A Successful First Week with Eric Booth!

The first week of El Sistema Kenya kicked off on September 15 with 24 young students.  We had a great time playing games and learning the parts of the violin and viola, learning how to make a proper bowhold and how to hold the instruments in play position and rest position.  This week, after several days of learning "secret handshakes," we finally put the bow to the string and everyone was able to play "Mississippi Hot Dog" on the E and A string.

Last Friday, we also had a special visitor: Eric Booth!  Eric is the originator of the term "teaching artist" and taught for many years at Julliard, as well as enjoying a prolific acting, writing and teaching career.  An avid supporter of the arts, Eric has been traveling the globe researching different El Sistema projects around the world, and we had the privilege of hosting him in our first week.  Although Eric doesn't play any instruments, he sat with the students and learned how to hold a bow!

Karis Crawford, Eric Booth and Mumbi Mbugua in Kawangware, Nairobi

Launch Week Update

We are excited to announce that we will begin teaching 24 young people in Kawangware this coming Monday!  We had hundreds of children who wanted to be involved, but we are limited on how many instruments we have at this moment.  Yesterday, Bernadette and Karis met with the students and their parents, who are very supportive of the project.  A few parents gave very touching speeches on how they wished they had the opportunity to learn music and told us that we had their full support.  We can't wait to start teaching on Monday!

Launch Week Preparations

This week we are very excited to meet the children we will be teaching in Kawangware.  The Kawangware Primary School has helped El Sistema Kenya select a pilot group of 20 children in Class 5 and Class 6 who will be joined by 30 other children in January 2015.  We will be meeting with these children and their parents to talk about the program and answer any questions they may have.  This is a very busy time of year for Kenyan schools as most students have begun preparations for national exams and we have tried to be sensitive to timetabling music classes alongside the exams in order to include as many students as possible.

We are also starting our Suzuki teachers in training masterclasses this week with our four trainees, Etta, Bernadette, Mumbi, and Papa.  The teachers in training will learn how to teach using the Suzuki Method with all of the stringed instruments and will be assisting with teaching during the week as we start classes in Kawangware.