April 28, 2025 - MAINSTREAMING
If you’re in town on Tuesday, please stop by at Bernunzio Uptown Music for a cup of soup or two and make a donation to Rochester‘s finest education program. My daughter Kara works at the World of Inquiry School in the city of Rochester. They are taking kids on an outdoor program and trying to raise as much money as they can so they don’t have to pay it all out of pocket. I’ll be bringing my famous smoked turkey and bean soup, but there will be many other options to choose from.
This vibrant teacher from Ohio appeared at the door of our store early Saturday morning. She knocked and I let her in and she told me she was exploring Rochester. She had a deal with Amtrak and was taking train trips to different cities around the northeast each weekend. She had walked from the train station was asking for advice about different things to see in the city so so she could report back to her third grade class on Monday morning. What a gem she is! I just love these encounters!
And speaking of encounters, on Saturday afternoon I had a visit from the great Dr. Steve Greene. He is a master guitar teacher and has been in retirement but he is contemplating reviving one of his famous workshops at our store. If you want to see what those workshops are like you can go to YouTube and search for Steve Greene/ Bernunzio Uptown Music
MAINSTREAMING
April 28th, 2025
Greetings folks,
My first real job was a teacher… specifically a special education teacher, which was a new field back in 1972. Students were being diagnosed with reading disorders, dyslexia, attention deficit, and they were being funneled into programs that were run by the organization known as BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services). Students were placed in classroom across the county. Often they had to travel far from their home and out of their district to be in a special education classroom. I began teaching at the Thomas Connor school in Scottsville, New York. I had a group of kids who were from Greece, New York and would travel on a little yellow bus over one hour to get to the school. When they got off the bus they were, to say the least, raring to go. The ratio of boys to girls was about 10 to 2, and we had a very strict program to ultimately get the kids back into their regular classes. It was a multisensory reading program that was basically five hours each day of hard-core drill and flashcards and repetitions until they could master the art of reading, writing and arithmetic. But the real goal was to get them back to their regular classrooms, and that was the personal goal of each of the kids. Eventually someone came up with the idea, entitled "mainstreaming". This allowed the placement of special education students in the into a "regular" class such as Social Studies or Science if they were able to handle the material in that class. I would act as a support service to back them up with the reading material that was challenging. It was every kid’s goal to be in the "mainstream", and we made it as such an important achievement….to function and work in the mainstream, that was the goal.
However, 50 years later, as I look back I realize that I, myself didn’t really want to be in the mainstream….after all, the mainstream is the place where all the "sharks" are feeding. I would really rather spend time in the tributaries and the little branches and the side streams….and that has been the story of my life…. stay out of the mainstream! That’s my advice… do something your heart tells you not your brain. In fact, I have tried to avoid the "mainstream’ at all cost, because, I realized that being in the mainstream wasn’t the goal…In fact the journey itself is the goal of life. So, stay out of the mainstream, explore the side roads… that’s where the real happiness can be found.
The only time I followed my heart AND my brain at the same time, was when I married Julie Ellen Schnepf, whose birthday is this Wednesday. It was the right move. It is the one that is always closest to my heart. We may not be in the mainstream… but we have been swimming together for 40 years and avoiding the sharks.
With peace,
John Bernunzio
Julie’s been getting the planting beds on the side yard ready for the season of growing. May is really when life begins again in this area.
The spring colors seem to only last week or two, but it’s probably the best time of the year… the world has come back to life
This week I will not be in the store, but I will be attending the American Banjo Fraternity convention. It will be held in Palmyra, New York. It is open to the public, so feel free to stop by if you can find your way to Palmyra.