Christopher Gunther’s Crusade To Teach Calcasieu Students Strings
By Brad Goins
In the last decade, education’s meant different things in different parts of the country. In Louisiana, it’s meant big budget cuts.
When it comes to handling budget cuts, Louisiana operates much as other states do. The first things to get cut are the same: music (and the other arts), foreign languages and the humanities in general.
In Calcasieu Parish, there have been periodic cuts to music instruction for some time now. One of the areas of instruction that’s fallen by the wayside in education is string instruments. Since athletics are one of the things that don’t get cut, bands have stayed strong, and students still learn their brass and percussion. But strings instruction is a thing of the past in the Lake Area.
One person is changing that.
Christopher Gunther is originally from Sulphur. He received a bachelor’s in instrumental music instruction — specifically on the violin — from McNeese in 2012.
In the fall of that year, he started subbing for the choir at S.J. Welsh Middle School. He soon added a strings club that met at the school after classes.
Of Welsh’s principal, Bobby Jack Thompson, Gunther says, “I owe him a lot.” Around Christmas of 2012, Gunther asked Thompson what he could do for Welsh. Thompson told him he could teach the students to play ukulele.
Thompson had studied ukulele during his own school days. Gunther started teaching it at Welsh in spring of 2013, and by fall he was teaching it full-time. (Keep an eye peeled, and you’ll notice that the ukulele pops up again later in the story.)
In the meantime, Gunther’s after-classes string sessions were chugging along. The instruction was rotational, with a new group taking up the instruments every nine weeks. Gunther soon had the after-school group up to 20 students.
During the sessions, Gunther taught students to play one of three instruments: violin, viola or cello.
‘A Love Of Music’
Gunther says students are mainly attracted to the strings club because they have “a love of music.” They may also have a love of “something different; something unique.” The opportunity seems to be especially appealing to students who are already in the school choir or band.
To learn strings, both students and parents demonstrate a dedication that’s above the norm. For one thing, each student must buy or rent his or her instrument. Students must also pay $100 for each nine-week round of instruction. (This fee covers, among other things, the cost of field trips. It gives Gunther the funds to prepare a t-shirt for each student. And he’s able to repair instruments himself with funds that come from the fees without any additional charges to the students.)
‘No One Else Teaches It’
For more than two years, Gunther kept the strings instruction at Welsh going solely on an after-school basis. But this year, for the first time, he’ll be teaching strings in the classroom in S.J. Welsh on a full-time basis.
He’ll continue the after-school strings club.
As it has in previous years, in 2016 the strings club — whose official name is the Colt String Orchestra and Ukulele Band — will participate in state orchestral contests and in local community concerts.
The group will attend the District IV — Multi-District Orchestra Music Performance Assessment Festival for statewide school orchestras. The event will take place at Baton Rouge’s Magnet High School on March 13. In its last competition at the event, Welsh took straight 2s — meaning that it was ranked “Excellent” in every category. The only mark higher than 2 is 1, which signifies “Superior.”
Students will also have the opportunity to audition for the Louisiana All-State Orchestra.
These same opportunities are now available to students at Barbe High School, where Gunther has also begun an after-school string club (The Buccaneer String Orchestra). The Barbe string groups have been numbering around 18 so far.
Strung Out
Gunther notes that it’s not necessarily new for strings to play second fiddle to winds — at least as far as area schools go. He says that according to tradition, “in the south, bands are predominant [in the schools].”
A long lack of string instruction in the schools affects aspects of local culture that extend far beyond S.J. Welsh. Gunther says that while the Lake Charles Symphony’s wind and percussion sections are made up mainly of local musicians, the majority of the symphony’s string players are brought in from as far out of town as Atlanta and Dallas. When the symphony performs, it must pay for both the travel and accommodation expenses of these out-of-town musicians.
Of course, the presumption is that if instruction in strings continues and expands in area schools, the L.C. Symphony will eventually have a much larger group of well-trained local string players to draw from.
The process is well underway. At its Dec. 15 Christmas concert at the St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, the Barbe High String Orchestra played many traditional carols, such as “What Child Is This?” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman.” But it also performed such works as Verdi’s “La Donna e Mobile” and Tchaikovsky’s “Trepak.” That’s not bad at all for an ensemble that’s still at a very early stage of its development.
Back On The Map
“We have an excellent student body [at S.J. Welsh],” says Gunther. “It’s very diverse.” Gunther notes that in addition to taking instruction in strings, Welsh students study subjects ranging from ballroom dancing to robotics. The principal continues to be very pro-arts instruction.
The move of strings instruction into official class hours was given a big boost, says Gunther, when parents started “chiming in” to the administration about how impressed they were with the learning opportunity their children were being offered in after-school strings instruction.
Gunther promoted the move to in-class instruction, of course. But he says he did so with the “soft sell.” “I’m not a push,” he says.
The soft sell paid off, and full-time strings instruction at Welsh is now a reality.
Gunther says the principals at both Welsh and Barbe have “worked with [him] tremendously” to bring back strings instruction.
At this point, lack of classroom space is the biggest problem facing innovative instruction of all types. Education routinely presents both instructors and administrators with some sort of grunt work. But now, at least, instruction in strings is back in the curriculum and back on the map in Calcasieu Parish.
Comments are closed.