Longtime Great Neck Public Schools music teacher Juan Garcia didn’t know what to expect when he first laid eyes upon the man in the suit, who had been knocking on his front door.
Then a college student, Garcia said he had been practicing his electric guitar “a little loud” that Saturday afternoon. He had no idea the encounter would someday spawn a 17-year career in music education.
“Someone knocked on the door, this guy in a suit, and he asked if I was the one playing the guitar,” Garcia recalled. “I said ‘yeah’ and I thought he was going to kind of say ‘hey, turn that down.'”
“Instead, he was asking for lessons – if I could teach him how to play. I was like ‘oh, I suppose.'”
Nearly two decades following his humble beginnings as an educator, Garcia recently accepted another of what he called his “surprise” teaching positions.
Garcia served as the National Association for Music Education online professional development guitar mentor for November.
“It’s pretty much a forum where all teachers have access to,” he said. “I was asked to fill the post, so to speak, specifically for strings and for guitar.”
The position came after a national search for applicants resulted in the Lakeville and Saddle Rock schools’ orchestral music teacher being selected to preside over an online forum dedicated to nurturing young guitarists and assisting other music education professionals.
“It’s kind of serendipitous,” said Garcia, a composer and performer of several styles of music, of the position. “I’m just kind of taken aback that I got chosen. I appreciate the opportunity. It’s been enjoyable. I’m going to continue doing it if I get more requests.”
And like the encounter with his first guitar student, Garcia was equally surprised to receive the National Association for Music Education position.
“I received an e-mail … asking for volunteers for this on-line guitar mentorship,” recalled Garcia, who is a National Association for Music Education member. “I said ‘why not, let me give it a shot.’ So, I sent my info through and I was just surprised I got selected. It was a national search.”
The National Association for Music Education e-mail asked for applicants to provide a short description of their interest in proctoring the musical mentor program, along with a brief biography of their musical education.
Garcia sent the organization a link to his Web site, which includes a description of his history as a musician and composer, along with examples of his work.
“I’m very grateful that I even was chosen,” he said. “I’m still kind of in shock about all that. The fact that I was able to answer anything at all, to help people out, I thought it was great.”
During his tenure at National Association for Music Education’s online guitar mentor, Garcia said he answered questions ranging from “arrangements for guitar” to his “impressions about tablature as opposed to note reading.”
“The main thrust of it was just to be available to anyone who had a question about their guitar program or anything related to guitar and education,” Garcia said. “It was pretty broad.”
Although Garcia was pleased to assist the musicians and educators who wrote to him, he said he expected the response to the program to be larger.
“The only thing I wish I had a lot more questions to answer,” Garcia said. “I felt for the month of November, I only answered a few, but what’s interesting is my link got over 400 and some odd hits. A lot of people went there and clicked on it and were reading, but then they didn’t ask (too many) questions.”
But, that’s not to say that he was disappointed with the results of the program.
“It wasn’t even (just) in Great Neck, I mean, this was throughout the U.S.,” Garcia said. “This was people in other parts of the country, so I thought that was really cool.”
Garcia first began playing music when his sister Margarita received a keyboard for Christmas when he was six-years-old.
Despite being told he was not allowed to play the instrument, Garcia said his curiosity eventually got the better of him.
“I was fascinated when I saw that new thing come out of the box,” Garcia said. “I knew I was not allowed to touch it, so unfortunately I had to sneak my way in after school and get in there.”
“I didn’t actually have any formal training for my very initial exposure to music,” he added. “It was something that just drew me in, the curiosity of it.”
Since first experimenting with the piano, Garcia also learned to play the drums, bass guitar and the violin, to go along with his guitar playing.
Garcia eventually attended the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, where he received bachelor of arts and masters degrees in music education. He was one of only 25 students around the country who were chosen for the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund, which paid for his masters degree course work.
“It was a long kind of road kind of finding my way into deciding to eventually becoming a musician,” Garcia said. “It was not planned out for me. It was not an easy road. I had to kind of go against the tide, so to speak.”
After working as a music teacher in Queens and Suffolk County elementary schools for seven years to begin his career, Garcia eventually came to the Great Neck School District where he has led the string orchestras at the Lakeville and Saddle Rock schools since 2001.
“I enjoy having the opportunity to help these kids start out on a path with some guidance and some very firm basics,” Garcia said. “Hopefully, they continue it well into middle school and high school.”
Garcia said the most beneficial part of his 17-year tenure as a music teacher has been watching the effect music has had on his students.
“You can see the joy in their faces and that confidence,” Garcia said. “They feel like they’ve accomplished something. I’ll tell you, playing a violin or something with a bow, is definitely different than playing guitar or piano. It’s a very difficult instrument to play. I give them a lot of credit for that, the little guys.”
