Hitting High Notes With China Trip

Director of School Band Savors Cultural Learning

For Oxon Hill High School band director Walter Harley, teaching has always been as much about exposing his students to enriching experiences as it has been about leading them through their scales and arpeggios.

So when he was offered the opportunity to take a group to China last month to play for pre-Olympic ceremonies, he jumped at it. He said he knew the trip would offer the students a lifelong memory of playing before capacity audiences in ornate concert halls. He also knew that going to China would teach them lessons about the world they could never learn from textbooks.

"They will never be the same again," Harley said last week. "Culturally they gained a greater appreciation for our country and our freedom, as well as an understanding of how different another culture can be."

The 12-day trip, sponsored by the Chinese government, took Harley's students from Beijing to Shanghai to Xian. They walked along the Great Wall and played a concert there. They ate shrimp with the heads attached, purchased Nike sneakers for $20 and visited ancient palaces -- the culmination of a year of preparation that included fundraising, practicing for five concerts and learning about China's culture.

Harley said the trip was the kind of experience he had dreamed of offering to his students when he became an educator 25 years ago. The Baltimore native turned to teaching for the chance to do two of his favorite things: work with young people and dabble in music.

He cut his musical teeth in church, where he played his first piano piece at 6. His parents were ministers and musicians. His mother, Alice, now 84, sang and played piano. His father, Alexander, who died in 1992, played blues guitar.

Harley began performing in school bands in the elementary grades. After starting with the piano, he moved to percussion. He attended Livingstone College in Salisbury, N.C., on a full music scholarship and earned a master's degree in percussion performance from Morgan State University, where he accompanied the gospel choir directed by the legendary Nathan M. Carter.

"I was a drum major in high school, and I played in Morgan's Symphonic Band," Harley said. These days, he plays in the band at River of Life Christian Center in Baltimore. Last week, he was among the musicians of the Howard University Metropolitan Symphonic Winds who played at the opening ceremony for the black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha's centennial celebration in the District.

After teaching at a private school in Baltimore, Harley moved to public schools in 1983. In 1994, he was recruited to Prince George's County as part of a program to lure successful black male teachers.

His only assignment has been Oxon Hill, where he inherited a music program that had attracted fewer and fewer students.

"I had six bands but only 15 kids," Harley said.

He said he "aggressively recruited" students who had quit the program and went after freshmen who had played in elementary or middle school. He created an ensemble and worked to punch up the sound of the other groups. He focused on the fundamentals of music to help the students improve their playing.