As a third-generation teacher and a product of Newark schools herself, Belinda Larkins knows the power of education as a tool for social justice. “School isn’t just about the curriculum or even social skills. It’s about community. How do we reach out to everyone, every child, and build community? How do we work with all of them, so they’ll make it? I’m still in touch with one of my pre-K kids; now she’s getting her Ph.D.”
This philosophy was one of the reasons for Ms. Larkins’ immediate and enthusiastic support for Keys 2 Success as a program for her South Street School students. In 2018, when Jee-Hoon Krska, K2S founder, approached Ms. Larkins to ask if her pre-K students could be invited to participate, Ms. Larkins didn’t think twice. Twelve students immediately began learning piano, using classical instruction methods.
She could see what those piano lessons delivered to the children. “Kids get excited when they’re learning; you can see it in their eyes,” Ms. Larkins said. “They’d come back and play something for their classmates, and they’d be beaming all day long.” She also saw how the children became more empathic, and how they cared for each other in the class.
“I see those children now—because I stay in touch with my kids. They’re now in 2nd or 3rd grade. Those kids are more verbal than their peers who didn’t participate. They’re better problem-solvers, better critical thinkers. They have fewer attention problems,” she noted. Beyond their academic and social development, she sees the pride and self-confidence they develop in themselves, and the trust they’ve built toward the K2S teachers.
Ms. Larkins remembers her own challenges as a child in the early grades. She describes her young self as “having some trouble,” spending more time in second grade telling jokes at the back of the classroom than doing the classwork. Her teachers were too overloaded to try to engage the children who didn’t comply with assignments. Finally she was referred to a school psychologist, who interviewed her and reported that, “She needs to see somebody else - there’s nothing I can do to help her.”
Her mom—a single parent who’d moved to Newark from Alabama—didn’t know what to do. Luckily, a few people intervened at critical moments to make all the difference for her: the choir director who gave her a solo in a middle school performance… the wife of a prominent Newark judge who attended that concert and recommended she be admitted to the Arts High School in Newark…..a guidance counselor in 9th grade who took an interest in her. “I got in by the skin of my teeth,” she recalls, “but I loved music. I grew up on Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett. But at Arts High, they were teaching us about classical music—that was new! I was in the choir, I got the lead part. And that part of me just grew.”
After high school, Ms. Larkins earned a degree in Social Work and began her 23-year journey in teaching. At her first school, her pre-K students mostly lived in a low-income housing project with high crime. She needed to engage them, and turned to what she loved: music. “I played classical music, Eric Clapton, everything. And they loved it. We formed a pre-school choir!” So when Ms. Krska appeared two years ago and offered to teach the children piano, it was right in line with what she has always worked to create for her young students: exposure to music and all that it makes possible.
From the first, Ms. Larkins has taken an interest in each child, striving to be a presence working to make sure they succeed. Even more, she sees it as her responsibility to “be their voices. No one listens to children, so we have to set the stage for them to be the change we want to see in others,” she said. “We need to expose kids to all kinds of things in life, and when any discourse comes at them that isn’t right, we need to be the buffer.”
She compares her teaching role to “planting seeds'' in the community. “I’m vested in Newark,” she says, “and in the children of Newark, who may not have all the opportunities that children who don’t live in Newark might have. As I see it, education is a springboard to something bigger. Because the learning doesn’t all happen in the classroom. Exposure is education. Exposing them to Keys 2 Success, it makes my heart feel good, because I feel like I’m doing something good for them. They love it, they’re excited. When kids are excited, they’re learning.”
