List Mates: 
This is what Jim Fryer, and a host of other fine musicians have been doing in the CT schools all along....and several CT High Schools produce some fine Dixieland Bands, five of them play consistently at the Greater CT Trad Jazz Festival.  And Steve does this in PA....and I know many do this on the West Coast....so why can't this be done in every corner of the Country?
Nancie
Article published Apr 28, 2007
Teacher incorporates music into fourth-grade lesson

By Patrick Meighan
Telegraph Staff

Don’t confuse teacher Nick Goumas with actor Jack Black. The Ledge Street School classroom of the former isn’t the “School of Rock.” But for April, anyway, it was the School of Jazz.

“Let’s listen to ‘Scat Cat,’ ” Goumas said to his fourth-grade music students in Nashua last week.

“I like cats!” exclaimed one wide-eyed girl.

“Yeah, I like cats too . . . but I like these cats,” Goumas said, pushing the “play” button on a tape machine.

A voice begins to scat: “Ba dop bop, doo bee doo bop.”

The scat lesson admittedly went better than the geography lesson.

Goumas discussed how jazz is rooted in the 1800s in New Orleans, the only place in America where African-American slaves were allowed to gather in public to play music.“Now, where did jazz begin?” Goumas asked.

“New Orleans!” one girl enthusiastically answered.

“And where’s New Orleans?”

She thought for a moment, and then said, “That little thingy by Florida.”

“That’s Louisiana.” Goumas chuckled.

Goumas is a veteran teacher at Ledge Street, where for decades he has led the band and chorus, taught music and given instrument lessons. He’s also a veteran jazz musician, an adept saxophonist who has cut CDs and played in clubs throughout the area.His quartet a few years ago was named best jazz group in the state by New Hampshire Magazine.

Of course, Goumas has been introducing his elementary grade students to jazz for years. But this year, he’s giving jazz a special concentration in his classes to commemorate Jazz Appreciation Month.

Goumas got his students to scat along with records, swing to Duke Ellington tunes and name jazz greats. His students navigated the jazz timeline from ragtime through Dixieland, swing, bebop and fusion.

“Name a bebop player,” Goumas asked.

“Bird!” Kelvin Bey, 10, practically shouted, hip to the nickname of the great alto sax player Charlie Parker.

Goumas also grilled the students on such concepts as improvisation and even the state of being “hip.”

“What does the word hip mean?” Goumas asked a third-grade class. “That’s like a jazz word. Are you hip? I think you’re hip!”

He further explained that hip means, “You’re cool; you’re a good player.”

The main thing Goumas wanted his young charges to know is why Jazz Appreciation Month is celebrated and why jazz is important.

“Jazz Appreciation Month was started six years ago by the Smithsonian Institution,” Goumas told his fourth-graders. “Why?”