Love of Music, Movie Making Captivates Young Students

VILLAS – The Lower Township Department of Parks and Recreation has expanded its youth programs to include music and movie maker program and the results have been very positive, according to a release.
The music program, “Rockin’ the Rec,” began classes the first week in October led by Lisa Jurewicz, known to her students as Mrs. J.
Jurewicz, a music educator for over 20 years who still gives private lessons, is providing guitar and piano lessons as part of the class.
“Rockin’ the Rec” is for students in fourth, fifth and sixth grades with no experience. The class is scheduled to be offered again in spring 2019.
Since the sessions began at the Millman Center, both the guitar and piano class has been filled with young students eager to learn. The Lower Township Recreation Department provided the instruments and equipment. Jurewicz said one student who didn’t know how to hold a guitar can now play a few bars of one of her favorite songs.
 “This is a class designed to give kids the opportunity to be introduced to an instrument and get their feet wet,” said Jurewicz.
Jurewicz said that she created a program that will focus on learning contemporary pop and rock songs. The guitar 10-week session includes being introduced to parts of the electric guitar, playing guitar tab, open chords, power chords, and listening to selected rock music.
The 10-week piano session introduces students to “Middle C” and “C” positions and playing simple, beginning songs on keyboards. Reading and music terminology is also covered in the class.
Sixth-grade student Dakota Tozer said she wanted to take the class after watching her older sister play acoustic guitar. The only experience Peter Zumpano had with a guitar was through the video game “Guitar Hero.” Both can now confidently name the parts of the guitar and strummed chords. 
In the Movie Maker program, students had Sony HD Handycam video cameras in their hands on day one of the program. They moved on to work on tripods, recording in front of a green screen and then video editing software including iMovie and Final Cut Pro X. Editing will be performed on state-of-the-art 21.5-inch Apple Mac computers.
During one evening’s program, fifth-grade student Jaxon Turner was adding music to his movie. He said he has a love of sports, especially basketball, and he has dreams of one day editing sports films.
At another computer, Axel McCoy and Allie Miller working on edits to their horror movie while nearby Kayla Farina, Carly Gittle and Caila Haines worked on special effects for their movie.
 “The biggest difference between teaching kids with technology and some adults is that adults are afraid that if they press the wrong button, they could break something. Kids adapt to technology and aren’t afraid to create and play with technology,” said Movie Maker instructor Gina Bronson,  also a teacher of television media at Lower Cape May Regional High School.
Sixth graders Nathan Brockman, Mason McBride and Luke Gregory were filming a police interrogation scene that they hope will become a pivotal piece in their movie. They were working with green-screen technology and standard tripod work.
Bronson noted that the skills they learn in the recreation program could provide the building blocks for similar audio-visual classes in school.
For information on any of the recreation programs call 609-886-7880 ext. 0 or visit the township’s website at townshipoflower.org.