Coventry School Students Learn Skills Music Above and beyond playing instruments

Over the years Coventry instructor High School band and the fight Unified Arts Curriculum Coordinator Bill Smith has seen families pay for maintenance and repair of instruments for their children. Expensive services and initial purchase costs tend to frustrate the hopes of students interested in taking a complete instrument.

Smith is trying to change all that with a program known as "Service Learning", which promotes learning through community involvement. The program originated in Maine and is used in all schools in Coventry in a different way.


The initiative of the Service Learning is a teaching strategy in the classroom that connects to real life. Strives to motivate students and increase academic achievement, while students solve problems of community life.

Smith currently has 12 students ranging from freshmen to seniors who have been taking several clinics hour and a half hours with outside professionals who arrive at school after hours to teach them how to repair wind instruments. Students are learning the secrets of the flute, saxophone and clarinet, but Smith hopes to expand its body of knowledge in the future.

"Children are learning how to set a higher absolute instrument," he said.

The clinics have been made possible by a donation of $ 300 from the school district paid for the repair of three kits for students to use.

"What better way to meet their own instrument and learn how to repair?" Smith asked. "They will have a better understanding of how it works and how to care for her."

The objective of this program is for students to repair the instruments in the music departments of the district, but also encourage the community to donate instruments they no longer want so they can be repaired and offered to families at Primary school children would not normally be able to afford an instrument for your child.

"Parents still know the value of instrumental music," said Smith. "Students who study score higher on the SAT and do better in math, science and other academics."

Smith said he hopes the program will not only benefit the school district, but eventually offered to members of the community who may be in need of repair at a reasonable rate instruments will be interested in services.

"I'm excited and I hope the community comes out and gets involved," said Smith.

Participating students will carry out the repairs after school or during their advisory periods and to receive community service credit for their time, a graduation requirement in Coventry.