While teachers were not able to see their students in person this spring, some kept connecting with their kids. Chase Howard, the director of bands for Dawson Middle School, used technology to host a “concert from the couch.”
“Music has always been a therapy to me in times that I have needed it. To the same effect, laughter and happiness have always been my salvation in trying times, so I downloaded this app called Acapella with the intent of exploring some fun music that I could share with the students at Carroll ISD,” Chase says. “I’ve seen friends post videos to social media where they are able to record themselves multiple times playing different instruments or parts to a piece of music and link them together and the results have always just been incredibly fun. I went online and found a quartet to ‘Cantina Band’ from ‘Star Wars,’ and gave it a go.”
Chase says his efforts were a big hit, getting lots of fun remarks from students, messages from families and over 2,000 views.
“I was hoping that with everything going on in these students’ lives, they could just pull up a funny video of Mr. Howard jamming out to a cool piece and get a good laugh in each day,” Chase says about his video. “[I’m] merely trying to put a smile on the students’ faces.”
Fellow band directors and CISD students also came together to keep the music going.
“Some students have taken it upon themselves to begin working on their own collaborative videos of music that interests them,” Chase says. “What’s neat about that is you really get a sense of what draws students into music and where some of their passion lies outside of the regular music curriculum.”