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Learning with no shoes on
Local musician Chuck Cheesman brings music to the kids
By Kat Nichols
Published on 11/12/2009
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As parents sit and drink their coffee, children run around and bounce off the walls with delight. They are singing and dancing, attempting to do things like recite the alphabet backwards. The kids crowd around a man in the center of the café, their own version of a rock star: Chuck Cheesman, the superman with the guitar.
Prior to coming to Flagstaff, Cheesman worked within the Chicago public school system for five years, teaching class after class of fifth graders. A few years into his career, Cheesman began teaching at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, working with young children to learn the basics of music.
“I think it’s the best way for kids to learn—using the arts, using music, using physical education,” Cheesman says. “Especially young kids because I really do think they learn best through play.”
After moving to Flagstaff, Cheesman was quick to continue his work with children. He began performing for an hour on weekends to the kids who came into Bookman’s Entertainment Exchange. The show would draw large crowds of parents bringing between one and three kids each.
Geoff Jackson is a Bookman’s employee who sat in on Cheesman’s shows. He said that whenever the music would begin, it would make everyone happy, not just the children.
“He’d roll in at 10 in the morning with his smiling face and play music for an hour,” Jackson says. “A lot of the songs had involved dance steps, so I’d do all the dance moves and sing along while doing my work. His music cheers up everybody, even people who don’t know what’s going on. You’ll see them come into the building and tapping their feet in spite of themselves.”
The tremendous response to Cheesman’s music in the store—and his popular educational performances “Dancing with No Shoes On!”—inspired Bookman’s community coordinator Kate Beles to tap Cheesman for a kids’ music program in local schools. She approached him stating that Bookman’s had decided to put some funding into the local arts. Working together, the pair came up with the MIC (Music in the Classrooms) program through the federally funded Head Start preschool program.
Every week, Cheesman visits around seven different classrooms, playing music for the kids and attempting to get them interested in learning and interaction. Many of the children in Head Start are learning English as a second language. To effectively work with them, he is usually assisted by a teacher and two other adults.
“I’ve been incredibly impressed with those teachers,” Cheesman says. “I have been really impressed with the people who are in these classrooms and the way they work with the kids and the enthusiasm they bring. It’s really exciting for me to go into these classrooms and see them in a nice environment like that and work with them.”
There is enough funding for the Head Start music program to be continued through February. Cheesman has been trying to brainstorm ways to continue the funding beyond that, extending more musical opportunities to the kids. In the meantime, he is working with other youth-oriented music programs.
Young Jammers is another program he is involved with. It teaches young kids up to 9-years-old the basic fundamentals of folk music. Older kids in the Young Jammers program are taught bluegrass music.
One of the main benefits of the Head Start music program, and other similar opportunities, is the level of involvement parents can bring to the table. Cheesman says that he makes a point to get the parents as involved in participation as he can, setting an example for the children.
“If your kids see you sitting on your bum not doing anything, that’s what the kids are going to do,” Cheesman says. “You have to model the behavior for your kids and show them that this is worth getting excited about.”
The combination of music skills and parental involvement makes a big impact on the kids. Jackson said that he was fortunate as a child to have been exposed to music and the arts in school. In today’s tough economic times, many schools are cutting music and art in order to save money, a fact that Cheesman is greatly concerned about. “It’s a little frustrating for me to see that there’s so much emphasis on basic skills and testing,” says Cheesman.
“Music’s great, it helps with everything,” Jackson says. “It’s good to have something that’s purely creative and expressive (in school) even if you have to learn the almost-mathematic fundamentals of music, you can still play a lot more than is possible in social studies or math or composition.”
Cheesman plans on continuing to work with kids through the Head Start program for as long as funding continues. He is also working on his own CD project at the moment. In December, he will begin recording a CD of all original songs composed for adults, not kids.
For more information on Cheesman and his music, visit his Web site at www.chuckcheesman.com. To learn more about the Music in Classrooms program, contact Bookman’s, 1520 S. Riordan Rach, at 774-0005.
Additional photos for this story:
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