I work with all ages of kids but currently my focus is on growing our newly started middle school program. You may be wincing at the idea of working with teens and pre-teens and I feel your pain. Truth be told, however, I dig on that age. Yes, they are a challenge, but you can also reason with them and have fun conversations. Granted, I don’t know enough about Hannah Montana to keep up with some of the them (hey, I’m a Suite Life with Zach and Cody kind of guy), but I can hang.
Anyway, one of the after school programs that I am running is a DJ 101 class. I did some mobile DJing a couple of years back and thought this would be a fun program.
So we bought some used equipment, I grabbed a few of my CDs and we started it up. We figured that when the kids are ready, they can DJ our dances and special events. Not only would this be a great way for them to learn the art of mobile DJing but it would also be a neat way for them to get community service hours, not to mention save us the $500 we spend each event on a DJ. Over the course of a year the equipment will pay for itself and then some.
If you’re looking for a new after school program for teens this is a good bet. You can either find a working mobile DJ to contract with or lead the class yourself if you have at least a little experience. Here’s what I’ll be going over with the kids:
- Equipment set-up
- How to work each piece of equipment
- Troubleshooting – what to do if something goes wrong with the equipment
- Song selection for different events
- Building your music library
- Looping, beat matching and mixing
- Practice, practice, practice
- Using the microphone and working the crowd
- Group dances
- Party games
- Dressing the part, your DJ name and your persona
By the way, if you’re a mobile dj and you’re looking to make some extra money consider going down to your city recreation department and submitting a class proposal to teach teens how to dj.
