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Chelsea School of Rock: High School Teacher Fundraising for Guitars

By Ben Fractenberg | December 16, 2014 3:29pm
 Students from the Manhattan Business Academy on West 18th Street play air guitar. The student's teacher, Richard Hull, is raising money to buy 15 guitars so he can give his art class music lessons. 
Students from the Manhattan Business Academy on West 18th Street play air guitar. The student's teacher, Richard Hull, is raising money to buy 15 guitars so he can give his art class music lessons. 
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Richard Hull

MANHATTAN — These high school seniors just want to rock.

An art instructor at the Manhattan Business Academy on West 18th Street in Chelsea wants to raise more than $2,000 through the educational fundraising site DonorsChoose.org to buy 15 Epiphone acoustic guitars and accompanying equipment for 30 senior students who have never had a high school music program.

“We all need a creative outlet," said social studies and art teacher Richard Hull, who has been teaching at the public school since 2011. "Who knows? Some of these kids may pursue careers in creative industries. This is New York City. This is the cultural capital of the U.S. in many ways. I think it’s silly not to have a creative arts program for kids.”

Hull said the small public high school, which caters to low-income teens, does not have much money for arts education and he wants to provide a creative outlet for his students, many of whom come from Washington Heights and The Bronx.

“They don’t really have access to music education,” Hull said. “We don’t have a music program in this school. That’s true of a lot of schools.”

The teacher has raised a little more than $960 out of his $2,331 goal as of Tuesday.

In addition to the guitars, he wants to purchase 15 capos, 10 packets of guitar strings, 15 tuners and two packs of guitar pics.

“I want to teach basic chord structures, tuning, and a hands-on appreciation of rock, blues, and folk music,” Hull wrote on the fundraising page. “Students would learn to play and perform songs of their choosing in front of their peers; they would also research one musical artist whose work they will present to the class. If this takes off, we may even have a school-wide performance!”

Hull, a self-described “classic rock head,” said he first got into playing music when his stepmother gave him a guitar during his freshman year in college.

He eventually started tutoring people on the instrument.

“It’s just something that’s always been important to me for different times when I’ve needed that emotional outlet.”

Hull eventually got into teaching while work in special education in Burlington, Vt.

He moved to New York to be closer to his sister and earned a master's degree in education from Brooklyn College in 2011 and then started teaching at MBA. 

"I've been very happy here," Hull said. "[There are] a lot of very committed staff and teachers."

While he feels the teachers do an amazing job with limited resources, he wants to make sure his students are given as diverse an education as possible in a specialized school. 

"High school is a time which shapes many of our future experiences," Hull wrote on the fundraising page. "For my students, this may be their last shot to gain any music education — formal or informal — during this formative period."