A Monticello High School media specialist is pumping up the volume on music courses. Now, a class gives students the chance to explore their passion hands on, and gives the instructor many reasons to be proud.
The classroom's location is all too ironic. Like many libraries, the media center at Monticello High School is lined with shelves of books and seats filled with students quietly studying. In the middle of it all, media specialist Dave Glover has transformed a storage closet into a fully functional recording studio.
"I'm amazed every single day. Everyone is just amazingly talented and I love what I'm doing," said Glover, a musician himself.
Kids pack the small studio, crowding around the computers and taking turns on the microphone. As our cameras hovered over him, senior Evan Cunningham "dropped a beat" in no time. He's been playing piano his entire life, and this course gives him a chance to put his years of practice on the keys to good use.
"I'll just kind of get an idea in my head or even just a feeling, really," Cunningham explained, "and I'll try to make that kind of come alive with the sounds and the beats."
For Cunningham, this class is less about lecture and more about the music. Not to mention, he says the community of people occupying the studio is one he's honored to make music with.
"Maybe all of us wouldn't cross paths normally and so we just collaborate in this really cool way," Cunningham said.
One of those fellow classmates is senior Evan Jones. He started rapping when some of his friends took up "spitting rhymes", and even spent a summer with the Music Resource Center. However, it was in this class where Jones found his passion for the art could mean more than money and fame.
"This whole process has made me who I am right now," Jones explained. "I'm able to be like, express myself on the mic or on paper, and without all of this equipment and Mr. Glover, I know for a fact that I wouldn't be doing this right now."
Whether this course means the start of a career or just getting class credit for their talents, at least these students have a song or two to show for their love of music.
Jones said, "I imagine myself doing it in the future because obviously, if it makes you happier, you're going to pursue that."
"Learning has many shapes, it has many looks, and at the end of the day, its supposed to be fun and its supposed to be collaborative," Glover said, "and that's what's going on in here."
Albemarle County Schools are making an effort to turn media centers into more learning-friendly spaces for students, which spurred on the studio's location.
Some of the students in this career tech program actually submitted songs they produced in the class to colleges to help get them into music programs.
