WORCESTER—Peacelove Lombo concentrated as she waited for the right moment to hit a drum during a song she was practicing with her fellow third and fourth graders from Worcester Cultural Academy last week.
Lombo and her classmates were rehearing at the Joy of Music Program, a community musical school on Gorham Street in Worcester, before a final performance on Dec. 15 for their families.
“It was really fun because the drums made nice noises that went along with the song,” 9-year-old Lombo told the Worcester Guardian. Her experience with JOMP was the first time she was able to play the drums.
She and her classmates have been working with JOMP instructors all year. The instructors have been going to the WCA campus to visit every WCA grade, kindergarten through fourth grade, once a week for 45-minute music classes.
The classes also previously visited the JOMP school to attend a recital, according to JOMP Executive Director Jennifer Griffin Gaul, where they were able to learn how to attend a concert. The students were given tickets, had to find their seats, and learned audience member etiquette, according to Griffin Gaul. On another field trip to JOMP, the students enjoyed an instrument “petting zoo,” at which they were able to familiarize themselves with different instruments.
JOMP was founded in 1986 with the goal to make music accessible to people at all different levels, Griffin Gaul said.
JOMP has a youth orchestra, an after-school program, and private lessons among its offerings, according to Griffin Gaul, and provided $165,000 in tuition assistance in 2023. JOMP currently has around 400 students from babies to adults, Griffin Gaul said.
JOMP also had partnerships with Worcester Housing Authority, visiting its Great Brook Valley Gardens once a week, and Worcester Public Schools, working with students at Burncoat High School, the district’s magnet school where students participate in music, dance, theater, and visual arts, according to Griffin Gaul.
“But, as far as the programming that we do, this is the first time that I believe that we’ve actually gone into a school and worked within the classroom,” Griffin Gaul said.
Griffin Gaul and JOMP Program Manager Monica Daly taught the WCA third and fourth graders three songs to perform for their families. The songs are a tongue twister (“How Much Wood Would a Wood Chuck Chuck if a Woodchuck Could Chuck Wood”), a song in Spanish with accompanying percussion, and a song in Hebrew with accompanying xylophones and maracas.
Daly said chose the tongue twister because it activates their voices and requires mental energy to memorize. Some of the songs also involve rounds, which helps the students build their independent musicianship having to continue singing their parts while their classmates sing different parts, according to Daly.
During the song involving percussion, the students without drums use body percussion. This teaches students that they can create sound with their bodies without needing extra tools, according to Daly.
“It helps develop their creativity and understanding that you don’t need to have all the resources in the world to make great music,” Daly said. The song in Hebrew calls for peace, which Daly said she specifically chose to soothe the students during a time of global strife.
“Singing is healing and calling for peace feels good at this crazy time,” Daly said.
Elijah Senckowski, a fourth grader at WCA said he likes all the songs the group is performing and enjoyed getting to try out the xylophone and piano.
“It’s really fun to be here,” Senckowski said. “You get to learn about a lot of things you haven’t seen before.”
Both Senckowski and Lombo are Worcester residents and attended Worcester Public Schools before coming to WCA.
Lombo and Senckowski both said they like WCA more than their old schools, with Lombo enjoying the number of field trips and Senckowski partial to wearing a uniform.
In addition to its partnership with JOMP, WCA students have also taken field trips to Old Sturbridge Village and the EcoTarium.
Senckowski said his favorite field trips have been to OSV because he feels like he’s going back in time.
Lombo said working with JOMP has been her favorite.
Going into the classroom was challenging at first, Griffin Gaul said, since it is different from the type of teaching JOMP instructors are used to, but the WCA teachers were incredibly supportive.
“I love seeing them light up when they’re really engaged with the material that they’ve been comfortable with, that they’ve been hearing for months,” Daly said. “They’re like ‘I’m ready to do this’ and they absolutely shine when they do it.’”
Worcester Cultural Academy opened in August and currently has 133 students from kindergarten to fourth grade. The school opened despite pushback from the administration of Worcester Public Schools, the Worcester School Committee, and several local public officials vocally opposing the opening of the charter school and asking the state’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education not to approve its charter.
Their arguments against the charter included that it would take $7 million away from Worcester Public Schools over five years, that it wouldn’t live up to the promises it made to serve English Language Learners, that WPS already had relationships with the cultural programs WCA proposed it would, and that the relationship between it and Old Sturbridge Village – which is providing management services to the school – is unethical. Despite their arguments, the board approved the charter in February.
Of the 133 WCA students, 43 percent are English Language Learners and 90 percent reside in Worcester, according to WCA spokesperson Jamie Greenthal. Of the 24,318 students Worcester Public Schools has in 2023, 30.4 percent are English Language Learners, according to Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford, and Antigua and Barbuda. Her work has been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
