Every student benefits from getting to drum, and should have the opportunity at least once a year. Some schools hire me to come in and work with each class 6 or 8 times a year, and we often get the students to prepare a percussion performance to show off their new skills and confidence playing in a rhythm ensemble.
Rufus Glassco is a trilingual facilitator who specializes in experiential learning and healing through Drum Circles, with a focus on health and wellness, and Sound Healing. He has been facilitating workshops in schools since 2006, and works as an Artist Educator through the Royal Conservatory’s Learning Through the Arts program. This revolutionary program trained Rufus to teach teachers how to make learning more fun – he uses African hand drums and many kinds of percussion instruments from around the world to teach students a variety of curricula. He facilitates stress-reduction workshops for students and teachers in elementary, middle, high schools and universities, and helps preschoolers to discover how much fun drumming and percussion can be at a number of private nursery schools throughout the GTA.
Move & Groove Workshops for JK – Gr. 12
Body Percussion Workshops for Gr. 4-6
Learning Through the Arts for Grades 2-12
Les Programmes de Tambour & Percussion
HealthRHYTHMS Stress Reduction Teacher Workshops
Rhythm to Recovery Workshops for At-Risk Youth
Move & Groove Workshops for JK – Gr. 12
We facilitate Move & Groove© rhythm circles with a focus on health and wellness.
Facilitate means to make easy – for everyone.
Wellness is an overall feeling of wellbeing.
Our goal is to make it easy for youth to enjoy making rhythmic music together, to feel successful and good about themselves, each other, and the music they make together.
By using both drumming and reflection, our Move & Groove® Wellness Workshops help students to:
- have fun, exercise, and lower stress.
- develop better social and emotional skills.
- build self confidence.
- communicate in many ways about vital life issues and life skills.
- increase their resilience and strengthen their sense of self.
- feel more connected to their peers, and a deeper sense of belonging.
Nursery School Workshops
Rufus drumming with preschoolers in downtown Toronto.
Rufus has been teaching in private nursery schools throughout Toronto since 2007. We share research that proves that music education helps children wire their growing brains in a unique way that produces greater math scores, compared to children who do not get musical instruction in school. This research also proves that children who get music instruction that includes hand drumming do even better in math.
He works with many classes 6 – 8 times per year, and over 2-3 years in preschool, Rufus become more popular over time.
“There is something very magical that happens with Rufus arrives. It’s not just the beautiful rustic drums resting in the middle of the circle nor is it the bag of instruments he brings along – it’s all about his ability to draw the children into a world where together the class can experience sound and rhythm while participating as a group. Our Nursery children have loved every class so much that next Fall, we will be doubling the number of sessions of ‘Rumblin’ with Rufus’!!”
Pamela Cappe Hamovitch, Director of the Early Childhood Centre at Holy Blossom Temple
May 18, 2016
Body Percussion Workshops for Gr. 4-6
Rufus is the Founder and Director of the Body Percussion Ensemble of Toronto, which performed at the Second Harborfront International Body Percussion Festival in 2017. He has been facilitating body percussion in most of his drumming workshops since the very beginning, and body percussion workshops in schools and music festivals since 2009.
Getting young people to move their bodies in an aerobic way as they create body beats and stomp their feet together, makes learning a lot more fun, and this help their brains retain more about what they’ve learned in the process. We focus on having fun playing games that help teach a variety of curricula, creating a safe environment for learning that requires active listening, and promotes respectful behaviour.
These are our most cost-effective rhythm workshops, as we don’t have bring as many percussion instruments with us!
Learning Through the Arts for Grades 2-12
I am an Artist Educator with Learning Through the Arts, an innovative program run by the Royal Conservatory of Music. In these 4-session workshops, we teach part of the Ontario Curriculum by using drums and percussion instruments. I teach at a variety of grade levels in music, literature, math, social studies (early civilizations & geography) history, active ecology and character building. As these types of workshops require planning meetings and the creation of tailored lesson plans, the fees are slightly higher.
Some of the schools I work in have managed to raise or access funds to purchase their own hand drums. Then drumming can be incorporated more easily into the music curriculum, and hiring outside teachers like myself becomes less expensive, and I can work with more classes, more often. This is the way I encourage schools to go, if they are able to raise the funds to get their own drums.
Hand drums can also be reserved from the school board, but this has to be done well in advance due to high demand.
The Numbers, The Location, The Length
Generally, a one day school event involves teaching 4 or 5 45-55 minute percussion workshops, in groups of up to 30 students at a time. That means we can work with 120 – 150 students a day.
It is ideal to work in a space like a gym or somewhere where we can set up chairs in a circle and have the classes rotate in and out, instead of having to move the instruments around. It is important to have at least 5 minutes of transition time between these workshops.
If we need to move the instruments between classes, we would need 15-20 minutes of transition time between each, which will lower the number of workshops we can do in a day.
Les Programmes de Tambour & Percussion
Nôtres programmes sont flexible pour adapter aux besoins de nos clients.
Les programmes sont participatif, interactif, dynamique et unique.
Il faut pas être rythmique ni avoir une connaissance de la musique pour profiter de nos classes et s’amuser beaucoup.
Tout le monde peut profiter de nôtres classes – n’importe âge, n’importe capacité. On travail avec les étudiants de chaque niveau, avec les conseils des étudiants, les élèves avec les besoins spéciaux, et les groupes des professeurs.
Nôtre École du Rythme
L’École du Rythme est une cercle de tambour et rythme participatif qui est dirigé, et conçu pour:
- atteindre les conditions de la Curriculum Générale d’Ontario et la Curriculum de la Musique d’Ontario aussi.
- pour introduire les concepts du beat et du rythme.
- pour familiarisez les étudiantes avec les instrumentes du rythme mondiales.
- pour mettre l’attention sur la diversité: les tambours de main et les autres instruments de percussion nous donnent une métaphore que tous les voix différentes ont la même valeur, et souvent ces voix sont mieux quand on écoute et apprécier à chacqu’une et on les mélange.
- on explore des modes de communication différentes aussi: Nôtres voix, avec des chansons et la poésie, les sons qui sont fait par le corps, exceptera.
- on aide à développer les capacités à écouter.
HealthRHYTHMS Stress Reduction Teacher Workshops
Of all the employee groups we work with, drumming with teachers is the best. They work so hard, are challenged on so many levels, and really appreciate the opportunity to offload stress in a supportive and safe environment. When we’re having fun, making noise, and connecting in rhythm, we create community, and find ease, and great relief, in sharing and releasing in non-verbal way, with others who intuitively feel and relate to each other through sound.
Rhythm to Recovery Workshops for At-Risk Youth
Rhythm to Recovery is a revolutionary group hand drumming protocol developed in Australia, and now being taught all over the world. Rufus was the first Rhythm to Recovery facilitator trained in Ontario in 2015, and has been working with youth at risk and youth with mental illness for over a decade through the Royal Conservatory’s Living Through the Arts program.
We all inherently know that to enjoy good mental health, you need good people in your life, as well as a sense of belonging, that good people can help to provide. Researchers have now proven it, and shown that engaging in shared physical activity is one of the leading ways to develop social connections, and feeling like you belong.
Making rhythmic music with drums and percussion instruments has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to create those bonds in young people, which lead to lasting drops in depression, social anxiety and isolation, and improvements in social resilience and in their immune systems as well.
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