NEWS

Artists bring dance, music, theater to Yonkers schools

Elizabeth Ganga
eganga@lohud.com
Ronnie Negro, a professional drummer, teaches a group of seventh graders at the Enrico Fermi Middle School in Yonkers about music and mathematics Thursday as part of an ArtsWestchester grant.

YONKERS – Arts educators say you can teach math through music.

Ronnie Negro showed how Thursday as he broke down drum beats for a group of seventh graders at Enrico Fermi School in Yonkers. Quarter notes became eighths and 16ths and 32nds as he and nine boys beat out time on their knees and then on the backs of chairs with drum sticks.

"The first week we came here they had no idea what that was," said Negro, pointing to notes on a chalkboard indicating different rhythms.

Negro, a drummer who has been a sub on Broadway and plays in a band, was in his sixth week teaching through an ArtsWestchester program in the Yonkers schools funded by a $500,000 state grant. The program is bringing artists into 12 schools in the district to reinforce academic curriculum through arts as varied as dance, sculpture, mixed media, music, theater and ceramics. More than 60 residencies will take place this calendar year in 10 elementary schools and two high schools. A federal grant provides a similar program in Mount Vernon.

In Joanne Riolo's first-grade class at School 22 this week, the desks were pushed back against the walls. Dancer Kendra Mace had the kids in a circle on the floor. After trying out different rhythms by clapping and pounding, they tried shuffling like crabs across the carpet. For little kids, concentration is one of the goals, Mace said.

Dance instructor Kendra Mace, right, leads first graders in a lesson about sea life Wednesday in Joanne Riolo's class at School 22 in Yonkers.

"What I really love about it," Riolo said, "is it's teaching them problem solving through dance and music."

The residencies are taking place as Yonkers is struggling to provide students with basic arts after years of program cuts and facing more cuts to extracurriculars next year.

At Enrico Fermi, a pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade school with a performing-arts theme, one art teacher and a part-time music teacher teach 960 kids. The school focuses its efforts on kindergarten to sixth grade and uses the ArtsWestchester artists to fill in the gaps in seventh and eighth grades, said Assistant Principal Isaac Del Monte.

The program marries ArtsWestchester's mission of bringing arts to the community with the school's educational mission. After years working with school districts, they've seen how students are more motivated and engaged when they are exposed to the arts, said Joanne Mongelli, ArtsWestchester's deputy director.

"What we find over the years is kids retain what they learn more when they're actively participating," she said.

Twitter: @eganga