Don’t tell Kurt Barker you’re not cut out for music.
“We’re all musical,” the Willowbrook School music teacher said. “It’s part of who we are.”
Barker recently won an Illinois State Board of Education Those Who Excel award that recognizes his ability to teach students in innovative ways. For instance, he’s bringing the gifted math teacher of the Glenview/Northbrook school into the mix for the annual fifth-grade musical performance, helping the kids design a musical instrument that they came up with themselves.
The students were asked questions such as “what do you love about school?” (Recess) “What is something you like at recess?” (Monkey bars) So, the math teacher is helping them design a percussion instrument that looks like monkey bars.
Naturally. This is, after all, the teacher who taught kids to play music on shoes.
“I you look at it through one lens, they’re performers,” he said of his charges. “But I don’t want them to be performers, I want them to be creators.
“When you make music, you’re not playing for me. You’re playing for yourself.”
So, in October, the fifth-graders will have mallets and monkey bars on stage. Nothing new for parents, since Barker helped change the expectations of parents when he arrived at District 30 a decade ago.
He had the support of the administration then, and he has it now. He was hired by Melissa Hirsch, then the principal of the Glenview school, now the district curriculum director. She was looking for a different kind of teacher to replace a more traditional music teacher, and Barker was highly recommended, she said.
“I just really loved not only this passion and his energy,” she said. “But it was clear how much he enjoyed being with kids and seeing them grow in the fine arts, and celebrating it, and I hadn’t seen it in a long time.”.
“He’s all about the experiences and the process, not so much the product, but the learning and the growth,” said principal Scott Carlson.
“Music is just the medium, and he looks beyond it,” Carlson said. “What Kurt is trying to do with the kids is empower them with their own creative voices.”
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It’s not the first award Barker has received this year. Last spring, The Northern Suburban Special Education District sent him their Best Practice Award, which recognized his skill with special education students at the school, 2500 Happy Hollow Road.
His philosophy fits their needs.
“They create what fits for them,” he said.
Hirsch said that the district responds to people who teach with imagination.
“Our curriculum in the district is aligned to standards, but it also aligns to pedagogical best practices,” best teaching methods, she said. “And Kurt has a real talent for integrating other content areas, bringing (other teachers) in.”
Barker said that children try new things because they trust him, and he does, in part, because his bosses trust him.
He said former Superintendent Ed Tivador told him not to be afraid to take risks, because he wasn’t going to break the kids.
Twitter @IrvLeavitt