DrumPower Project at the Middle School Munich on Wittelsbacherstreet, 5th grade

by Nelli Cardenas

From 6.10. 2021 - 03.03. 2021 a half-yearly project could take place in the 5th grade of the middle school Wittelsbacherstraße in Munich. The project was accompanied by the intern Sonja Ebert.

The teacher Ms. Sadri was very motivated to work with her class on the topic of violence prevention with music. She had only been in the student body for a few weeks and had the goal of understanding and getting to know the students better.

The class consisted of 8 girls and 15 boys and a very heterogeneous relationship in terms of origin, culture and language.

Getting to know the class was loud and stormy, but it showed right at the beginning a great, still very unbridled, joy and desire to drum and explore the games.

Due to the mask obligation in the classroom and a somewhat difficult acoustics in the hally gym, we had to get used to giving short and clear instructions and to concentrate on the communication on the drums.

Topics that kept popping up in class were a respectful learning to live together. At the request of the teacher, we also took this aspect into every hour and tried right at the beginning to always make a transfer to everyday situations of the students. During the breaks and during the cleaning up, a high energy and aggression potential was observed and at the beginning of the project the cleaning situations of the drums regularly escalated into small physical confrontations, which is why we tied them into our process, which worked better.

Over time, favorite games such as the stop game crystallized. The students showed great creativity and joy in showing each other a stop, i.e. a limit, in different ways. This game was desired by the class each time and always slightly varied. Our common goal was to show the students how important it is to set boundaries and accept those of others. Piece by piece, the game was practiced to listen to other classmates and respect their limits.

Despite the high volume level, there were always very quiet and concentrated moments such as when music was played. Even if we didn't expect this, the class surprised us with a calmness, when each student was allowed to play the chimes alone. Here the class showed that they were very capable of a respectful coexistence.

In order to increase concentration and participation in the games, we formed small groups. Sonja Ebert worked with a group to write a song together.

Since schools had to close due to coronain caimsis in mid-December 2020, contact with the students was interrupted for the time being. In order to be able to get in touch with the students again before the Christmas holidays, Sonja Ebert wrote a song for which she used the wishes of the students and sent as a video of the class before Christmas, which met with a very joyful response.

Unfortunately, after the Christmas holidays, distance teaching continued until the end of the project, so the project had to be continued and terminated online. Once again a bridge was built to popular games, such as the stop game, and there were many colorful creative contributions on different stop signs as well as thank-you letters.

The cooperation with the teacher proved to be very positive and fruitful and the follow-up discussions and supervision with Dr. Andreas Wölfl proved to be very profitable for the further course of the project. There was a great desire on both sides to continue the project in presence, so this is planned when the situation with Corona in the schools has improved again.