After teaching music and leading the student orchestra in Waukegan Community Unit School District 60 for more than 20 years, and teaching the subject for more than three decades, Kathleen Dudley decided to go back to school in 2015 to learn mariachi music.
Dudley said she wanted to be able to teach it to her students at Andrew Cooke Magnet Elementary School, with its 87% Latino enrollment.
“Some of the kids grow up with parents trying so hard to become American,” Dudley said. “I wanted them to be able to celebrate their culture with their kids. I started teaching it to my orchestra students.”
– Original Credit: News-Sun
Soon after starting to teach the Mexican folk music, Dudley started Mariachi Estrellas, a mariachi band consisting of middle and high school students from Waukegan performing as an extracurricular activity throughout the community.
Mike Rodriguez was president of the District 60 Board of Education when Dudley started the band. He said creating a program in a district with a large Latino enrollment, and giving those youngsters an opportunity to both learn about their heritage and be part of it, was an outstanding addition for the schools.
“I felt it was really good for the kids,” Rodriguez said. “You have to learn how to strum and sing, and she taught them well. I’ve heard them perform, and they give commendable performances.”
Fatima Zamudio — a freshman at Cristo Rey St. Martin College Prep and a Waukegan resident — said she started playing the viola in the band as a second grader at Cooke. Joining the band played well at home, and helped her share her culture with the community.
“My family really likes to sing and dance,” she said. “They like to see me play at the concerts, so they can sing along and dance. It feels so nice that I can be part of this tradition.”
Now a junior at the Waukegan High School’s Washington campus, Salvador Alvarez began learning Mariachi playing the guitar as a Cooke fourth grader. He has stayed with it ever since, and now plays the guitarron, a very large guitar-looking instrument.
Standing a head taller than the other band members, Alvarez has a strong stage presence. He said he likes playing the guitarron because of the sounds it makes. He also hopes to have his own band one day.
“The strings are much thicker than a guitar,” Alvarez said. “It makes a much deeper sound. I like the deep sound. It was hard to find one. I heard it in when I was visiting Mexico. We found a shop, and they made it for me there.”
Sophia Lopez is an eighth grade student at Edith Smith Middle School who started playing the violin as a Cooke third grader. She plays Mozart on her violin with the orchestra, and does the same in the Mariachi band.
“I got interested in Mariachi because I was looking for something with my culture,” Lopez said. “I really enjoy how it sounds.”
Isaire Leguizamo is nearly a lifetime member of the band. She stated as a first grader at Cooke in 2016, a year after Dudley started the ensemble. Now a freshman at the high school, she plays the vihuela. It looks like a guitar, but sounds different. She likes the group’s culture.
“The people are very welcoming,” Leguizamo said. “It’s a very strong friend group, almost like a family.”
Dudley also started playing the violin in the third grade, and she has been doing it now for 54 years. Her parents surrounded her with music — her father brought a new record home every day — but also a sense of community. It led to her rationale to learn and teach mariachi music
“They were always talking about social justice,” Dudley said of her parents. “They taught me to be thoughtful of others.”
By 2015, Dudley decided it was time to use music to teach students about the importance of their culture. She took a course in mariachi music at the VanderCook College of Music in Chicago. She took three more classes in Las Vegas in subsequent summers at the National Mariachi Educators Conference.
Starting with her orchestra class for fourth and fifth graders at Cooke, Dudley said she began teaching mariachi to those interested as an after-school activity. Soon students joined from other schools until it became a full-fledged extracurricular activity, with students playing regularly around the community.
