Nebo District keeps the music flowing

MAPLETON — Deanne Helquist is teaching sixth-grade strings players the basics: Sit up straight, don't collapse the wrist and perhaps the most important lesson for anyone armed with a bow, "Don't poke your neighbor."

On Thursday morning, by the end of the class, the 28 students had learned to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on their violins, violas, cellos and basses.

Last week was the second of band and orchestra classes for sixth-graders in the northern part of the Nebo School District.

The young musicians wake up early twice a week to attend the 7:30 a.m. classes — during first period at Springville and Mapleton junior high schools — then ride in carpools to their elementary schools, which start between 8:40 and 9 a.m.

"They're great," Mapleton Junior High band teacher Michael Whatcott said. "They're very eager to lean. They're practicing — most of them."

The music program is new this year, created because the Nebo School District has started to close its middle schools. Under the middle-school plan, sixth- and seventh-graders, educated together, were able to take such music classes.

Now, however, because sixth-graders are being educated in elementary schools, which don't have those programs, they nearly lost the opportunity to receive band and orchestra training.

That is, until a group of parents formed the Nebo Performing Arts Council and worked to "save the music," as the VH1 expression goes, for the sixth-graders, believing that starting students young would increase the chances that they would stick with music through high school. The parents also point to studies that show music helps students excel in other academic disciplines.

"Nationally, on average the students start in fifth (grade)," said Brigham Young University music professor Andrew Dabczynski. "There's a lot of places that start in third. There's a lot of places that start in seventh."

However, the number of students from Mapleton and Springville in orchestra classes has dropped by two-thirds from last year, when such classes were offered in middle school as part as the regular day. This year, there are 44 orchestra students in sixth grade; last year there were 144, Helquist said.

In all, about 160 students are participating in band or orchestra at the junior highs, said Su Tullis, one of the organizers of NPAC, which is registered as a nonprofit organization, has a mailing list of 400 people and a Web site: www.nebomusicfriends.org.