Feb 23, 2012 | 02:45
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Jan 26, 2012
Helping kids cope —one drumbeat at a time
I am responsible!"Pum pum puh pum pum pum!
"I do the right thing!"
Puh pum puh pum pum!
But Gilmore’s students, drawing on lessons learned in a UCLA program called Beat the Odds, are finding better ways to cope. Her interactions with her class were featured in a 2009 documentary, "American Rhythms," which showcased Beat the Odds. The program combines elements of contemporary drum circles with group counseling to teach children skills for managing stress, expressing anger and other feelings in appropriate ways, and developing respect for themselves and empathy for others.
The lesson that teacher Tina Gilmore chanted to her fifth-grade class — accompanied by the beat of her handheld drum — wasn't merely instruction in "being good." It was an affirmation her students repeated as they drummed enthusiastically on their desktops before going out for recess in the schoolyard, where fights had been breaking out lately.
Their school, Napa Elementary, is situated in a tough Northridge community nicknamed "Little Tijuanita," rife with gang violence and poverty. Kids struggle with everything from learning English as a second language to going home to families crowded into tiny, one-bedroom apartments. Stressors like these can trigger emotional problems like depression and anxiety as well as aggressive behaviors like bullying and fighting.
Teacher Tina Gilmore gets playful with her students in a Beat the Odds drum circle.
"The little ones look up to you," Gilmore told her class in the film. Just 10 years old, her students were considered the "big kids" at the K-5 school. "If you want to do something wrong, I want you to stop and think — and [mentally] drum the beat."
Beat the Odds is the brainchild of Ping Ho, founder and director of UCLArts and Healing within the UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine. With a background in counseling psychology and public health, coupled with lifelong interest and involvement in the arts, Ho views the process of creative expression as an opportunity for self-growth.
Hundreds of teachers, counselors, community workers, college students and performing artists have been trained to deliver Beat the Odds in schools, giving thousands of children a deeper understanding of themselves and upping their chances that they will "beat the odds" of failing in school and becoming dropout statistics.
Teachers have been impressed by the fact that research has shown that Beat the Odds has helped students reduce depression, anxiety and acting-out behaviors and has improved self-awareness and attention spans.
Students practice leadership skills by taking turns at the circle's center to set a new rhythm in motion.
Early intervention, with children as young as 8 to 10 years old, Ho maintains, can help prevent problems like substance abuse and aggressive behavior over a lifetime. But the program has already expanded beyond this age group.
"Drumming is a universal, human thing," said Ho. "We all have a heartbeat and can keep a rhythm. It comes naturally to us." What’s more, as a deeply rooted tradition in many cultures, drumming is "a community experience that supports the notion of the collective."
Most recently, more than 7,000 6th and 7th graders in Santa Clarita schools went through a consolidated version of the program. In May, those students will showcase their syncopation skills by performing as the world’s largest drum circle at Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center. Ho is also pursuing similar projects with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, Santa Monica College and the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage at the Santa Monica Performing Center.
In an era of community "drum circles" — from drop-in sessions at Venice Beach to "spiritual" workshops — drumming seemed a natural for UCLArts and Healing, which uses writing, art, dance, music and other art forms in its public workshops.
Ping Ho, founder and director of UCLArts & Healing, led the creation of Beat the Odds.
Scientific research has looked at many aspects of drumming. A professor of music cognition at the University of Amsterdam found, for example, that infants have an innate sense of rhythm which can be detected even in the womb. He went on to hypothesize that this "pre-language mechanism" is the foundation for communication skills.
Another researcher who examined the uniquely human capacity to synchronize body movements to an external acoustic beat — e.g., tapping our feet to music — suggested that this ability evolved as a means of synchronizing socially with fellow humans. There’s also scientific evidence of connections among drumming, stress reduction and health-enhancing neuroimmune benefits — a subject of particular interest to Ho, who previously served as founding administrator of the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, which studies brain-body links.
To design a pilot program, Ho teamed up with LAUSD psychiatric social worker Giselle Friedman and Dr. Lonnie Zelzter, on faculty at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine and director of Whole Child LA. ALso pulled in were professional drum circle facilitator Mike DeMenno and drum manufacturer Remo Belli, who has provided funding for the program and opened up his Remo Recreational Music Center in North Hollywood as a training site.
"We decided to take drumming — which already is a great model for bridging diversity and building community — and add group counseling activities to boost the psychosocial benefits," Ho said. "While the kids’ understanding is that they’re having a community drumming experience, they’re actually getting a therapeutic experience," minus the stigma sometimes attached to therapy.
School social worker Giselle Friedman, who helped design Beat the Odds, invites students at Napa Elementary to show their moves.
"It’s broadly inclusive," Ho said. "Rather than pulling Johnny out because he’s misbehaving, Johnny can now learn together with everybody else."
"Drumming — any art form, really — is a powerful metaphorical tool," said Ho, "especially for young people, who tend to respond to everything biographically based on their own experience. So when you start asking about how life is related to this artistic experience, they’re very forthcoming."
Napa Elementary served as the pilot site for the eight-week program. During a weekly, 45-minute session, Gilmore and her students gathered around a circle of drums in the school gym. Starting with everyone pounding out a shared rhythm to release stress, create a sense of community and simply have fun, each lesson then shifted to group discussion such topics as feelings, positive risk-taking and being a leader. In one session, for example, the group brainstormed ways to manage anger, learned a spoken "calm-down mantra" and then expressed their feelings on the drums. In a session on team-building and positive risk-taking, hand shakers were passed around the circle in increasingly rapid succession until many students dropped them. Then students discussed how it’s okay to make mistakes and how it feels to give and receive.
"Drumming — any art form, really — is a powerful metaphorical tool," said Ho, "especially for young people, who tend to respond to everything biographically based on their own experience. So when you start asking about how life is related to this artistic experience, they’re very forthcoming."Said one of Gilmore students in the film documentary: "We’re starting to actually behave good ... not bad like last time." A classmate noted, "Some kids are just angry all the time. … The point, I think, of [Beat the Odds] was to take out all the bad feelings inside and to just express yourself."
"Our kids bring a lot of baggage to school," Gilmore said. "If this helps them to release some of this, then maybe tomorrow when I teach pronouns, they’ll hear me instead of having so much tension about what’s happening at home."
Beat the Odds is also being taught to nurses, marriage and family therapists and other professionals who are finding ways to apply it in their work. A Feb. 4 training session open to professionals and non-professionals alike will feature an opportunity to observe a large drum circle for children. To learn more about Beat the Odds, visit the UCLArts and Healing website.
