30 taking acoustic guitar class at Chesterfield middle school

William Ashanti Hobbs IV, an eighth-grader at Elizabeth Davis Middle School, is not into trumpets and percussion, so he did not sign up for music education in sixth and seventh grade.

About a year ago, he discovered his dad's acoustic guitar in the closet, and he wanted to learn to play it.

As luck would have it, his school is offering the only acoustic guitar class at the middle school level in Chesterfield County this fall. He is one of 30 students taking the class.

"I was very excited," he said.

The reason for offering the guitar class was to reach students like Hobbs, said Jonathan Schoepflin, who teaches the class. Many students are not interested in chorus, band and orchestra, he said.

"All the kids, minus one, in my guitar class have not been in band or orchestra," he said. "From that standpoint, it's a great situation where we're able to get kids involved in music education."

A healthy school music department is one that offers band, orchestra, chorus, general music and guitar and involves 60 percent to 70 percent of the student body, Schoepflin said.

"I think that we [Elizabeth Davis Middle] are close to 50 percent at this point," he said.

Schoepflin, who has been teaching music for 14 years in the county, said his principal, Sarah Fraher, asked his opinion on how to bring in new students into music education.

"What about a guitar class?" he said he told her later. "Her eyes lit up and she goes, 'I married my husband because of his guitar.'"

Some Chesterfield high schools offer guitar classes, Schoepflin said.

"Guitar classes have been treated as the red-haired stepchild of music education," he said. "Some of the teachers just don't want to teach it. Us musicians tend to have this inflated ego of ourselves that we're better than other types of musicians, and that's not the case."

His plan, Schoepflin said, is to expand the guitar class to sixthand seventh-graders, and his goal is to raise $3,000 for 30 guitars.

"My hope is that we'll be able to get that into the program next year," he said. "If it does not happen next year, I'm anticipating it the year after."

One of Schoepflin's students, Daisy DeuBay, 13, said she wants to play guitar to accompany her singing and to boost her transcript to apply to the Thomas Dale High School Specialty Center for the Arts or the Appomattox Regional Governor's School.

She's happy the class is at her school, she said.

"I always wanted to learn," she said, "and paying for a teacher after school would have been too much."

Contact Juan Antonio Lizama at (804) 649-6513 or .