‘Virtual virtuosos’: CMS music teacher gains following with creative online classes

For 45 minutes a day, three days a week, the students at Torrence Creek Elementary School holed up at home during state-mandated school closure can feel some sense of normalcy.

That’s when music teacher Kevin Brawley signs on to his YouTube live channel, under the name “Notorious Mr. B,” and starts teaching what he calls his virtual virtuosos. For 45 minutes a day, just like a normal music class at Torrence Creek, kids like Finn and Scarlett Ernest, siblings who are in Brawley’s class and the school choir, can feel connected to a beloved teacher from a distance.

“It’s hard for them to be engaged at home,” Chris Ernest said of his two kids. “It’s not familiar, but seeing a familiar face like him, the next thing you know, they’re dancing and singing.”

Since Governor Roy Cooper signed an executive order closing schools across the state to slow the spread of COVID-19, Brawley has broadcast from his kitchen, studio, gym and living room, building lessons around the same concepts he would teach in the classroom.

Tupperware and bowls turn into percussion instruments, while a pepper grinder helps shake out a rhythm. Brawley said he uses whatever he can find at home, and encourages his viewers to do the same. He pauses for kids to repeat after him and asks viewers to chime in with answers to his questions in the live comments.

While teachers were instructed to provide only supplemental materials at least until March 30, Brawley’s videos are covering the same “meat and potatoes” materials from his classes.

“We’re using what we’ve got to make it happen,” he said. “But we’re learning real music concepts, and it’s a real music education.”

Brawley has been teaching music at Torrence Creek for the past eight He took an unconventional path to the classroom, joining a band right out of high school and touring the country before earning his degree in music education from UNC-Charlotte. Last year, he was named one of the Country Music Association Foundation’s 30 Teachers of Excellence.

The idea for the live lessons came from Brawley’s experience planning for substitute teachers — it’s not easy to find someone who can teach music concepts while he’s away from the classroom. Instead of leaving worksheets, Brawley sets up a camera in his classroom and records a lesson just as if he were talking to his students.

As he heard about coronavirus in the news, Brawley started thinking about what teaching during a school closure would look like.

“You could tell what was coming down the pipe, that we were going to be shut down at some point,” he said. “I thought I would take some of that video action and try to figure out a way to do it here at home, like they’re in my music room.”

Brawley streams on his channel every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11:30 a.m., and more than 100 people tune in live on any given day. Not every family can stick to a strict schedule, Brawley said, so the viewership often climbs in the days after the video posts—since it first aired just over a week ago, his first live lesson has garnered over a thousand views.

At the top of each class, Brawley asks viewers to write where they’re watching from. In addition to his students at Torrence Creek, his audience ranges from homeschooling families in Waxhaw to kids in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. One friend in living in Germany told Brawley her sixth grader loves following along, but won’t sing out loud just yet.

“We’re going to work on him,” Brawley said. “It’s been really fun to see the reaction from people.”

On Monday, Brawley was joined by Edward Bender, a CMS music teacher at Briarwood Academy, to teach a workout-themed lesson. They lifted weights to different rhythms and sang about different tempos, and told those watching to pick up something to lift along with them.

“Doesn’t have to be weights, it can be pencils, it can be pillows, it can be your cat,” Bender said to the iPhone they were using to record, as Brawley made a meowing sound in the background. “If you have two cats, it can be two cats.”

The two have been friends since college and played in a band together, Bender said, which made it easy to riff of off each other as they worked from their loose script.

“We know how to make jokes and improv,” Bender said. “We did it all the time during gigs. So when he said, ‘Here’s a little script of what we’re going to to,’ I was like, alright, cue me in.”

For parents like Ernest, virtually having Brawley in their homes provides much-needed connection for young children not used to such intense isolation. Ernest said his 11-year-old son, Finn, thrives on routine and repeatedly says how much he would like to go back to school. But from watching the videos together, Ernest said he can see Finn and Scarlett having fun and retaining the music concepts being taught.

“It’s so infectious,” he said. “I hate to use that word right now, but that’s his personality. It brings a lot of fun and a lot of smiles to the kids and parents.”

Brawley said he hopes his videos can provide parents with some breathing room and stability during the school closures. For the 45 minutes he’s online, kids will be engaged and learning, he said, hopefully giving parents some time to take a call or grab a cup of coffee.

When he checked his phone after Monday’s lesson ended, Brawley had already received messages from parents applauding the day’s class, along with videos of kids following along with the weightlifting exercise. One parent sent a video of a student lifting their dog up and down with the beat.

“Yes, I’m just teaching music,” Brawley said. “But it seems to be a lot more than that at this particular time.”

This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 9:55 AM.