Private Lessons

Yesterday was the winter open house for the Academy of Community Music at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh. The day included workshops for young children, demonstrations and a concert by preschool and school-age musicians from the academy's Suzuki classes. The academy was founded in 1983 by violinist Robert DiPasquale of the Philadelphia Orchestra and his wife. It offers private lessons, music education for people of all ages, music therapy and an Academy of Children's Music.

Credit the private pitching coach. For what? For all of those 1-0 softball games. For all of those dominant hurlers who turn high school games into their personal workouts. For fans' being able to go home, walk the dog, read the paper, and then eat dinner after witnessing a lightning-quick, one-hour contest. The pitcher is the dominant person on a softball field. Private pitching coaches - who make up a cottage industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years - are the most influential off the field.

Leave it to the cutting-edge mentality of popular music to put a new twist on the venerable occupation of teaching. With thousands of aspiring Eddie Van Halens and Herbie Hancocks all wanting to learn to play instruments, why would anyone want to take lessons from some also-ran in a cramped classroom? After all, these would-be virtuosos can get one-on-one instruction from some of the greats in the music field. What's more, instruction comes in a medium that feels comfortable to musicians raised on television.

Ahmed Nagy finally got the hint. Two years ago, his low grade on the high school English exam caught him by surprise. Last year, expecting to do much better, he was again taken aback by his poor marks. He decided this year to pay the price of a passing grade: He agreed to hire his teacher after hours as a private tutor. Nagy has joined the ranks of the majority of Egyptian students who spend vast sums of money for after-school lessons - in many cases because their teachers extort this payoff for a passing mark.

Applause from a school band concert was just starting to fade away when audience member Sharon Parker began to think about the students who were not on stage. Parker, curriculum director for the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, said that a few days later. she asked a child who was not in the concert what the reason was. The answer, Parker said, was financial. "That child told me that their family could not afford to lease an instrument. The mother of the family was concerned about paying for any repairs that might arise," Parker said.

Rowan College of New Jersey is clearly expanding - a new library is nearing completion, and the school will have to construct a building for its new engineering school. The college is growing in another way as well. Last month, the first Satellite School of the Arts took root at the Friends School of Mullica Hill. Students at Friends, and anyone else who is interested, can pay to have private musical instruction from Rowan staff through the Satellite School. More programs, including group lessons, also will be offered, some by next semester.

As a youngster, Jeff Boyer wanted to learn karate. But his father wouldn't allow it because he said Boyer had a bad attitude. Ironically, the karate lessons might have helped. "When I started karate as an adult, I told my dad, 'This would have calmed me down because it teaches confidence and self-respect,' " said Boyer, who has been giving private lessons in the martial art since 1985. It's a lesson that Boyer is putting to use as he teaches karate to 12 Lindenwold youths - boys and girls - every Friday night in a program sponsored by the borough's Municipal Alliance.

Before 16-year-old Andy Diedrich dares to turn the key that will charge the one-ton maroon machine he sits in, he quickly says a prayer and makes the sign of the cross. It is only Andy's second time behind the steering wheel and first time with driving instructor Bernadine Demnicki. After picking Andy up at his home in Secane, she explains how to adjust his seat and mirrors. Beads of perspiration seep onto Andy's forehead. During the next two hours, Andy's turns become smoother and the road becomes less menacing.

There was a time when Bill Potoczny started his winter tennis practices with a shovel instead of a racket. He and his father would head for the nearest playground, clean the snow off a court and proceed with their match. "Once I forgot my gloves, and I couldn't move my fingers afterward," Potoczny said. The Potocznys contended with the snow because they had just two alternatives: play indoors or not at all. The first option was too expensive. The second was unthinkable.

Like windup toys, the two 10-year-old girls, black riding helmets securely buckled, bobbed up and down as they rode their respective mounts, Bubba and Cinnamon, around the training ring at Ferguson Farm in Blue Bell in Montgomery County. Instructor Ann Deininger, standing in the middle of the arena, studied the small figures rising and falling in rhythm with the horses and called out instructions. "Get your heels down," Deininger called. "Pick up your hands and shorten your rein.

Naomi is 3, and enthralled by the flash and sparkle of the beautiful ladies who "do the jumps and spins" on Olympic ice. And now we are teaching my little niece to ice-skate herself. She's a trooper out there on her surprisingly grown-up-looking single blades. She likes to watch the big kids zoom past, likes watching the Zamboni, that monstrous miracle, make the ice smooth and beautiful again. I quite enjoy when my rental skates don't make my feet stink, and when the rink speakers blare the teen pop I secretly know all the words to. And right now, we can ice-skate almost anywhere.

Guiding small, light brush strokes of brown acrylic paint across 11-by-14-inch art paper, Harold Davis created the image of branches in a vase. Switching brushes and colors, he dabbed bright pink to the brown lines to form blossoms. As he added colors and textures, Davis, 67, created his first original painting in many years. "I have not painted since grammar school," Davis said, laughing and looking at his finished work. "It's nice to create something. " The Rose Valley resident is one of about 50 patrons of the Lawrence Park Adult Day Services program who enjoy art classes.

Mary Jewett saw the expensive cars in the school parking lot. She learned of the private lessons her players regularly attended. She did not understand all the special attention focused on the Cherry Hill East girls' tennis team. It seemed like a pretty strange place to Jewett. "It was a culture shock," said Jewett, a mother of five. "My first day at Cherry Hill, a kid pulls in with a brand-new Audi. I didn't like all the entitlement. " That was three years ago, when Jewett was hired to coach the junior-varsity team at East.

Liz Formoso was a typical tennis player when she started playing at age 10. She had some natural ability and could hit the ball hard and keep it within the lines. Formoso had no idea that by her junior year at Moorestown she would be one of the best doubles players in South Jersey. And it was all thanks to her workouts at the Moorestown Field Club. "I was kind of oblivious to how I played then," Formoso said, referring to her early years. "There were a lot of good players who were better than me. All of a sudden, I was beating people I had lost to. " It took Formoso, now on the No. 1 doubles team at Moorestown, several years to hone her skills through private lessons, and last season she helped the Quakers reach the final of the Tournament of Champions.

Credit the private pitching coach. For what? For all of those 1-0 softball games. For all of those dominant hurlers who turn high school games into their personal workouts. For fans' being able to go home, walk the dog, read the paper, and then eat dinner after witnessing a lightning-quick, one-hour contest. The pitcher is the dominant person on a softball field. Private pitching coaches - who make up a cottage industry that has blossomed over the last 10 years - are the most influential off the field.

South Jersey is "corny. " North Jersey is "off the hook" because of its New York connection. Orange, N.J., is really like Chestnut Hill. And the rest of Philadelphia is "all one big street. " Such stereotypes and labels of neighborhoods and the youths who live there evoked laughter and applause from the private-school students gathered at yesterday's conference at Springside School in Chestnut Hill. But after the jokes came serious discussions of perceptions and misperceptions of cultural values, fashion's tendency to reinforce hierarchies along lines of class and race, and personal tales of friendships across those lines.

No one could have anticipated the problems lurking inside 8-year-old Linda Hooks when she anxiously watched her father playing on a tennis court nearly 10 years ago. Until then, Hooks had been a lover of dance: tap, jazz and ballet. But after she watched her father smack a tennis ball across the court, the sport seemed too much fun for her to resist. "I saw them out there, and I decided that I want to try this," she said. For the next two years, Hooks took private lessons, played in tournaments, and practiced with her father, Stewart, and a family friend.

Applause from a school band concert was just starting to fade away when audience member Sharon Parker began to think about the students who were not on stage. Parker, curriculum director for the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, said that a few days later. she asked a child who was not in the concert what the reason was. The answer, Parker said, was financial. "That child told me that their family could not afford to lease an instrument. The mother of the family was concerned about paying for any repairs that might arise," Parker said.

As a youngster, Jeff Boyer wanted to learn karate. But his father wouldn't allow it because he said Boyer had a bad attitude. Ironically, the karate lessons might have helped. "When I started karate as an adult, I told my dad, 'This would have calmed me down because it teaches confidence and self-respect,' " said Boyer, who has been giving private lessons in the martial art since 1985. It's a lesson that Boyer is putting to use as he teaches karate to 12 Lindenwold youths - boys and girls - every Friday night in a program sponsored by the borough's Municipal Alliance.

Yesterday was the winter open house for the Academy of Community Music at St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh. The day included workshops for young children, demonstrations and a concert by preschool and school-age musicians from the academy's Suzuki classes. The academy was founded in 1983 by violinist Robert DiPasquale of the Philadelphia Orchestra and his wife. It offers private lessons, music education for people of all ages, music therapy and an Academy of Children's Music.