new teacher q & a
Nurturing notes
Mar 1, 2007 4:25 PM
Gregory Durant with his chamber singers at Brooklyn’s IS 71.
You can sing Gregorian chants with Gregory Durant — or any other kind of music for that matter. This versatile chorus teacher packed up his bags one day in Bellafontaine, Ohio, and left for the Big Apple. He was determined to live in New York and bring music into its schools — especially those that didn’t have any.
“I always wanted to work in a Title I school,” Durant says. “Growing up we had nice schools with everything we needed and with good arts programs. When I was looking for a job, I came across an article about New York City schools and saw that some were great and some didn’t have anything at all in the way of chorus and performing arts. I realized I just really wanted to come here and do some good.”
Durant had another revelation years back, when he was a kid in one of those golden schools, playing a shiny trumpet in well-funded school bands ever since 5th grade.
He got sick of playing the trumpet.
The boy was at a loss. All he knew was that he loved music.
Then, in high school, after his changing voice had calmed down, Durant discovered that he could sing. Really sing. Baritone and bass. Clear, on key, beautifully and strong.
He sang his way through high school, then through Otterbein College, joining every single chorus he could, from jazz to chamber to operetta to the college’s mass choir.
“I knew I wanted to teach because I love working with kids and I like security,” he says. “But I needed a big change from Ohio and just wanted to put myself in a new place with new people, see if I could get accustomed to life in New York. Now I love it here.”
Durant got an Ohio teaching license but never taught there. Reciprocal license in hand, he got hired two years ago at IS 71, a 6-12 school in “non-yuppified” South Williamsburg. He lives in Astoria, is getting his master’s at Hunter College, and sings in a professional choir in Manhattan.
“My first year, when I taught four classes a day, it was sort of easy because all the students were starting out at zero and I could be same person for each class,” he says. “This year I’m teaching five grades and have to be five different people because they’re all on different levels, partly because I had many of the kids last year, and it’s great, it makes me work harder.”
Nurturing different levels can mean playing the piano in one class and shunning it in another. “The piano is important for kids whose voices are all over the place or who are hearing a musical passage for the first time,” he says. “But allowing more advanced singers to rely on the piano for accompaniment is detrimental, a big crutch. They must work a cappella. I’ve always had that philosophy.”
He’s turned rank beginners into advanced beginners and intermediates doing three-part harmonies. His 10th-graders “are singing SAB now [soprano-alto-bass] and my 11th-grade group I call the chamber singers — they’re my top group, and I’m really proud of them,” he says.
At the school concert, the 11th-graders performed “Laudamus Te,” from Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and the 6th-graders did some jazzy stuff. Then the combined choir of 50 that Durant put together sang.
“I see the progress my kids have made in just a year,” he says. “I prepared a student for the Summer Arts Institute at Stuyvesant HS and she loved it. I’m talking it up now so I have more students who want to go this year. I prepared students to audition for an all-city chorus at Talent Unlimited HS and they got in.
“Sometimes the progress is small but I tell myself that slow and steady wins the race. The details of my room, classroom management, my lessons — so much has improved in one year. I can’t wait to see what this is going to be like in four or five years!”
