Rocking their hearts out

School counselor Mike Anderson wows middle-school students with his prowess on guitar and drums, but they save their real accolades for his quiet skill: listening.

Through this awkward age of early adolescence, Anderson uses music — cool music, rock music — to connect with kids who supposedly spurn adult interaction but love hanging out with him, even going to eat their lunch in his office.

This isn't teaching kids to read sheet music or cover '50s hits. It's watching a 14-year-old's slow smile as the short melody he composed on his bass guitar gets shared with the other two electric guitarists in the band. And as they all play, the drummer kicks in and the singer starts improvising lines. And just like that, it's the beginning of a song.

It's leadership, it's social skills, it's cooperation and collaboration, all washed down with a spoonful of rock and an "awesome" mentor who sports earrings and retro sideburns.

Anderson sits and jams with them, he walks the hallways during breaks, he builds go-karts with his counseling groups. And he listens.

"It's so easy to talk to him because you know he'll keep your secrets," said Mallory Cummins, a seventh-grader at Seattle's Catharine Blaine K-8 School, where Anderson works and runs the "School of Rock." "He makes it easy for you to let it all out."

What the kids don't know is Anderson says they help him just as much, as he copes with grief over the loss of his son.

Respect

In this rock band, Random Friday, four of the five musicians wear braces. The boys are tall and lanky, the girls beautiful with shiny hair and open smiles. One of three bands that meet weekly after school as part of the "School of Rock," they set up amps and tune guitars, move desks out of the way in their "classroom by day, rock room by afternoon," as principal Thalia Nawi describes it. It's an improvement over last year, when musicians met in a former bathroom-turned-storage-area.

The student rockers practice a song they created and hope to perform at a school talent show later this month. It's about heartbreak, explains lead singer Sydney Day, a seventh-grader who wrote the lyrics.

Sometimes other students come watch the bands, and the younger kids even want their autographs.

"When people hear we write our own songs, they think it's really cool," Cummins says. "People are excited by it, that we're actually in a band."

For drummer Andrew "A.J." Wergeland-Rammage, the best part of playing in a band is he "gets respected.

"People don't just stare at me," he explains. "They talk to me, ask me how long I've played. I bring in my drumsticks to show them. The best sticks were these glow-in-the-dark ones from Disneyland.

"I used to be the annoying kid. Now I'm the annoying drummer."

Anderson joins them to work on a new song, and they circle him, sitting on the floor or desks. He gets the chatty girls' attention with a "pssst" and shows how to play a new part. He signals the drum transitions. The only part he can't do, the kids say later, is sing high notes. They do an off-key impression of him that is more laughter than anything else.

"I don't want to use the word 'magic,' but it really is," said Mallory's dad, Scott Cummins. "Middle school can be a really horrible time in the lives of children. It's not just about playing some great music after school — even though that's really fantastic. It's about having a great relationship with a teacher they love and who loves them."

"He always understands"

The kids play rock. But on his own time, Anderson, 37, is punk and only punk.

He played drums in punk bands through high school (graduating from Federal Way's Thomas Jefferson in 1986) and college at Western Washington University, picking up guitar in his 20s.

"The energy in punk rock is exhilarating," he said. "It's more pure emotional expression because it's so physical. It's all about building a ton of energy for the audience. The music is so fast if you just stand there you look stupid."

With only 15 spots, about twice as many kids want to join "School of Rock" than Anderson can accept. He's mentored after-school bands for 12 years, first at TOPS Alternative School, now at Blaine for two years. He's seen some of his early students compete in Battle of the Bands or perform at local clubs. He just fixed an amp for a former student, now in high school, who still comes by to talk.

"Some of these kids don't have dads around," he said. "I try to help fill in a little bit as a role model."

He's mostly worked as a reading specialist; this is his first year as a full-time counselor, a position partly paid for by the school's PTA.

Anderson runs 11 weekly groups for kids from divorced families or ones who need help making friends. They do fun activities like run relays in the nearby park, which helps cut the stigma and avoids the "sit and talk in a circle" model. "I've found that kids get a lot more out of doing than talking about doing," he said.

He helps students with behavioral issues and leads class discussions on bullying or sex ed. But he feels most effective meeting with kids one-on-one, seeing "a stream of kids coming in through the course of the day."

"He always understands," said seventh-grader Day. "Even things you'd think a guy would never get, he always finds a way to make you feel better."

Anderson works with all grade levels; "kids gravitate to him like molasses," said principal Nawi. "The principal has to be more of a disciplinarian. Mike can just be an advocate."

Anderson figures about 70 percent of the kids he sees are self-referrals, meaning they approach him. "It's everything from 'I found my cat dead' to 'My dad does horrible things to me,' " he said.

Grief and comfort

Anderson is cool — kids and parents agree — but he's professional. Though his love for music and kids combine in "School of Rock," he tries to keep his personal life private. His work is about the kids, supporting and empowering them.

Colorful concert fliers adorn his office wall, but he's cagey with students about his band's name (he plays guitar for the Spazms, and used to be the drummer for Cookie) since the punk-music scene isn't exactly kid-friendly. The places he plays are "gross, dingy and dark — and these are the good clubs."

And though he'll proudly show an adult a photograph of his beloved baby son, Phoenix, he doesn't keep it on his desk.

That, too, would cross a line, because 7-month-old Phoenix died in July, a sudden and devastating loss to meningococcal meningitis, a rare infection of the fluid in the brain and spinal cord.

In the morning, emergency-room doctors sent them home, saying Phoenix just had the sniffles. "It was the first real cold he'd had," Anderson said. They were back in the ER by the afternoon, and Anderson watched his son die within an hour and a half. He and his wife recently marked the sad milestone of his death 7 months ago, the same amount of time he was alive.

"My life will never be the same," he says simply. "I fought that for a long time. I fought the loss of my life the way it was. I wanted to feel normal again."

Through counseling, through Journey, a grief support group at Children's Hospital, Anderson is starting to accept that the aching hole is "my reality. It's going to be this way."

He doesn't tell kids how to cope with their own grief — whether from the death of a pet or a grandparent or a parent — because he doesn't have any answers. "I'm not an advice giver," he said. "I can't tell them the right thing for them."

The older kids are a comfort, but crying babies can remind him of his son. "Those triggers come out of the blue," he said. "It hits you, and you've got to just disappear."

Though he's helped teen bands for years, it's taken on new meaning now.

"Part of what's helped in my grief process is working with the kids," he said, his choked-back tears adding weight to each word. "I find they exude such life. To be able to do something that brings them happiness, to give them a place where they feel better about themselves, that is hugely powerful to me in the wake of losing my son.

"A big part of me not being able to do it for my own son is being able to do it for someone else's."

Stephanie Dunnewind: sdunnewind@seattletimes.com

or 206-464-2091.