For students, the recently concluded Herricks Summer Music Program is a way to develop their music skills.
For 18 Herricks High School students and alumni who volunteered to help in the instruction, the program is a chance to develop their teaching skills that could lead them to a career.
“Teaching experience is hard to come by. What I’m doing now is exactly what I want to do as a career,” said Jesse Torres, who graduated Herricks High in June.
In his third year teaching in summer camp, Torres is planning to major in saxophone as he starts working toward a music education degree at SUNY at Fredonia this fall.
Torres said teaching a group class for brass players “is challenging, but it’s fun.”
When his young students are stressing over learning a piece, he said, there’s always that moment “when they get it and then they love”
“That’s the best moment for me,” Torres said.
Herricks district music and performing arts director Anissa Arnold, who directs the summer program, said the 18 Herricks High students and alums are an “essential” part of the camp.
All the volunteer instructors are either members of the Tri-M Honor Society or initiates for it, Arnold said, which means they’ve achieved top scores as vocalists or instrumentalists in New York State School Music Association tests. They must all receive recommendations from one of their music teachers to qualify as volunteers in the program.
The volunteers provide both group and individual instruction to the 52 grade school students who participated in the district’s fourth annual summer camp that concluded last Friday.
The tuition of $325 for the month-long camp hasn’t increased since its inception.
This year the camp included five student volunteers who had attended the camp themselves.
“Now that we’ve done it for several years, you have people who’ve been in camp and come back as counselors because it was so much fun,” Arnold said.
Katherine Devine, who will entering her sophomore year at Herricks High School, said she came back to help teach flute because of her experience as a student. She said the teaching experience was also very satisfying.
“Here, everyone wants to be here, so they’re eager to learn,” she said.
“I love sharing my passion with kids because they soak it all up and they share their passion back,” said Sarah Fernandez, who was in her second of music camp this summer teaching chorus, beginner piano and musical theater.
Going into her senior year at Herricks High School this fall, Fernandez said she’s planning to pursue a double major in musical theater and music education in college, and hopes to both teach and perform professionally.
Fernandez said she enjoys “giving back to the music department and giving back to the community.”
Emily Buckley, in her third year of the summer music camp, taught trombone and chorus this year. She’s going into her junior year at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam as a vocal major aiming for a degree in music education.
“It’s really fun. It’s really good experience for me,” Buckley said. “You learn the most when you’re in front of kids.”
“It starts at this age. We have to instill in them a love of music.” said Herricks junior Dustin Liu, who taught cello for the second year in camp. “It’s just friends playing music together.”
Fellow cellist Rachel Kim, also going into her junior year at Herricks High School and in her second year teaching summer camp, said she used pop tunes her young students were familiar with to spark their commitment.
“My goal is to make them want to practice and get better,” she said.
For flute teacher Aleena Pasha, entering her junior year at Herricks High School, she remembers being a young musician with a will to improve. She told her students about her early struggles to reinforce the commitment she saw in them.
“When I was in fourth grade, I was last chair and I was embarrassed. I became first chair by fifth grade,” she said.
Agashan, an eighth grader who started playing trumpet in third grade and has since picked up French horn and trombone, said the student teachers “just make it work” by recalling their early years with their instruments.
“They recently experienced the problems you’re experiencing at this moment,” he said. “It’s just an opportunity for musicians to grow over the summer and give them new experience they don’t get in school.”
