and he’s learning. To see a kid like that, a kid you like, succeeding and growing, it’s just a really magical, unparalleled experience.
