Pamela V. Brown

Write Path, an L.L.C.  

Photo by Ron Kosen / Photo-Spectrum

   Kauai Business Report, March 2003

There's Something About Mary

Kapaa Middle School Chorus Teacher Brings Heart, Soul and Music to Children

By Pamela V. Brown

Looking nearly as youthful as her charges, she cheerfully encourages her students to sing, dance, emote and to perform sign language while singing, as she accompanies them on piano. She's clearly in her element - and students and administrators can feel it.

"She brings passion to what she does," said Daniel Hamada, complex area superintendent, who supervises the 17 public schools on Kauai and Niihau. "She can inspire kids to bring out their best, even the naughtiest kids."

Agrees Maile Kauo, vice principal of the middle school, "We say every child is a star and Mary really makes the children shine," she said.

Lardizabal views music as a wonderful vehicle with which to expose children to hidden aspects of themselves and to parts of the world beyond their classrooms. She deems such learning experiences so valuable that for the last several years she's coordinated trips to Oahu for two of her choruses to participate in music festivals, and is taking one of them to the mainland this year.

A few years ago, when fundraising for travel expenses fell short, Lardizabal covered the remaining balances on her personal credit card for families who couldn't come up with the difference. "That's how much I want this for them," she said. Some parents are still, slowly, paying her back, but it was worth it to her to give her students experiences they may never have gotten elsewhere.

Hamada says that as a former school principal who visits classrooms across the island, he can see the difference Lardizabal's lessons have on students. "You notice those kids that have performed the year before, they're very poised," he said. "When you go to other classrooms and see them in other subjects, they're very confident, so it does integrate into other core areas."

That's why Lardizabal is again bringing 44 of her 8th grade chorus students to the Heritage Music Festival on Oahu in mid-April to compete against choirs that for the last two years have been exclusively from the mainland. The first year they attended, Lardizabal's group won both the Gold and Hawaii Spirit awards. It seems like they would have been a shoe-in for the latter for obvious reasons but Lardizabal chalks winning the award up to her kids being nice to other school groups and probably for being the youngest choir in attendance. Last year's chorus won the Hawaii Spirit and Silver awards, missing the gold by one point.

"My thing is it's not so much the competition, it's hearing other choirs and learning from the adjudication process," she said. "Wonderful professors come and workshop these kids afterwards. They get to hear strategies and different techniques, and what can improve."

Each chorus performs for 15 minutes - about three or four songs - then is adjudicated for 15 minutes. Lardizabal's church choir of younger children will also be heading to a music festival in San Diego, Calif. during the first week of April which will be similar to the Oahu festival, but without competition.

When chorus members are nervous at the beginning of a performance, Lardizabal teaches students that time flies when you're giving a concert. She reminds them that they get only one chance on stage and to make it their best.

"That's my ultimate goal, what can they learn from all of this?" she said. "I don't care what we do or how we do it, it's what can we learn from it?"

No auditions are required to join the school choirs, Lardizabal said, just one elective class selection. For Jonathan Ganir, a member of the 8th grade chorus which will be competing on Oahu, that's a good deal, one that he's taken for three years. "There's nothing boring about it," he said. "Not like writing all day."

But there are definitely some hard parts about being in a chorus, like singing on pitch, said 6th grade class president Jason Iloreta. Sometimes "the sign language part goes too fast," said fellow 6th-grader Ashley Fabiana. And sometimes learning to fake it for a whole class period can keep students occupied. "Some boys - not Jason - act like they're singing and reading music but they're not," Fabiana said. "They turn the page when everyone else turns."

Most students who spend several years in Lardizabal's classes come to think of her as a friend, someone they can trust. Gabrielle Balmores, who is in both the 8th grade chorus at Kapaa Middle School and in the Immaculate Conception choir, says she talks to Lardizabal about non-singing related problems "all the time."

"She makes it fun for us," said Brittney Palomares, a member of the 8th grade chorus. "She's the kind of person you can talk to. I don't think there's anybody that could replace her."

Lardizabal's not thinking of leaving - teaching is in her blood. After graduating college, "I just wanted to leave South Dakota. I just had to get out of there," she said. She came straight to Hawaii and through a connection with Jim Jasper who owns both a hunting lodge in her home state and JJ's Broiler in Lihue, began waiting tables at his restaurant.

But having taught piano lessons in high school and played piano for her church for 20 years, "I knew there was something missing in my life and music was always my first love," Lardizabal said. "I knew I should have done teaching from the beginning but who wants to go to five (more) years of school?" she said, laughing as she noted that once she went back to school to earn her teaching certification, she ended up doing more than that.

After two years at Kapaa High School, she began the choral program at Kapaa Middle School when the school opened in 1997 and has been there ever since. She's put her creativity into action finding different fundraisers to subsidize her group's travel plans - bake sales and silent auctions during concerts, car washes, Pizza Hut night, during which the restaurant donates a percentage of each meal tab to a charitable cause - and even asking students' families to complete anonymous, confidential surveys to help people writing psychological research papers.

"They needed kids from ethnic backgrounds, and parents and teachers," Lardizabal said. "We were paid $35 per survey. The surveys took some time but it was worth it to get back that much money. They're easier than car washes."

Lardizabal also applies for grants where she can find them, and said this year she is very grateful to the Rotary Club of Kapaa which donated $500, the PTSA which gives between $1,000 and $2,000 per year, and to Walmart which usually gives a $1,000 matching grant to the school chorus and this year also gave $500 to her church choir.

She's quick to credit others for her program's success. "The parents are wonderful. I have total support from my administration. If I didn't have that, there's no way a program like this could be successful."

Mom to Tia, 3½, and Christian, 11 months, Lardizabal says without her husband Anson's support, there's no way she could do her job.

But it's clearly Lardizabal's vigor and enthusiasm that inspire her students and keep the program going, yet she turns the spotlight back on her kids. "It's so fantastic what they do and what they produce," she said. "This group I have is really pretty darn good."

Contact Information:

Pamela V. Brown

(808) 651-3533 cell

(808) 821-1027 fax

pam@writepath.net

"Individuality of expression is the beginning and end of all art."             --- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose

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