Monday, June 24, 2013

Cigar Box Guitar? To teach math? Really? Absolutely.


G-Funk carries his ukulele with him everywhere. As I walk up the hall to his 7th grade Career and Technical Education (CTE) classroom, I hear him playing. I hear him again as he leaves the school after the carpentry club ends. G-Funk (“Grant” to his teachers) and 200 of his middle school classmates built cigar box guitars over the past two years, during and after school. Grant’s guitar ranks among the best built and best sounding.

Using Building To Teach materials and methods, the Cigar Box Guitar Project started in one school as a way to teach 20 students “hands-on math.” It has ended up serving over 200 students from all the middle schools in Alexandria, Virginia. CTE teachers now coordinate with math teachers; students, teachers and parents gather for school district-wide “gut bucket” blues concerts; the students are engaged in their projects; and, they’re measurably improving their math skills.
 
Download the Building To Teach Cigar Box Guitar Math Instructor and Building Guide 

A small city inside Washington DC’s beltway, Alexandria, Virginia’s public schools have a diverse student population which brings tremendous challenges, opportunities and rewards. I’m a wooden boat builder and carpenter by trade and have become a hands-on math instructor. My own kids have led me to guitar building. (They like musical instruments better than boats...) With the on-line inspiration of Keni Lee Burgess, I’ve even started playing a little bottleneck slide. http://www.cigarboxnation.com/profile/KeniLeeBurgess

None of this work happens without good partners. Alexandria has two of the most flexible and open minded middle school CTE teachers you will ever meet in Matt Cupples and Kyle Godfrey. They’ve allowed us to come into their classrooms and work with their students. They’ve also made our work much, much better.

Curtis Blues (http://www.curtisblues.com/) is a local blues musician/ historian who’s crazier than any middle school student I’ve met. Who else could take a class of kids who have never played a lick and get them to perform a concert, on stage, in front of their peers?

Affection for cigar box guitars is not isolated to Virginia. After taking a CBG building workshop with me at a ‘Teaching with Small Boats” conference, Chris de Firmian has the kids of Ukiah, California building and playing.  He’s not alone. Google “Cigar Box Guitar” and you’ll get over a million hits. We want to continue to spread the fun. You can download the Cigar Box Guitar Math Instructor’s Guide. The related hands on math instructional materials and exercises are available through Building To Teach, also free of charge.

We get to do this work through the context of teaching math skills. Kids learn symmetry, measurement, fractions, basic geometry, even Algebra through building the guitar and laying out its fret scale. The math achievement is easily measurable; but what’s really great about this work is watching the student use what they build and change their expectations about what they can achieve.

Every Thursday afternoon G-Funk and his mates meet in Kyle Godfrey’s (CTE) classroom. They are now building electric guitars, working in hundredths of inches, learning to select the correct piece of wood for their fretboard and doing all the wiring. Best of all, I get to help.