Minstrel Helps Pupils Put Their Imaginations to Music : Education: Visiting guitarist helps children write songs about their everyday lives. ‘Through music, you can teach all subjects,’ he says.

If school shut down, the children were asked, what would they miss most?

“Our very lovely principal,” the third-graders at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Monica said.

They may or may not have been sincere, but in any case that was a line they voted to put into a whimsical song they were creating with the help of modern-day minstrel Gary Dulabaum.

The guitar-toting Dulabaum strummed his way through every classroom at the 800-student school last week. He showed the children secrets of songwriting by drawing lyrics from their everyday lives--and their imaginations--and setting them to music. He also got the children to perform their creations--all in a 45-minute period.

Dulabaum was the latest guest of Franklin’s artist-in-residence program, really an informal version of the state program by the same name, said Principal Dale Petrulis.

The session with the third-grade class began calmly. But soon the children were caught in the excitement stirred up by the energetic, longhaired musician.

“Why do you like school?” Dulabaum asked.

“Recess,” said a blond-haired boy wearing high-top tennis shoes.

“If it wasn’t for Franklin School,” a shy boy with glasses said, “I wouldn’t have any friends.”

“We’ll miss our homework and easy mathematics,” piped up a girl wearing a purple and green backpack.

That response made several children slap their hands to their foreheads and groan, “Who would want to do homework?”

“That’s OK,” Dulabaum said. “Let’s just put it down and we can reshape it later.”

The following verse took form:

We’ll miss our homework, our easy math,

Geography and English, riding our bikes on the path.

But most of all we’ll miss in school,

Our very lovely principal,

And the Franklin kids who are cool.

“Words have rhythm,” Dulabaum said. “I want you all to read it down to here and don’t worry about what your neighbors think. Just look straight ahead.”

They read the verse aloud and fell into rhythm together. Dulabaum slung the guitar strap over his shoulder and strummed a few boogie chords. He began to croon a soulful melody, squinting his eyes and bobbing his head for emphasis. He even added an Elvis-like “uh-huh-huh-huh.”

Soon the children were singing loud and dancing. They added a sneering upper lip, waggled one leg, and there they had it. They had created a funky blues tune about school closing down. And they were ready to perform it at an assembly the next day.

Students in other classes chose different topics to sing about: recycling trash, sports, homework, James Bond.

One class that had just discussed how it’s OK to be different wrote a song about what it must be like to be a nerd.

“I’m a weird, runny-nosed nerd,” they sang. “I have platypus feet and brains of a bird. . . . N-E-R-D, that’s me.”

Dulabaum, 36, said his goal in the sessions is for “kids to start paying attention to their internal rhythm and creativity and to look at themselves as their own source of entertainment.”

Dulabaum came from a musical family and also plays the banjo and harmonica. He began using music in the classroom as a preschool and kindergarten teacher in Vermont.

“I realized that some kids just didn’t pick up on things,” he said. “So I decided to use music. Through music, you can teach all subjects.”

He launched into a multiplication-table song as an example.

Franklin Elementary School teachers Abby Cowan and Anne Brown first saw Dulabaum two years ago at a teachers’ convention in Vermont. They were so impressed by his program, which integrates music with language arts instruction, that they immediately set to work to bring him to their school.

They applied for a Santa Monica Education Foundation grant, but were turned down, Cowan said.

Cowan sought help from parents, and found it from John and Danna Meyer. John Meyer’s company, Young Edwardian Corp., a Los Angeles clothing manufacturer, agreed to be the corporate sponsor. Dulabaum stayed at Cowan’s parents’ house to cut down on costs.

For the $2,200 fee, which included his air fare, Dulabaum spent a week at the school, performed in two evening concerts and presented a well-attended music workshop for teachers in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

“Children love to sing,” Cowan said. “It inspires writing. It’s a really powerful teaching tool.”

As the week progressed, the aptness of Dulabaum’s job title--minstrel--grew ever clearer. Like a traveling singer from the Middle Ages, he attracted a happy crowd wherever he went. The Franklin children were bringing him songs they had written at home, and his breaks were constantly interrupted by students who wanted to practice.

Ten-year-old Shannon Miller was among a group of girls practicing a song with Dulabaum after school last Thursday.

“It’s fun because you get to put what you like and what you like to do in them,” she said.

“The rhythm is right,” added Rae Kotani, 11, who also plays flute and piano. “How Gary plays it, it’s like good music.”

Students performed their creations for one another during an assembly Friday. Afterward, they begged Dulabaum to stay forever. He explained that he had another school to visit in Arizona.

And sure enough, when they came back to school on Monday, the wandering minstrel was gone.