Steinbeck Elementary third-graders sang, marched with paper-plate tambourines, clapped out different four-beat rhythms and showed off their artwork and writing about music that has chronicled American history.
Chris Gammel's Central Unified class aptly demonstrated Tuesday to a group of visiting politicians, educators and symphony managers how music helps cement lessons in memory and makes learning fun.
Ask third-grader Bobby Garza about the national anthem, and he not only sings all the words, but he knows who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" and why.
"One time, Francis Scott Key was on Britain's ship because he was trying to save Dr. Beans, but he had to stay on the British ship and he had to watch the battle. Mr. Key's team finally won," Bobby explained in an essay that hangs on a wall of Gammel's classroom. After seeing America's flag survive the bombs lobbed from that ship, Key wrote a poem that became the basis for the national anthem, other students wrote in essays.
Gammel was among a group of Fresno County teachers who spent a week this summer with the San Francisco Symphony learning how to integrate classical music into subjects such as history, math and language arts. The 20 teachers are piloting an ambitious $1.5 million, five-year project to eventually bring music into core lessons in every California classroom.
The training is an extension of the symphony's "Keeping Score: MTT on the Music" program, which was launched in 2004 to broaden the audience for classical music and fill the gap left by funding cuts in music education.
San Francisco Symphony's executive director, Brent Assink, said Tuesday that people always tell him about their childhood experiences with music when they find out what he does for a living. "For some reason those memories lodge in people's minds. And I think we're all here to make sure the next generation has the same experiences … We want to share the power music has — and should have — in their lives."
Congressman Jim Costa, D-Fresno, who helped steer the symphony and its financial backers toward Fresno County, said it was important to give children early experience with the universal language of music because it would help them do better later in school with other subjects.
Ron Gallman, the symphony's director of education, agreed: "Music, we know, has a way of really invigorating learning and enlivening the curriculum."
Gammel said her class got excited last week when they saw a computer game with Napoleon in it. They all remembered that Napoleon was a general in France a long time ago and he lost a big battle commemorated in the rousing 1812 Overture.
On Tuesday, the students talked about how, in that music by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, they could hear not only cannons exploding, but soldiers marching and church bells ringing in celebration.
Gammel nodded and smiled. Up on her wall, next to a poster of symphony instruments, is a quote from Plato: "Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination …"
Gammel aims to do the same with a piano in the corner of her classroom, a portable CD player, dozens of books on music and a new repertoire of lesson plans from the San Francisco Symphony.
Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra trumpet player Ron Franklin accompanies third-graders on the national anthem Tuesday in Chris Gammel's class at Steinbeck Elementary. The performance was part of an interactive classroom demonstration showing visiting politicians, educators and symphony managers how music helps across the curriculum. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee
Kiara Kendrick, 8, picks up a tambourine from Chris Gammel as Adalanna Sasone, 8, waits her turn. Gammel was among a group of Fresno County teachers who spent a week this summer with the San Francisco Symphony learning how to use classical music while teaching subjects such as history, math and language arts. Mark Crosse / The Fresno Bee