Choir Ninja, With Ryan Guth

Christopher Kurt explains how you can become a Ukulele Ninja like him. Besides being quirky, fun, and astonishingly on trend at the moment, ukuleles have a lot of value to add to your choral or general music classroom.   Listen: Show Notes: He’s from Iowa. Not from Colorado. And that’s important. Christopher teaches 6th-8th grade general music classes and directs 3 choirs. When he began his job at Aldo Leopold Middle School he found he had inherited ukulele lab, including 35 instruments that had been there for 20-30 years. Having access to the instruments inspired Christopher to teach himself to play. Ukulele makes a great classroom instrument because the 4 basic chords are easy to learn, the instruments are cheap, accessible, and provide an immediate win for students. Multitasking is hard for middle school students (and for Christopher, who falls up stairs). Singing and playing at same time lets them multitask successfully. A little less than half of his time with 8th grade students is spent on the ukulele u