Collier music teacher celebrates 1st anniversary of studio
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Ask youngsters about their favorite songs, and the answers are likely to be nursery rhymes or something they heard in a Disney movie.
You may not expect Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Ronda Alla Turca.”
The section of a sonata composed in 1783 made the top-two list of Becki Lewis’ three-year-old daughter, who had heard and enjoyed the tune so much that she ranked it right up there with the far more contemporary “Radioactive” by the pop band Imagine Dragons.
“If you know that song, it’s really upbeat, really fun,” Lewis, a lifelong Collier resident, said about the Mozart piece.
And as a music teacher since she was a teenager, she takes a practical approach to piquing her students’ interest about what they’re playing, even if it’s of the classical genre from a couple of centuries ago.
“Let’s make it part of their lives,” she said. “If we’re going to expect them to learn it, let’s motivate them to learn it by making it relevant to them.”
As the Chartiers Valley High School graduate gets ready for the Aug. 1 anniversary of opening Lewis Music Studio in South Fayette last year, she continues to teach students as young as preschool in a manner that grabs — and, she hopes, retains — their attention.
She gave the example of a special activity for children as they hear Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s uptempo “Flight of the Bumblebee”:
“The kids take a parachute, and we put balls on the parachute. They pop the balls all around, and I say, ‘These are our little bumblebees.’”
With a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Duquesne University and director’s credential in early childhood administration from Point Park University, Lewis’ background in working with youngsters has paid off in an increasing number of parents and guardians entrusting their children’s musical education to her.
As a result, she now is joined by about a dozen other teachers in handling the quantity.
“We got some teachers after covid who had existing students and needed a place to teach,” she said. “We’re crammed on some nights, but mostly it’s working.”
Her own experience as an educator began when she spent a summer volunteering as a vacation Bible school teacher at First United Presbyterian Church of Rennerdale in Collier.
“One of the moms said, ‘Would you teach my kids piano?’ So I started. I don’t know if I was ready, but my teacher encouraged me and she mentored me,” Lewis said about local instructor Karen Dietrich-Elstner.
Lewis took a break from teaching after having the first of her three children, but returned with the encouragement of her husband, Scott.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you just take some students? You’d make way more money teaching a couple of students than you would, like, at the mall,’” Becki said. “We had the space, so I started teaching at my house. I got my first student on craigslist, and I still teach her sister today.”
Lessons later shifted to her church, Calvary Full Gospel in South Fayette, where she previously had led the daycare program.
“They called me and said, hey, we know you had plans to start a music program when you were here. What were your thoughts, because we want to get that running,” Lewis said. “I got too many students to do myself, so I brought on some other teachers to start helping me. And then we just outgrew that space, basically.”
The covid-19 pandemic also made relocation necessary, to a two-room space that seemed to be fine until Lewis noticed what looked to amount to a business boom.
“Normally, summer’s a really slow time for us. But we were getting so many calls last summer, I knew: If this is how summer’s going, fall is going to be crazy,” she said. “That’s when we rented this space.”
Lewis Music Studio offers lessons in voice and numerous instruments, including piano, drums, guitar, bowed strings, woodwinds and brass. Other areas of study address music theory and technology, and introductory programs are available for children as young as six months with Me and My Grownup Music Time.
To expand the reach of music lessons, Lewis is working with a Carnegie-based nonprofit, BRIDGE People — the acronym stands for Becoming Responsible Independent Determined Goal-oriented Empowered — on a need-based scholarship program for youngsters “who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity privately.”
As for her growth as an educator from a couple of children to owning a studio, perhaps the key is in her overall philosophy:
“Personally, I think that a student-centered approach is always the best.”