C.B.S.L. PROJECT OF THE WEEK
AUGIE GAMBA & LOGAN ONSTOTT

   We began our CBSL Project at the start of our senior year, without a mentor. Luckily, with the support of Mr. Contreras, we landed Mr. Healy as a mentor, who taught us beforehand. Occasionally, Mr. Healy will teach with us, giving us a chance to model our class after how well he handles a classroom. He is extremely good at picking up the students’ moral and lightening up the room. We both struggled choosing a project our junior year, but when we heard of the guitar elective opportunity, we knew that it was a perfect fit. Because of how much playing guitar has opened up for us, we absolutely loved the idea of instilling our knowledge of experience into our students. We were in the same guitar class during junior year, and had many ideas of how we would run a class of our own. Through these classes we were able to pick up on many effective teaching techniques, while noting certain techniques we weren’t so fond of. We wanted to bring this knowledge to our own guitar class in order inspire our students to want to learn more about the instrument, while having fun at the same time.

   So far, we are more than satisfied with our class’ progress. Not only are the kids respectful, but also interested in the subject matter. We hope for our project efforts to go further than the limited time we have in the classroom. Our ultimate goal is to spark our students’ lifelong interest in music, while setting good examples for our kids to learn from. Although we are very impressed with the progress our students have made, we are much more enthusiastic about the interest our students now have in guitar.

   By far, the most challenging aspect of Take Note is that we are limited to one class per week. The students don’t all own their own guitars, and those that do struggle to keep their instruments in tune. Guitar is not easy to progress in with this limited practice time. Also, our class periods are 90 minutes long, and our students are in 7th and 8th grade, so it can be difficult to keep them focused for the entirety of class (we rely heavily on short breaks). That being said, we are extremely impressed with their progress under these circumstances. If we could start over, we would most definitely include more fundraising early on so we can get our students playing outside of class.