Heathcliff Sygapolho gives free violin lessons to inspire confidence in the next generation.<br /><br />Every day Sygapolho spends two hours teaching at the Prince Joshua Avitto Community Center. He has been a teacher for 20 years and played the bass growing up, but he learned the violin to better reach and motivate his students.<br /><br />“What I know with the instrument, usually the violin and music trigger the left side of the brain so if they can trigger that mathematical [skill] or the critical thinking skills by playing an instrument, and reading-wise it helps them to focus from lines to lines, so I think that’s a tool that they could use to like excel in their academics,” he explained.<br /><br />The community center was named in honor of a six-year-old who was fatally stabbed inside a house complex in 2014. East New York has one of the highest violent crime rates in the city.<br /><br />Sygapolho doesn’t expect every student to become a professional, but he keeps a love of music as a guide to each lesson.<br /><br />“Music to me is—it’s love. It’s reasoning, and it’s motivation,” he explained. “Motivation, because like a lot of, for me, music has taken me a lot of places that I wouldn’t have been to and meet people that I wouldn’t have met.”<br /><br /> This video, "Music Teacher Heathcliff Sygapolho Gives Free Violin Lessons To Children </a>", first appeared on<br /> nowthisnews.com</a>.<br />
