Sam Maren has passion for teaching kids
Sam Maren works closely to perfect Mayleigh Byrd’s banjo technique at a recent session at Bowman.
Fred Rogers, the man known to generations as Mr. Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, famously said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” Who are the helpers in our community? Where can we find them? How can we each be a helper in our own way?
Sam Maren is a “perfectly adequate musician.” At least that’s how he sees it.
What he’s really good at, he says, is working with kids. Watching Maren on the stage of the Bowman Middle School Auditorium with students learning to play the banjo, he seems considerably better than adequate as a musician, but there’s no doubt he’s really, really good at working with kids.
Maren has taught banjo at Bowman since 2016 and worked with Toe River Arts in area schools since 2001.
Maren wears many hats. He’s an artist, an educator, a woodworker and a storyteller, skills he often combines and brings to his work with children.
“We have one hard and fast rule,” Maren said. “You have to be having fun.”
As Maren teaches the young musicians on the stage, they in turn teach each other. While they’re all certainly having fun, they are clearly learning and learning deeply.
“That’s what happens when you teach something to another person. Teaching teaches the teacher on a deeper level,” Maren said.\
While students are welcome to bring their own instruments to the Traditional Arts Program for Students, Toe River Arts will gladly lend instruments to any students. Then, once a week for an hour local students remove instruments from cases that sometimes seem bigger than the kids themselves.
They learn, teach and have fun with instructors like Maren. They are participating in local artistic traditions that have deep cultural roots in the community.
Maren worked in other communities with deep Appalachian roots long before he came to Western North Carolina. He was a licensed social worker in West Virginia.
“I worked in small communities there for 25 years,” he said. “I worked with adolescents in residential treatment. Lots of soft skills development and placing in jobs in the community.”
At 38 years old, his boss told him he’d need a college degree to keep his job. That’s when he went to college, eventually getting two degrees, one in counseling and a masters in social work.
But the kids on the stage in Bakersville know him as Mr. Sam, banjo player, the man who shares music with them and passes on a mountain tradition.
For more information about how children in Mitchell County can participate in the Traditional Arts Program for Students or how you can support TAPS or other Toe River Arts programs for kids, contact Toe River Arts Community Outreach Coordinator Alena Applerose at alena@toeriverarts.org or call 765-0524.
Traditional Arts Program for Students is supported by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council.