Celebrating Our Volunteers: A Chat With David Armenta

Name: David Armenta

 

Year: Harvard College '17

 

Program: HARMONY Mentoring

 

PBHA: How long have you been volunteering with HARMONY Mentoring?

 

David Armenta: I started, actually, freshman fall so finishing out my sixth semester.

 

PBHA: Why do you do the service you do?

DA: Oh, man. I mean I know how expensive private lessons can be so I think it's really cool to be a part of this program where - I mean obviously I'm not a professional - I can provide some sort of one-on-one teaching of music to a kid in the area and for free. I think it's really beneficial to people who are learning how to play music to have these one-on-one lessons, and I think it's really rewarding, also, to see their improvement over the course of the semester or year or whatever. And it's really cool to be able to offer that to people.

PBHA: How have you grown since you were a freshman doing this program? What's changed?

 

DA: I think what I'm starting to learn how to do is just sort of cater more to individual people's methods of learning. Different people learn different ways so it's important as a teacher to pick up on that and learn what's working and what's not. But beyond that, with these lessons I'm kind of seeing how I learn myself and what I need to do for myself to get better at not just music but other stuff too. 

PBHA: Anything else you want to share?

DA: HARMONY's great! I think it's really cool that this program exists - it's a big program too - to offer these services to the community. I think it's great. Also, PBHA's great for hosting us!

To learn more about HARMONY Mentoring, check out http://pbha.org/programs/harmony-mentoring-2/