Music can have healing powers, both when you listen to it and when you make it. In Englewood, a neighborhood with some of the highest poverty and violent-crime rates in the city, some elementary school students are finding ways to channel their talent and creativity through musical instruments in a program called Shift: Englewood Youth Orchestra.
“The community needed a social intervention and music is our intervention,” says Ayriole Frost, executive director and one of Shift: Englewood’s teachers. ”We want to use music and music excellence to help steer our students away from the pathways that are laid down by poverty and gun violence. Through music we allow the students to use self-expression to deal with the trauma they experience on a daily basis.”
After school at least four days a week, students grade 3 through 8 at Wentworth Elementary School in Englewood gather for free music classes. Starting with one teacher and nine students three years ago, Shift: Englewood currently has three teachers and 30 students, along with a dozen of their younger siblings who often tag along.
According to Frost, with all the obstacles these students are facing in their neighborhoods and at home, it’s important to understand where students are emotionally before music lessons begin. Each class starts with the students gathered, holding their violins. Frost goes around the class and asks each student to say one word to describe how they are feeling that day and then to make a sound on their instrument to demonstrate that feeling. “This is a really quick and effective way to check in and know how everyone is doing, and to get their creative juices flowing,” says Frost.
Shift: Englewood is a nonprofit founded by Larry Gerber, who lives in Wilmette, after seeing the impact his grandson Samuel, a talented pianist, had through his bar mitzvah project providing musical instruments to students who needed them. After that, Gerber reached out to schools and clergy in Englewood to explore the option of providing after-school music training to elementary students in that community.
After many meetings, “I knew I had to make a decision about starting a program myself. If it was purely a business decision, the right answer was to let it go. But I couldn’t let it go,” says Gerber. “Ultimately, our mission is to promote the social and personal growth of our students in the form of improved academics, increased self-confidence, self-respect, impulse control, a greater ability to work with peers and adults, and a better and healthier vision of what they are capable of.”
Shift: Englewood’s unusual approach is based on the intensive music instruction program El Sistema, which has been proven successful in empowering children in low-income environments. The El Sistema program originated in Venezuela in 1975, and through the years its philosophy and methodology have achieved broad international reach and impact, having inspired networks of programs in many countries, including Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, South Korea, Sweden, Scotland and the United States. There are about 200 such programs in the United States, but only five in Chicago.
One of the added benefits of being part of the Shift: Englewood program is that students get to experience life outside of their school and their community. Students participate in at least 10 performances each year, in school and non-school venues, locally and in the greater Midwest. They also travel to professional music performances and collaborate with other youth music groups.
What’s next for Shift:Englewood? The plan is to grow its program and impact by increasing enrollment at Wentworth and starting up after school programs in possibly three other Englewood schools starting next year. For those interested in supporting Shift: Englewood, donations can be made here. The program can also use volunteers and needs violins to keep up with the demand by new students. Reach out to Ayriole Frost at ayriole.frost@shiftyouth.org with questions.
