California Dreaming

After getting her master's degree from UCLA, Nancy Wills dreamed of starting a school-based guitar program so she could teach students to make music on the instrument she'd loved since she was a kid growing up outside of Yosemite, California. She had a strong belief that guitar was perfect for schools, ideal for individualized playing but also capable of jibing with a band or orchestra. She landed a job at Lindsay High School in Lindsay, California, which had been struggling with an unsuccessful music program and whose administrators thought that perhaps adding guitar to the repertoire would liven up things. They didn't get the signups for guitar they thought they would, so Wills ended up teaching all over the district. But something interesting happened during that first difficult year. This article describes how Wills created a top-notch high school guitar program with help from her students. It also includes a Q&A with Wills.