After years of not-so-silent absence, music will return to the curriculum of Hermosa schools.
The Hermosa Beach City School District announced earlier this month that Ken Harrison has been hired on as a full-time music teacher. General music education will be offered to students in first through fifth grade. By the 2018-19 school year, instrumental band available as an elective to students in grades six through eight.
Harrison has previously served as band director for Hermosa Beach Youth Music, a parent-run nonprofit founded in 2012 to address the lack of musical instruction in the classroom. The group ran after school band and chorus programs, regularly entering competitions with other school-based music programs and taking home a variety of awards. With the change in the status of music education, HBYM will transition from a nonprofit to more of a “booster club” for music education, President Meagan Sardana told the school board.
As was the case with schools throughout the state, music instruction met the ax following the 2008 financial crisis. Further complicating matters in the crowded district was the lack of space to store instruments. Harrison’s salary will be paid for through the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation, and the passage of school bond Measure S last will ease crowding by adding an additional campus.
The new music elective will comply with Common Core requirements that were not in effect when music was last part of the curriculum. The new requirements have three broad sections: perform, create and respond to music. With these in mind, Harrison employs the Orff Schulwerk approach to music education, which aims for a “child-friendly” approach to learning music. Techniques include removing certain bars from a xylophone, so that every note a child strikes is in the same key.
Olivia Webster, a former Hermosa student who plays flute in the marching band at Redondo Union High School, said that Hermosa students were at a disadvantage when they tried out for high school bands. She was thrilled Harrison would be able to share music with future students.
“Music gives you a sense of accomplishment that I don’t think anything else can give you,” Webster said.
