Though Kelsey enjoys singing, she is more comfortable with…

What do Frank Sinatra, Carrie Underwood, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Beethoven, The Beetles, Elvis, and Mrs. Jo have in common? They can all claim Kelsey Anderson as a FAN!

This featured WeJoySing “graduate,” now a senior at Dublin Jerome High School, was one of Mrs. Jo’s very first Columbus students, in 1992.

A Wide Repertoire

“I like country, hip hop, rock, classical…Mom used to play that for me all the time, so I have an affinity for it now,” Kelsey says, adding that she also likes Broadway and movie soundtracks.

Commenting on Kelsey’s “eclectic music choices,” Cynthia (Mom) says that Mrs. Jo “had so much to do with that…Music was fun from a very early age.” WeJoySing is honored to receive such acclaim. However, this honor student’s success is part natural talent and a large part hard work and good parenting.

Kelsey remembers the JOY of HeartStrings and Music & Me. “I have fond feelings of quality time with Mom and Dad.” (During our phone conversation Dad—David--sings “The More We Get Together” in the background.) Laughingly, she remembers the “instruments away” song. She tells about singing it one day at marching band, discovering that her section director was a WeJoySing parent!

…Instruments: clarinet, piano, guitar, dulcimer, trumpet...

Does Kelsey recognize WeJoySing’s impact? She’s aware that she “thinks differently” about music. “I have [a more natural] musical ability from being exposed to it at such a young age…for friends who weren’t…it didn’t come quite as easily.”

Cynthia says Kelsey has never had a best friend, but rather a “collection of friends.” That, too, could have WeJoySing roots. One of WeJoySing’s benefits is social, Cynthia adds. “My friends are your friends…everyone participates…”

Cynthia has her own fond WeJoySing memories. She recalls Language of Love prenatal classes before Hunter (now 13) was born. Because Kelsey was part of that interaction, her pre-birth brother was, Cynthia says, “very real to her. She called him ‘baby bean,’ as she’d tap on my tummy with the musical hammer and sing ‘rat-a-tat-tat…’”

Kelsey wants to make music as “wonderful and important” to her own children some day. She sees herself “introducing music to them at a young age [prenatally]…playing music, through headphones, to my stomach…”

More to the story

Orchestra, Marching, & Symphonic Band

This gifted musician happens to have a sixty percent hearing deficit! She wears hearing aids to compensate, but because she was an “environmental hearer,” paying close attention to the world around her, the problem was not discovered until she was in fourth grade. Everyone was amazed at her rhythmic and musical abilities in light of her situation!* Perhaps Kelsey is so in-tuned to the value of building on early musical foundations, because had she not been exposed early, she might have missed some “hearing” opportunities entirely.

Her rhythmic capabilities have also come in handy with non-musical activities. For the past three years, Kelsey has been a member of her school’s Crew team. She laughs: “It definitely takes a lot of mental rhythm to keep a boat of eight people [in sync]!”

After graduation, Kelsey plans to attend the University of Cincinnati to major in international business and minor in marketing and Spanish, but music will likely always be an important part of Kelsey’s life. She attests: “Without it, life’s just less interesting.”

A Note from Mrs. Jo-
Kelsey has something in common with current North Canton WeJoySing student Nolan Miller, age 2, who was recently diagnosed with a hearing deficit. His audiologists commented that, musically speaking, Nolan was the highest functioning, partially-hearing child they’d ever met! MUSIC! What POWER it holds!

"Sing"cerely,
Mrs. Jo