What’s Right With Our Schools: Whitwell Middle School Piano Lab
WHITWELL, Tenn. (WDEF) – Imagine a room with 24 middle school students all playing piano. That could get a little noisy, right? You’d think so, but Whitwell Middle School is now home to a state of art piano keyboard lab, and it’s hitting all the right notes.
Roger Payne is the music teacher and choral director at Whitwell Middle.
He says, “Today is a big day a big celebration day. We are opening and unveiling our new state-of-the-art piano lab for our students. We were so fortunate to get connected with the Community Foundation of Chattanooga and Lind Hurst foundation and the Songbirds Foundation. All three of those organizations helped us to uh get donations and to get funding, to have this piano Lab at Whitwell Middle School.”
“It consists of 24 piano keyboards, set up with the Yamaha lc4 system, which gives me the ability to speak to each student separately and talk to them about what they’re working on; allows them to work independently,” Payne continued. “They might advance faster than others they can do that so it’s a good system to use. And we’re just excited about it today.”
“If they were all playing out loud, you know that would drive you crazy. So, the fact that they’re all through headphones, they hear themselves, I can communicate with each student… really a neat concept,” Payne added.
Aiden Dutton is an 8th grader at Whitwell Middle.
He says, “I like it a lot because kids that can’t play it at home. They can play it here and they enjoy it a lot, and I enjoy it a lot.”
“Most of our students probably don’t have an opportunity to take private piano lessons or maybe not are financially able to fund that, or to purchase a piano at home. So, this gives them that chance to learn some piano skills. And they’re always interested in learning to play all kinds of instruments, but they’re especially the piano. They, they want to learn piano, just to be able to play a few songs even. The benefits they get from any kind of music education are so extraordinary. They get academic benefits. They get social benefits. They get emotional benefits. So, all that connects together. As part of this lab; part of their learning and their enrichment in this lab,” Payne concluded.
