For now, conducting a class

WHEN JASON RODGERS isn't dressed in a tuxedo, baton in hand, poised to conduct an orchestra, there is something about his warm, natural smile that makes him look like a big, lovable kid.

But at 26, Jason Ikeem Rodgers is "Mr. Rodgers" to the Philadelphia schoolchildren he meets as he begins his first year as a music teacher in the city's public schools.

It wasn't too long ago that Rodgers, who grew up mostly in North Philadelphia, was a student himself.

Last Friday, at Ferguson Elementary on 7th Street near Diamond - the same school Rodgers attended from first through fifth grades - Rodgers taught music to a group of third-graders.

Although he's a teacher now, some day Rodgers plans on working as a world-class conductor.

A piano performance major in college, Rodgers said, before his junior year he saw Zubin Mehta conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. That made him realize he wanted more from music than playing it. He went on to get two graduate degrees in conducting.

"My ultimate goal is to conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Kimmel Center, where my father almost lost his life building it." His father Junious Rodgers, a cement worker, had to be rescued as he dangled from a beam during the Kimmel Center construction.

"To say that I conducted in the Philadelphia Orchestra which my father put together with his own two hands, that's my dream."

On Friday, the young teacher sat in front of about 20 third-graders. He pulled out a clarinet and started blowing.

"It sounds like a lion," one youngster said.

"It sounds like a whale," said another.

Next, Rodgers asked the children to listen carefully as he first blew slowly into the clarinet. A little later, he blew faster.

"What's the difference in the sounds?" he asked.

"When you blew slow, it sounded low. But when you blew fast, it sounded higher," said one pupil.

Rodgers repeated the tones.

"It seems like when you blew slow, the sound was soft, and when you blew fast, it was loud," a boy finally said.

"Louder! Yes!" Rodgers said, pleased with the boy's answer.

He was teaching with Morgan Stewart, 22, another new music teacher hired by the school district this year. She demonstrated the flute.

Soon, Rodgers had a violin on his shoulder. When he opened the case, one girl opened her mouth in amazement.

"Do I have to blow on this violin, like I did with the clarinet?"

"No," the children said. "You have to do like this." And they mimicked the motion of playing a violin with a bow.

Watching it all on Friday was Virginia Lam, a content specialist in music education at the Philadelphia School District. She was there as Rodgers' boss.

But over the years, since first meeting Rodgers as a 10-year-old sixth-grader at Wanamaker Middle School, Lam has been much more than his first piano teacher.

"I consider Ms. Lam my second mother," Rodgers said after class.

When he arrived at middle school, Rodgers already knew of Lam's work as director of Wanamaker's New Attitude choir. It was famous in the neighborhood for its festive musical productions, and Rodgers' older sister once sang in the choir.

But Rodgers wanted to play piano. His mother, aunts and uncles performed all over the city as a family gospel choir - the Eason Singers. He had picked up a little piano by playing by ear as his mother and grandmother did. But he wanted to really play.

Lam told Rodgers she would teach him piano if he promised to sing in the school's choir.

"I needed boys," she recalled with a laugh.

So Rodgers sang in the choir and after rehearsals, Lam taught him piano basics.

Rodgers said his love of classical music grew from hearing it at choir rehearsals. And when he heard Beethoven for the first time during a movie that Lam showed the students, the music spoke to his soul.

"I think of Beethoven as a communicator," Rodgers said. "His music has the ability to speak right to the person. It just grabs you."

Even without a piano at home, Rodgers learned quickly. So Lam arranged for him to practice in the music studios at Temple University at night.

He'd practice at Wanamaker with Lam until she had to leave at 5 or 6 p.m. She'd get him something to eat and then drop him off at Temple.

At the time, Rodgers was living only steps away from the university on Berks Street near 10th in the Norris Apartments, operated by the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

"He would play until 11 at night, until the guards closed the building," Lam said. Rodgers said his parents always knew where he was.

In June 1998, at age 15, Rodgers played at a Philadelphia Education Fund College Access Program honoring young scholars. He told the audience he was going to play a Rachmaninoff prelude.

Lam said the audience laughed when Rodgers warned: "But it's kind of hard."

In the audience was Carole Haas, now Carole Haas Gravagno. She was particularly impressed by Rodgers' playing and the extra effort he made to practice.

By November, Gravagno and Judith Dooling, then executive director of the Concerto Soloists Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, had arranged for a baby grand piano to be delivered to Rodgers' home. By now he and his family lived Germantown.

Gravagno also helped the young man get a scholarship to Settlement Music School.

Because Rodgers' father worked in construction and his mother worked nights as a caregiver for elderly and disabled people, Lam drove Rodgers to the music lessons at Settlement. She also took him to summer music camps.

When it was time for college, Rodgers auditioned and was accepted at both the Manhattan School of Music and the North Carolina School of the Arts.

He went to the North Carolina, where the arts school recently became part of the University of North Carolina. There, he earned both a bachelor's degree in piano performance and a master's degree in orchestral conducting.

But Rodgers wasn't finished with his education. Suddenly, he knew he wanted to be more than a pianist.

"I realized that it was all of music that I wanted," he said.

So he applied to and was one of two students accepted into the Cleveland Institute of Music's professional studies program for conducting in the fall of 2007.

Last Friday, just before meeting his students, Rodgers walked up the stairs at Ferguson and joked about getting lost in the building some 20 years ago as a first-grader.

"You know how you remember a school being so large when you were little?" Rodgers said. "And after you grow up and go away, you come back and think it's going to seem a lot smaller."

But it didn't feel like that. When Rodgers returned to the school for the first time on Sept. 8, he was still overwhelmed. "It's just as colossal as it was before, when I was in first grade."

He said the magnitude of starting his first day as a full-time schoolteacher in the school where he began his own education seemed like some sort of cosmic destiny.

"It was another milestone. I'd started first grade here as a student; now I'm starting as a teacher.

"It felt big again because of the crossroads I'm coming to. I felt this same sense of this building being gigantic because now I'm walking into it as a teacher, and I felt this responsibility. I felt the grandeur of it all."