In their brief time as a band, the boys of Hamilton Handshake spent countless hours playing or attending shows in Cleveland. They were a ragtag group who’d take to the stage & cause a ruckus while busting out some blues-infused rock ‘n roll. But these guys are so much more than those personas you’ve seen on stage. Sure, by night you could catch them in any of Cleveland’s countless venues, filling our earholes with music or supporting their peers, but by day half the band was in the classroom shaping the young minds of the students at the STEPS Academy. When the band called it quits officially in May of this year, singer Ryan Boone and drummer Kyle Leuszler shifted their gaze toward something far more important than being Cleveland famous: their students.
When did you realize you wanted to quit the band?
RYAN BOONE: Playing in a band in Cleveland is like a never ending high school popularity contest that I don’t care to participate in anymore. When we were offered the position to open and run a larger scale high school program for the 2018/2019 school year, I think we both knew taking on such a huge program would lead to the inevitable decline of our social lives — and the band.
In all honesty, I think we both were ready for the change and so were the other guys in the band. Our lives were all changing, we were getting older as one does, and suddenly it seemed far less important what some guy wearing a pair of Levis, Vans and a leather jacket thought of my rock n’ roll band, and seemed to matter a lot more to us what our high school students and co-workers thought. Sometimes something amazing happens that puts things into a new perspective and I think in many ways, opening this high school was one of those moments. The best part about it was we all left the band on good terms, while still being super creative and passionate people. Ending Hamilton Handshake meant that we all had more time to put our creative juices into different projects and new and exciting things.
KYLE LEUSZLER: I remember we had a conversation one evening about how we were both collectively realized we made teaching the cool thing we do and didn’t need to spend time pushing a Thursday show no one is going to attend. There’s no reason for us to chase our tails when we’ll never fit into the popular Cleveland music scene and neither of us wanted to do music as a career. I still want to play music but I think people are lying to themselves when they say they “just have to play out”. We talk all the time about wanting to do something and start another band, if we do I’m sure we’ll take a different direction to booking shows.
How has quitting the band impacted the way you teach? Do you find yourself gravitating toward more music related projects because of it?
RB: Honestly it hasn’t changed a lot about my teaching, minus me being less tired after playing weekday gigs or having a weekday rehearsal for that weekend’s upcoming show. I definitely don’t miss showing up at 8am to teach with a gnarly headache and my ears still ringing. But it changed more of how I listen to and play music. Since quitting the band, I’ve started being able to play and write for fun, rather than it feeling like work. I’ve branched out a lot more in what I listen to and what I write because it all doesn’t have to be gut busting rock n’ roll. Though I do love me some gut busting rock n’ roll still, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any of us are ready to hang up our hats and stop making music. I think as we get older it’s just time to move on and do new things.
I’m really excited for the potential for new projects to come in the future. We have a really awesome live music space in the school where the students’ bands practice. It’s largely set up with our old gear so I’m sure once we have a bit more time, Kyle and I will end up sitting at those old drums with my old Orange amp and something is bound to happen.
KL: I’m not attending shows at the same break neck pace as I used to. I’ve managed to play out here and there and jam with friends when I have time. It’s a ton of fun to interview bands, record podcasts, screen print shirts, and review records with the students at school. I find myself bringing my hobbies into work. Instead of me spending a bunch of time screen printing shirts for White Buffalo Woman in my basement, I got to print them at school with the coolest people I know. I get to be 15 years old again…for a living. All quitting the band did was give me more time to focus on the rad things we do during the day.
I also teach drum lessons at Fairmount School of Music and every now and then I get the chance to jam at school. I don’t need a dimly lit bar to make noise, at least now the people involved are totally into it. It makes me feel silly to think I actually cared about what people thought of the music we were playing. We all get too ahead of ourselves and take the wrong things too seriously.
Give me an overview of the school & how long each of you have been there/what you do.
RB: Insightful Minds Community of Learning is a school that focuses on servicing students on the autism spectrum, who need further support in their social/emotional learning or are non-traditional classroom learners. We teach in unconventional ways, using creative programs to connect our students with hands on, real world learning.
I’ve been with the company, STEPS for eight years now. I started doing video work, taking pictures for their website, and was quickly sucked in by how much fun it looked like both the kids and teachers were having. It was what I always hoped school had been like for me. It was based on having positive relationships with your students, and making school a fun and welcoming place where you wanted to learn. I started training that school year and had my first student in 2011. Over the last few years, I have been lucky enough to open three different programs with STEPS, each of them unique in the student populations they service.
I brought Kyle aboard at STEPS in 2016 when I was helping start our therapeutic learning farm. We needed another talented teacher with a creative skill set and I was thrilled to have him join our team. Kyle had been teaching at a charter school in Cleveland for years prior and was a perfect fit to start teaching our high school class at the farm. I joined the high school team later in the year to help further develop the creative programs and a new Social and Emotional Learning Team for our high school group. We had a lot of success with those students and saw amazing growth and change in each of them.
My current role at Insightful Minds is focused on working with our high school students on developing their social and emotional skills. What that looks like is really very interesting and hard to explain. I help students find what they’re passionate about, and help them use their passions help in finding a deeper purpose in their education. We believe when students have a purpose and meaning built into their education, it allows them to work on their personal growth and development, along with helping them find academic success, and better preparing them for life after graduation.
Once I’ve worked with our team on finding a passion and purpose for a student, I continue to work with teachers in our high school program on how to teach our students through those unique passions and interests. Sometimes that means sharing a student’s interest and passions with our academic team, to allow them to incorporate those interest into their academic course load. Sometimes that means creating unique projects, designed with the intention of teaching a difficult skill in a unique and fun way. For example, we started using cooking classes as a way to work with students who had high social or emotional needs. Rather than asking a student to sit and talk with me in my office, I would use cooking as a way to connect with and coach a student through a difficult time.
KL: This is my second year with STEPS. I’m the Academic Coordinator for our high school program. My days are spent teaching English, math, science, and language arts. The tricky part of my job is figuring out how to increase the academic value of activities – a cooking lesson involves so much more math than doubling a recipe. Our cooking crew, lead by Stan Leman (former sous chef of Greenhouse Tavern), is learning how to find the total food cost of a recipe. They’re selling Christmas cookies this year and the students can tell you how much each cookie costs and why some cookies were not economical to make because they take too much time to produce or because the ingredients are too expensive. Another teacher, Jerry Vandal (I hate the word teacher because we are so much more than that) mentioned he’d like to have some students write for National Novel Writing Month. This was his second time trying to write a novel in 30 days. Two of our students were brave enough to try and I am proud to say they completed the challenge and are finishing their works so we can self publish by the end of the year.
Previously, I helped Ryan open our Willow Farms program. I learned a lot from my time at Willow Farms but it wasn’t until December 2016, when Ryan joined my team, that things really started to click. We abandoned behavior level systems and typical schedules. We took a trip to the Rock Hall and started bands. We cooked every day and ate as a family. We started passion projects, both staff and students, and worked together to make everything work. Our students started a band and then a side project and we put together a concert.
This summer we spent our time rehabbing these buildings to get everything ready for the school year. We really wanted the building to look and feel more like a silicon valley startup and less like a school. Ryan and I assembled an absolute dream team of staff who were with us through the entire process.
Everything we do is student-centered. Everything. I remember when I started teaching I had a classroom that looked like the one I had been educated in. There was a cursive alphabet running across the top of my whiteboard at the front of the room. I had all sorts of lame posters you’d find at any teacher supply store. The more I saw it not working the more I changed it. I don’t think there is anything sterile or clinical about our building or how I teach now. It took me realizing I had to come into work every day being the person I needed when I was 15. It sounds ridiculous, but I learned so much more than just art from my high school art class. Mr. Trunzo taught us how to dream big, to not accept being told ‘no’ when you believe in what you’re doing. He allowed us to have freedom within limits and supported my ideas even if he knew they weren’t going to pan out because experiencing failure was a learning experience for me. Most importantly he was the adult I needed when I was 15.
What sorts of activities do you do with the kids?
RB: Literally everything. It’s been a weird transition this year — going from the teacher doing the weird activities to the administrator helping to support teachers as they embark on the journey of these fun projects. For years I would bring in my guitars, drums, skateboards, pancake supplies, literally anything that would get my students interested in coming to school and being in my class. It took a while for the weird interest based projects to become a part of the program as a whole. But now it’s amazing to walk around and see bands rehearsing, students bleaching pig skulls for an art project, students learning geometry through building skate ramps, short films being made, novels being written. It’s really amazing the huge spectrum of interest and projects going on at any time here.
KL: We have an innovative building with programming based on staff and student passions. We’re the island of misfit educators – one big dysfunctional family of artists, chefs, photographers, musicians, skaters, writers, gamers and vloggers – and I love it. So far this year I’ve gotten to do a bit of taxidermy, fix an old drum set, write album reviews, interview bands, film and edit video, lots of creative writing. I’ve gotten to help students build projects in our woodshop/maker’s space. I’ve learned I still know how to unlock all the secret levels in Super Mario World.
RB: It’s really hard to explain the scope of the cool things the students are doing. They are working on a podcast, have a culinary program led by the former Sous Chef of The Greenhouse Tavern. They screen print t-shirts for local schools, businesses, charity organizations, bands and more. There are students who are learning how to skateboard and build ramps and learning the history of skateboarding. We have students who have dyed my hair blonde to learn about cosmetology and if it would be something they would be interested in pursuing. There’s a Dungeon and Dragons club that meets weekly, art clubs and classes, partnerships with local restaurants and community businesses to allow our students to have real world work experiences. I could seriously ramble on forever. And those are just the things we’ve done this month. Our students and staff are amazing. They’re comprised of some of my favorite amazing creative people on the planet. And the projects and activities our students and staff create are truly an awe-inspiring thing. I’m humbled daily to be surrounded by such powerful and amazing people, and to have a chance to lead and learn daily is one I never take for granted.
What sort of impact do you think these alternative approaches to teaching have upon your students?
RB: I can say without a doubt it has been life changing for our students and their families. I think we often forget that we are all so different as people and that means we all learn and grow in such hugely different ways. For many of our students, they didn’t find success in a traditional school environment and they thought that meant they wouldn’t be successful in life. This school has given our students an environment that allows them to thrive, to create, to learn, to be curious, to ask questions and to grow. It’s amazing to see our kids finding success here and changing the trajectory of their futures.
KL: The coolest thing I get to do is help someone take their idea and make it a reality. It’s pretty cool to have a student ask you to play drums on a song they’re writing for a project they started after being inspired by a painting from 1632 that they saw when we went to Allen Memorial Art Museum. I don’t like telling the students that they can’t do something, but rather work with them to make their idea a reality.
When my work day was boring I used the idea of playing music to help me get through it; turns out you we can use the student’s passions to help them get through their day, too. It’s easier to get math done when you know later in the day you’re going to record a podcast or film a video.
Is there anything programming-wise you wish you could do with your students?
RB: We’re fortunate to work for a school that supports these creative programs. Of course we’d always love to do more, but I think all things considered, we’re very lucky to get to do all of the cool creative programs that we currently have. But I would really love a food truck for the kids to work on and manage, and eventually a brick and mortar restaurant for our culinary program! But we are young and so is this program, so hopefully one day!
KL: This is a hard question to answer because we are rarely told we can’t do something. I’m really enjoying all the writing and blogging we’ve been doing. Big multimedia projects are my favorite. I like when I can get as many hands on a project as possible. I’m not going to lie, the hardest part of this job is not being able to do everything. I’ve never been the type of person that is scared of missing out. There are so many awesome things happening around the building daily that I can’t possibly be a part of all of them.
What I want to do is bring more people in to work with our students. One thing that Ryan and I really try to instill in our students is the value of social currency, the homie hook-up. Our students have things to offer the world and the world has a lot to offer our students; it’s nice when we can work out a trade.
To stay up to date with what is happening at the school, please consider following any of their social media below. And definitely, keep your eyes open for their end of the year arts and music fest, slated tentatively for Spring 2019. Until then, I welcome you to read the work of one of their students, Colin Gregory, who makes his Midwest Action debut as our newest Cleveland writer today.
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