Page 13 - Poze Magazine Volume 71

Rob Leytham

If you had asked me 40 years ago what I would be doing for a
living, I would have told you that I would be drumming for the
likes of Sting, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins or any of the
superstars of the 80’s whose drumming was an inspiration to
me. Never would I have said I would be teaching educators
about drumming and the effect it has on the brain, working
with children who live in poverty and trauma, and a children’s
book author/song composer. But this is what has happened
and my life has been richly rewarded for it.

It started when I graduated from college in 1990 and hopped
on a plane to England to seek my fortune as the new drummer
for the prog rock band ANCIENT VISION. When their first album
came out in 1991, the music scene had turned to Seattle
Grunge. Our albums “The Vision”, “Focus or Blinder”, and “Lost
at Sea” got good reviews but couldn’t sell enough to make a
living at it. I started giving private lessons and became
successful at that.

I was teaching privately 120 students a week, became a
freelance writer for Modern Drummer magazine for 13 years,
and wrote 10 drumming books for Mel Bay publications. Then
2008 happened with the economic crisis and the popularity of
YouTube and the growing popularity of lessons on Social
media. Even though I wasn’t affected as bad as some of my
peers, I knew another change was coming in the world and if I
wanted to keep music as my career, I was going to have to
reinvent myself again.
2012 I started working in a public school, first in Special
Education, and then in 2015 Behavior/Trauma and Students
missing Social Skills. That’s when my life started to change and
take off to where it is today. It began when I started bringing
in drums, bells and Tibetan singing bowls and doing some of
the mindfulness exercises I worked on with my counselor. My
principal, Dr. Tyler Shannon, then started sending me to get
more training in this area.

I started studying once a year with the Kennedy Center in
classroom arts integration, getting yearly training in brain
science, behavior and trauma with Dr. Becky Bailey and
Conscious Discipline. In 2020, during the Covid shutdown, I
stayed in touch with my students by posting rhythmic poems
that taught social skills using voice and drums. I put a daily SEL
rhythmic mantra out on social media every day for the
remainder of the school year. Then finally in 2021 I studied with
Dr. Pamela Lynn-Seraphine, out of Vancouver, on
drums/rhythm and the effect on the brain.
In 2020, Dr. Bailey and Conscious Discipline wanted to take
my Covid era Rhythmic Mantras and turn them into a children’s
book/music combo. In 2023 it came out as THE FEELING IS
BRIGHT: Self-Regulation through Rhythm and Rhyme and it
became my first hit.