Music unites for River View seniors
WARSAW − Two seniors at River View High School expanded roles assigned to them related to the music program in order to foster connections across the county and encourage the next generation of high school musicians.
Grace Cullison and Paige Nicely became music department public relations liaisons their junior year. This role in the past had students basically monitoring social media counts and making posts to promote choir and band activities. However, Cullison andNicely took it upon themselves to expand the positions and develop it into their senior project.
Seniors at River View engage in projects that has them working with community mentors and can be related to just about any hobby or career field, according to Cindy Hemming, senior project adviser. The idea is to increase their self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, responsibility and decision-making skills while improving themselves, school or community. Choir Director Dawn Anglin served as mentor to Nicely and Cullison.
"It gives us an opportunity to be recognized for different things," Nicely said of senior projects. "There's a kid currently doing a senior project on just painting the kitchen at our school. It's something I think that's important and (senior projects) really embraces those kind of things and encourages more kids to do stuff like that. It puts us in these roles to be leaders."
Cullison said it encourages students to complete passion projects and find their niche in helping their school and community.
"It's amazing to be able to take your own passions and make a project out of it. It's something literally catered to you," Cullison said.
Last year, they developed a pen pal program between high school music department students and students at River View's three elementary schools. Cullison said because so many students had multiple pen pals to cover all the children who wanted to take part, this year they made a video explaining what the music department does during the Christmas season at the high school and sent candy canes.
"It was a really fun project, it was just really hard to get people to write letters. That's why we switched it to something Paige and I could do personally," Cullison said.
Junior high music students perform at a basketball game each year. Nicely said they took the downtime around that performance to eat dinner, play games and just hangout with the junior high students.
"We call it passing the torch and just try to bring them into our world," Nicely said.
The teens also spearheaded a tri-county music department gathering last school year. River View, Ridgewood and Coshocton students in band and choir got together at Roscoe United Methodist Church. There were guest musicians, dinner, trivia, ice breaker activities and line dancing. A representative from each school also talked about the upcoming spring musical. The next is planned for March 4, and will feature square dancing and fiddle player Jeremy Timmons.
Cullison said about 50 teens attended last year and they hope for more this year due to word of mouth. They would like it to continue after they graduate.
"It was a night of fun and getting to know each other," Cullison said. "I think it bonded us together well."
Leonard Hayhurst is a community content coordinator and general news reporter for the Coshocton Tribune with close to 15 years of local journalism experience and multiple awards from the Ohio Associated Press. He can be reached at 740-295-3417 or llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com. Follow him on Twitter at @llhayhurst.
This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Music unites for River View seniors
