For the last several years there has been a drought of music in the Yamhill-Carlton community. Ever since the school district cut out the music program years back there has been very little interest in bringing music back to our community until recently. This year, we welcome our new general music and choir teacher, Nikita Johnson-Williams.
Mrs. Johnson-Williams is ecstatic to introduce music to new generations of YC students with her class putting a spotlight on the vital lessons that should have been taught early on. Johnson-Williams highlights the struggles of teaching music concepts to students that didn’t get the musical experience they needed earlier in their school career. “I’m teaching my sixth, seventh, eighth graders, kindergarten concepts that they’re struggling with because they’ve never had that experience.”
“If they had music back in elementary school, they would be in a different level,” Johnson-Williams said. This isn’t the first time she has experienced a school with no music programs. “I started at Silverton, where they didn’t have music at any of the K-8 schools,” Johnson-Williams said, “so out of 10 schools, eight of them never had music before.”
What’s the importance of music in our small sport oriented community though? Johnson-Williams believes that it’s even more important in a community surrounded by sports, “for the kids that don’t do sports, that don’t want to do theater,” Johnson-Williams said, “this is a really happy medium where they can be able to express themselves in different creative ways.”
Johnson-Williams says she doesn’t want to have music separate from the sports part of our community though. She says, “I would love to bring a marching band back to football… I would love to have something happening in the football stands.”
Johnson-Williams isn’t just finding her way around her first year here though, she’s already planning her course here for the next five to seven years. She wants to be able to bring back orchestra, “I am doing my part by learning all of the instruments so I can teach that”
She also highlights the fun of choir, mentioning wanting to bring more choir teachers to the high school level and middle school level. Johnson-Williams also discusses wanting her students to be able to do festivals, compete, and get into OSAA “because these kids are competitive and they want to win, but they’ve got to be good to be able to win.”
The YC School District hasn’t only introduced Mrs Johnson-Williams classes, they’ve also introduced after-school guitar and ukulele classes taught by the author of this article, Caden Livingston. These classes were started by Mark Rodriguez, the executive director of YCTC (Yamhill-Carlton Together Cares).
Rodriguez’s musical background started in the sixth grade with the trumpet, and in seventh grade he swiftly switched to the drums and stuck with those. He played in the marching band in high school and also in a couple of bands outside of school. Rodriguez also says he taught himself piano at some time.
Similar to Johnson-Williams, Rodriguez also noticed the lack of music in our sport oriented community, specifically music during our football games. “I showed up to a football game and there was no music, no band, no nothing.” Rodriguez says this is when he started bringing up the idea of bringing music to YC. However, he says he doesn’t like claiming that he came up with the idea of bringing music to YC, “I’m sure there’s plenty other people that have tried.”
Rodriguez says music is a great way for students that aren’t interested in sports to learn team building skills. He also says that music is great for the youth to improve their mental health. In the midst of their young years, students deal with a lot of stress and feelings that are hard to regulate but music can assist with that. “Music is therapeutic, music is like equine therapy, or any other of those therapies that are out there.”
