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For Ms. Jennifer Bellusci’s students, this school year was supposed to be an inspiring journey through music, until the strings broke. 

But it wasn’t the instruments’ strings that snapped. 

The Music Department faced an unexpected challenge when Ms. Bellusci was suddenly displaced due to low enrollment, leaving her students stunned as they got handed over to a new music teacher.

Faced with the news of their teacher’s unexpected departure, students in the music department have had to grapple with more than just new music sheets. They’ve had to adapt to a whole new environment.

Even worse, none of them were notified beforehand at all.

Due to the school’s poor enrollment numbers for the Fall 2024 semester, budget distribution and equipment funding thinned amongst school staff. 

As a result, Ms. Bellusci was dismissed from teaching at Van Nuys in order to preserve money. 

Unfortunately, neither Ms. Bellusci nor the school’s administration had any control over this displacement.

Her classes were informed on Sept. 3, four weeks into the school year, and with nowhere else to go, the ukulele, guitar and beginning orchestra students headed over to Room 426 to be brought under the wing of Mr. Robert Eisenhart, the brass teacher.

The sudden change of classes completely threw off those involved. The brass students, already in Mr. Eisenhart’s class, were squeezed in with Ms. Bellusci’s string students, tripling the number of people in the room. 

More importantly, Mr. Eisenhart could not replace Ms. Bellusci’s teaching methods in her own elective classes.

In addition, Ms. Bellusci’s students caused turbulence in the overall skill set of each class’ roster. With the varying levels of instrumental experience in his classes, Mr. Eisenhart had to assess all his students. The mixture of beginning and advanced students proved to be troublesome. 

All of these changes have offset Mr. Eisenhart’s plans for the year.

“We already had plans for the advanced orchestra, we already had plans for the marching band, we already had plans for our 5th period Rhythm Lab and we already had plans for our World Percussion class,” he said. “Things were going off in a really great way. Then all of a sudden ‘Boom! Here you go. Now you gotta work with these guys as well!’ Which is great, and we’re gonna do it! But, it would’ve been so much better if it was at the beginning of the year.”

Despite the new students, Mr. Eisenhart took up the challenge and adapted to the changes in his classes’ rosters. To him, it wasn’t worth getting angry over how administrators execute problems, otherwise, teachers would be “bursting blood vessels” constantly.

“What I do is music,” he said. “When a difficult thing happens, I just go back to the basics. I’m here to get people inspired about music, and I’m here to get people to build music into their life after high school.”

To adapt to the circumstances and accommodate both new and old students, Mr. Eisenhart has implemented “vertical differentiation” into his teaching curriculum.

“Vertical differentiation is, as a student’s skills advance, they go higher on that vertical line of knowledge,” he said. “What differentiation means is that we need to meet the needs of the students who are in the room. If we have beginning students, we need to meet the needs of those beginning students. If we have advanced students, we have to meet the needs of those advancing students.”

As a teacher, Mr. Eisenhart had to evaluate the needs of his students while considering their differing musical experience. However, this would prove to be frustrating as advanced students would get bored from beginner lessons, while beginner students would panic at the advanced ones.

“So what I do to reinforce vertical differentiation is that our most advanced students will also take on responsibilities to help guide the younger students,” he said. “I might put the most advanced students in charge of rehearsing a section of music or I might let them arrange or compose a piece of music for a group of students. Then that person is responsible for helping guide everybody towards a beautiful performance in that selection of music.”

Nevertheless, instruments are still difficult to learn. With Ms. Bellusci’s students being shoved into Mr. Eisenhart’s classes, they must learn instruments they may have never touched before. Despite that, Mr. Eisenhart encourages every one of his students to “embrace the struggle” of playing music, rather than give up because of its difficulty.

“It takes a long time to really develop a musical skill,” he said. “It’s a struggle. But students should embrace the struggle. Struggling to develop a musical skill is probably one of the greatest things you can struggle for. It’s a beautiful thing and it makes life better.”

Regardless of setbacks, concerts for the music department of Van Nuys High School are still scheduled to take place throughout the school year. 

For orchestra, students will perform classical and contemporary music, with the student composer Kevin Rodriguez writing original compositions and arrangements. The school band will be performing traditional Armenian music, as well as songs from the hard rock band “System of a Down.”

“One of the great things about ‘System Of A Down’ is that they are Armenian-American musicians and they incorporate a certain amount of traditional Armenian sounds or ideas into their music,” Eisenhart said. 

Beyond the school concerts, Mr. Eisenhart encourages all students in the music department to keep pursuing music. His want to spread the love for music onto new generations has been a major part of his 34 year teaching career.

“When I’m teaching students here in all of my classes, I’m looking at three things,” he said. “Number one, what kind of musical skills are you gonna have when you leave my program? Number two, what kind of interpersonal skills are you going to have that’s gonna help you build music into your future world? And number three, what kind of skills do you have to create those spaces in which music can happen? All three are really important, especially in my classroom.”

Even with the current struggles the music department faces from Ms. Bellusci’s displacement, Mr. Eisenhart hopes his students can persevere through it. 

“Whatever direction people want to go, I want to make sure I can support them,” he said. “As long as they want to make music part of their life.”

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2024 print edition.