By JEFF FOSTER, guest columnist

On Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 26, 2020, I took my guitar, a short stack of handbooks, and a smile on my face to begin the first of 12 Basic Guitar classes to be held once a week in the school library at Brown County Junior High School. Little did I know how radically different this semester was going to be!

A little backstory: The After School Arts Committee, under the auspices of BETA, organized by BETA board member Annie Hawk and underwritten by grants and donations, provides free after-school music instruction to kids in the Brown County school system who would like to learn to play a musical instrument.

The program launched in the fall semester of 2018 and has continued ever since. Basic Guitar for fall 2020 was one of three such class offerings, the others being a multi-instrument group jam for older teens created by Nathan Dillon, and a beginning drum and percussion class led by Michael Wimer.

Then came the coronavirus.

We managed to get in three weeks of in-school classes when suddenly the schools were shut down, and it was looking like the BETA program might be finished for the entire semester.

But BETA quickly pivoted. We set up a premium Zoom account so instructors could accommodate multiple students in a single virtual classroom, established a class schedule, contacted local media outlets and all affected families to notify them that an online classroom option was available — and the requests for services began rolling in.

Many housebound parents and guardians, along with suddenly idled (and antsy) children, jumped at the opportunity to receive, free of charge, a culturally enriching activity to help take young minds off of a troublesome worldwide phenomenon, which even the adults were having a difficult time understanding.

While our music classes only last an hour per week, the prescribed practice schedule prompts the fledgling musicians to make time every day to work on their music. And as we all know, the more practice, the better. A dedicated student can thus add several hours of focused, creative and enjoyable activity to their week.

For my first virtual class on April 1, I had four students. (Oddly, these were all fresh recruits, none of them had been enrolled in my original in-school class.) I soon saw that wrangling a virtual classroom full of young teens with little to no musical background would be a tough row to hoe.

The youngest one needed more one-on-one attention. Those a little older and/or more experienced (in particular, one young lady who had taken my class before) needed to be challenged to a greater degree, lest they become bored with the instruction and possibly withdraw — not an outcome I’d want.

So, the second week, I changed from a group format to four, 15-minute private lessons, assigning each student a specific time to be in the virtual waiting room, tuned up and ready to enter the meeting room for the lesson. This worked much better, as I could meet each student directly, focus on their specific needs, and tailor my approach to provide them with the most appropriate individualized instruction for that day.

I’m happy to report that, thus far, my private online guitar lessons have enjoyed full attendance every week, with no one withdrawing from the program. Despite the technical difficulties inherent in trying to not only communicate online, but to also teach a very physical and tactile skill such as playing a musical instrument, I’m seeing real progress happening for each of my students.

While I would never claim that online lessons are as effective as in-person lessons (for instance, it’s impossible to take the eraser of my pencil and tap on the strings to show where a particular note is, or use it as a gentle lever to coax stubborn young fingers into the proper stance to the fingerboard), a good deal of information and remote coaching can still happen.

And right now, when remote lessons are the only prudent way for aspiring young musicians to meet with their teachers and receive the instruction and help they crave, I’m thankful for the beneficial technology we all enjoy that makes that possible.

Jeff Foster is a BETA music instructor and the BETA website manager at betabrowncounty.org. BETA (Brown County Enrichment for Teens Association) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, funded entirely through the generosity of donors.