Revere High School’s (RHS) band director has created a new music class this semester for special education students to help teach them music basics.
Band Director Tom Chiera has taught at RHS for almost two years and in the second semester of the 2024-2025 school year he added Adaptive Music to the schedule. The class is for special education students at RHS.
The idea for the class arose among staff at RHS during the fall, semester and Chiera was able to implement it in the spring semester.
“It kind of came up in conversation because our administration and my fellow teachers were interested in creating a music opportunity for students that aren’t normally in ensembles. So we created a general music, a kind of exploratory class,” he said.
Right now the class has six students enrolled. Chiera explained that the class began with learning rhythms and percussion and will start leaning into more instruments as the class progresses.
“We spent about eight weeks there on just the element of rhythm, which kind of led itself to some body percussion, so clapping, tappings, patting. . . . Since then, we progressed forward to a little bit of singing and then taking those rhythms to pitch. So we’re introducing recorders, and then we’ll turn into some hand percussions and boom whackers,” Chiera said.
He said that he would like to end the semester with teaching the students instruments you would usually find in a band or orchestra class.
Chiera explained that there are many elements to music that the students can connect to their other classes like listening, socializing, and math, but he has also found that there are elements that students would only find in a music class.
“You have the other part that music I think is unique is the feel. Can you feel a pulse? Can you look across the room and realize you’re doing that together with someone else? It becomes a little bit of a community environment that I think is special and important to have,” he said.
Another unique aspect of the class is that Chiera has brought in some of his band students to help. Adaptive music takes place during fourth period, so band students who have a fourth period study hall come in twice a month to assist Chiera. One student, Mori Kovach, explained one of the percussion elements they helped Chiera with.
“[We] drum[ed] with them. It’s like a kind of bucket [drum]. So they’ve been making bucket patterns to just different songs that they choose. So we’ve just been drumling with them,” they said.
Another band student, Evelyn Noland, explained what she and Kovach do in Adaptive Music.
“We’re mainly examples, and then we kind of assist Mr. Chiera with whatever he needs,” Noland said.
Kovach said that they decided to help Chiera with the class because music has helped them and they would like it to have the same effect on other people.
”I think everyone should get to be involved with music, no matter who they are [or] what experience they have. And I just think music has helped me a lot, and I think it’s really cool to watch it help other people, too,” Kovach said.
Chiera explained that a positive take away he has gained from Adaptive Music is meeting students he would have never met without the class.
“I appreciate that it is an opportunity for me to meet students I normally wouldn’t see, meet families that I normally wouldn’t interact with in the ensemble settings that I traditionally teach,” he said.
Although Chiera said that he is not sure what exactly will come of the class next year, he plans to still go on with Adaptive Music in some way. He says that he is happy that has put a smile on his students’ faces.
Click HERE to listen to Chiera’s students work on body percussion.
