Banjo-Plucking Teacher Shows His Other Side

Greg Harrison studied to be a teacher.

But once a year, Harrison, a fourth-grade instructor at Junipero Serra School in Ventura, gets treated like a celebrity.

Harrison plays banjo with a Santa Barbara-based bluegrass band called the Dusty Chaps. And once a year, the group performs at Harrison’s school and at Poinsettia School in Ventura, where fellow band member Kevin Alvarado teaches.

At their annual concert Friday at Serra School, the lively five-piece band roused their audience of 250 children to sing along, clap their hands and stomp their feet to familiar tunes like “Oh Susanna” and newer ones such as “Wigwam Wiggle.”

The musicians then moved into the audience and the room erupted with excitement.

As the band traipsed between the rows of tables, continuing to strum tunes, drummer Alan Struebing lightly tapped his drumsticks on the heads of some of the children while Harrison kneeled to serenade others, including 8-year-old Johane Blaszak.

“I got to sit with him,” Johane sighed after the band passed.

After the performance, some of the children in Harrison’s class pressed close to him.

“It’s as close to being a rock star as I’ll ever get,” Harrison said.

Alvarado, a fifth-grade teacher, said he thinks it’s helpful for children to see their teachers doing things outside the classroom. “They see their teachers in a different light. They see their teachers have real lives.”

And some of the teachers in the audience Friday said that in addition to having fun, the students learn something from the annual concerts.

“Its just a wonderful experience for the children to participate in a concert like this with live musicians,” first-grade teacher Mary Bergsteid said. “It teaches them how to be an audience.”