Team Building

Inspiring Confidence In Our Youth

March 1, 2010 1:45 PM
At Drum Cafe, we talk about how the first rhythms of life are established in the womb— with the mother’s heartbeat. I always think about this when we work with kids in our youth team building programs. It’s almost like they’re still close enough to that experience to still hear the heartbeats echoing in their head.

But life really does pull us away from that the second we’re born. It’s stressful for so many kids to acclimate to new faces, new classes, new teams. Parents and teachers provide nurturing, but sometimes the stress of just being a kid prevails. That’s where drumming comes in so strong. Kids don’t name stress as stress. They just have ants-in-their-pants and extra, distracting energy. But when they get busy drumming the smiles erupt. There’s lightness about them and anything seems possible.

I’ll never forget a girl at the JT Brackenridge Elementary School. She said she felt more confident after our drumming program. Confidence, I thought— that’s the secret sauce behind both academic and social achievement. If you feel confident, your approach to anything is just better. You stand a little taller, write a little faster— your hunger is fed somehow by your own nourishing attitude towards life.

I know for a fact that confidence also yields benevolence. When a student is more sure of herself, she’s more likely to bring another along in the spirit of kindness and teamwork. It’s infectious too. Once kids know they can drum together and make rhythms that they can’t make alone, something shifts. There’s a new awareness that interconnectedness is a big part of a happy childhood.

When I grew up in South Africa, drumming was in the belly of my culture.  I love bringing that reservoir of power across the globe to kids. I think for some of them, experiencing the Drum Cafe is just the beginning of a deeper relationship with rhythm, music and movement. Lucky them. Lucky us.

In Joy and Rhythm,
Natalie Spiro

Posted by Natalie Spiro at March 1, 2010 1:45 PM

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