PIANO LAB
BY JOHNNY MULLIGAN
Band director Mark Toffelmier will begin teaching the new VAPA class Piano Lab next term.
According to Toffelmier, the class came as a surprise.
Over the past years, Roseville High School administration has attempted to offer a piano class but insufficient enrollment held it from becoming a class.
“This was one of the few cases where enrollment caused this class to happen,” Toffelmier said. “We have been wanting to have a piano class for a long time.”
Woodcreek, Granite Bay and Antelope High School all offer piano classes, and Toffelmier hopes to imitate their system with a beginner, intermediate and advanced piano class.
“Piano is where the music theory came from so there is that, and the piano playing part, the music reading part and depending on how it works we may do some music history,” Toffelmier said.
According to Toffelmier, principal David Byrd told him that if enough students enrolled in the class, administration would ensure that there would be pianos to use.
“Mr. Byrd and Mrs. Leong cobbled together a lot of leftover money and found enough to afford and buy the pianos,” Toffelmier said.
The school purchased 30 P1-15 Yamaha keyboards with weighted keys to function more like a real piano.
Students will also use headphones so that students can play without being interrupted by the other keyboards in the class.
“We can have different levels of students playing because they play through headphones,” Toffelmier said.
Senior Philip Derochers enrolled in the class because he was interested in learning a new instrument and the piano intrigued him.
“It will be fun and it will be easy,” Derochers said. “[Toffelmier] was saying it will be a very self-paced class, you’ll have a week to prepare something at your own level and then play it for him.”
Toffelmier will no longer be teaching photography classes at Oakmont and will be a full-time band teacher at RHS once Piano Lab begins.
“[He helps] create the music and marching drill for our field show,” Drum Major Amanda Lopes said. “He conducts us in class and at concerts and [stays] after school for about an hour and a half and he’s always willing to help.”
FILM AND LIT
BY JOSH SOLSO
[email protected]
This spring, English and drama teacher Ashley White will be taking over the Film and Literature class that was previously taught by former Roseville High School teacher Paige Powell.
The class will be separated into thematic units of film.
Inside those units there will be various genres of film that will be analyzed by the students in the class and integration of the vocabulary that is needed to be able to understand certain genres of film.
According to White, her passion for film and literature was cultivated by her college experience and simultaneously teaching drama.
“Personally it is something that I personally love,” White said. “When I was in college I took numerous film classes and I am an English major so it is right up my alley, especially with drama.”
The first week or two of the class will focus on building up the students’ knowledge of the world of film before actually beginning to analyze film.
“We will be looking at film and literature through a lense of adaptation and criticism, and then from there we will go into these thematic units,” White said.
Film and Lit is only available every other year, so the Class of 2015 would have not been able to take the senior-year-grade course last year.
RHS senior James Provins is currently enrolled in the course during the spring semester and is looking forward to what the class has to offer.
“Yeah, I’m pretty excited about it,” Provins said. “It sounds like it will be a pretty fun class.”
