Teacher hits all the right notes with kids.

Byline: LARRY BACON The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - A 1934 George Gershwin Broadway tune says nobody could ask for anything more than rhythm, music, and "my girl."

Most of the 600 students in kindergarten through fifth grade at Rhododendron Elementary and Primary schools are too young to be interested in the opposite sex. But Kelly Kawahara makes sure they've all got music and rhythm.

The kids spend two half-hour sessions a week studying music with Kawahara. Kawahara, who has been at the school for 15 years, sees her job as making music fun as well as a learning experience that will stick with the youngsters for the rest of their lives.

"I would say that 98 percent of my kids love it," she says.

For the most part, she says, the rhythm and the music must be learned. An amazing number of kindergartners, she says, arrive in class with no sense of rhythm - no ability to clap their hands in time to the music, or sing a song.

But under her tutelage they soon learn.

By the time they leave the fifth grade they know how to keep a rhythm, sing, and play music on instruments such as the small electric keyboards and xylophones in her classroom. They can read music, and they even get involved in composing a class song.

"I love what I do," says Kawahara, who says a music teacher she had as a child inspired her to make teaching music her career.

She admired him because "he was always excited every day," Kawahara says.

The teacher who students say makes them laugh because of the "funny faces" she sometimes pulls obviously was excited one day last week. She had kids in a combined first and second grade class on their feet singing and doing hand motions to "Fuzzy Little Caterpillar," part of a production they will put on for their parents next month.

Teaching is exciting for her, Kawahara says, because not only is she helping her students discover the joy of music, but she also believes that what she's teaching them will improve their mental processes and help them in their other studies.

Scientific studies show that many of the areas of the brain involved in processing and creating music overlap with areas used in math skills. Some experiments have shown that students who received music lessons did better in math than those who did not.

Because various elements of music - such as pitch, rhythm, harmony, timbre and melody - activate multiple areas of the brain, music stimulates the brain perhaps more than any other activity, Kawahara says. She says music instruction also helps young people become better readers and master language skills.

"Music is a foreign language," she says. "It has all the structure of a foreign language."

Music hones math skills, Kawahara says, because the rhythms in music are based on fractions. She teaches her kids about whole, half, quarter and eighth notes, she says. And once they grasp those concepts, she says, the lessons they get on fractions in their math classes will be easier to understand.

"When I was in fifth grade, I was a C and D student in math," Kawahara remembers.

She says she struggled, paid attention, but just didn't grasp the math concepts. Then, they started to make sense, and within one grading period she was getting Bs. Kawahara didn't understand then what caused the turnaround, but she thinks she does now.

Her grades went up after she started taking piano lessons.

According to the Oregon Department of Education, about 85 percent of Oregon school districts offer kindergarten through 12th grade music instruction. At a time when most districts are facing severe budget cuts, eliminating elementary school music might seem an inviting way to save money.

But an enlightened school board would never consider total elimination of elementary music programs, says Kathy Pengelly, an elementary music teacher for 32 years who now helps coordinate music programs for the Eugene School District as well as teach music education students at the University of Oregon.

Early music education help develop the cognitive processes of young people and brings them joy, Pengelly says. And scientists have found that it's easier to learn musical concepts at a young age. Some see birth to age 7 or 8 as the golden years for learning to read, speak a language, or learn music.

"So young children in particular deserve to have music instruction," Pengelly says.

And if they don't get that instruction, she says, they will find it more difficult to learn music skills later in life. There's a good chance they won't even want to, Pengelly says.

Bill Bartman, band director at Florence's Siuslaw High School, says Kawahara is one reason the high school has always had outstanding band programs. He says the students in his band who have been through her classes or who have taken private piano lessons are his best students.

Bartman has observed marked differences between band students who have had elementary school music instruction and those who have not.

"They get it quicker," he says of those who have had previous teaching. "They're not as confused about what the (music) symbols mean. And as they are playing their instrument, they're getting more joy out of the playing because there are not those road blocks."

CAPTION(S):

Music teacher Kelly Kawahara leads first- and second-graders in a song at Rhododendron Primary School in Florence. INSIDE Education Extra: Faces and Places, Achievements, Book Picks and School News / 4C