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Citizenship

Dr. Howarth

Melina Richardson

20 September 2018

Reflections on Music Mentors

During Junior year of high school, I founded a small community service organization

called Music Mentors. Music Mentors was a mentoring program where high school orchestral

musicians mentored and tutored the 6th grade orchestra at Quail Hollow Middle School. Quail

Hollow Middle School is a Title IX school which means that a high enough percentage of the

students—61% in 2010—qualify for free and reduced lunch that under the National School

Lunch Program the entire school’s population receives free lunch (LaFleur, ND). This gives a

rough estimate of the number of students at or below the poverty line attending Quail Hollow.

One unique thing about Quail Hollow is its arts program. According to an interview with

Mrs. Leigh Marsh the Orchestra teacher at Quail Hollow, most Title IX middle schools, due to

lack of funding, do not have music programs; those that do rarely invest in orchestras. Because

of this, many of the students would never be able to afford private music instruction had the

option to learn how to play the violin, viola, cello, or double bass at school. The opportunity to

study music is beneficial to students because studying of music teaches a lot of transferable

skills. Many of these skills such as memorization, quick information processing, focus, work

ethic, fine motor skills, and the ability to learn new complex systems can be used in other areas

of a student’s life (Miendlarzewska and Trost).

One of the reasons middle school orchestras are rare is that orchestral instruments are

difficult to learn in large group settings—they require a lot of one on one tutoring, especially for
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beginners. For example, learning to play the violin requires a student to balance the instrument

between the jaw and shoulder, hold the bow properly, hold the instrument properly, and learn

where various notes are located. For a student to play at higher levels, all these skills must be

committed to muscle memory. Additionally, if form is learned incorrectly it can lead to

permanent neck injury, wrist injury, back injury or tendonitis. Thus, learning an orchestral

instrument can be incredibly frustrating for a student learning in a large group class with minimal

personal attention. According to Mrs. Marsh, all of this leads to a lot of students dropping out of

orchestra with only around 30% of students staying through the 8th grade. The purpose of the

mentoring program was to give students who struggled the most, free personalized tutoring and

mini lessons to encourage them to stay engaged in music.

I was the founder and planned everything that had to do with the organization. I recruited

mentors, arranged transportation there, and taught the other students how to teach their

respective instruments. I also created a guide on how to tutor for any of the instruments. It

included strategies for teaching different skills, teaching games, and strategies for dealing with

difficult students. I decided to start Music Mentors because I personally benefited a lot from

learning violin. Music lessons were where I gained a lot of confidence, learned how to memorize

quickly, and how to work well with other people when playing group pieces. Most importantly,

my first violin teacher Ms. Elisa Bradshaw became my life long mentor who I still go to advice

for. I really wanted to give the students at Quail Hollow a chance to benefit from music like I

did—especially the ones whose families couldn’t afford to pay $300 a month for their students to

study with someone like Ms. Bradshaw.

I would volunteer with students like this again. It was an amazing experience. I think the

most important outcome of the work we did were the personal relationships with the students.
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Whenever I walked through the middle school, all the students I worked with would talk to me

about their music, school work, friends, and even romantic lives. I also ended up explaining a

fair share of pre-algebra to different students during music tutoring after school. I wish that the

organization could have continued after I graduated high school, but I couldn’t find anyone else

to carry the torch. Though there is no official quantification of the effects of Music Mentors,

according to Ms. Marsh around 50% the students we mentored kept playing through the 7th and

8th grade.

Citations

1. LaFleur, Jennifer. “The Opportunity Gap: Quail Hollow Middle School.” ProPublica:
Journalism in Public Interest, Pro Publica Inc,
projects.propublica.org/schools/schools/370297001264. Data from a 2009-2010 federal
education report
2. Marsh, Leigh. Personal Interview Melina Richardson. 24 February 2016.
3. Miendlarzewska, Ewa A and Wiebke J Trost. "How musical training affects cognitive
development: rhythm, reward and other modulating variables." Frontiers in Neuroscience
(2013): 279.