Dec 9, 2015 2 min read

FINLEYVILLE – Ringgold Middle School music teacher Melanie Sandrock transformed her room 15 years ago into Scotland, complete with performances by a bagpiper and harpists from Pittsburgh.

It was an event for the annual academic fair, where teachers picked a theme and the entire school became that theme, Sandrock said Tuesday, looking back on a year that would spark a rare harp program at Ringgold.

The Pittsburgh Harp Grove group played that day at the school, and its members invited Sandrock – a pianist – to attend its monthly meetings.

“Eventually someone said, ‘When are you going to get your own harp?'” Sandrock said.

She did just that and started playing with the Pittsburgh group, an interest that eventually would inspire her to enroll in intensive harp training at Ohio Scottish Arts School in Oberlin.

One day, a couple of Sandrock’s students heard her playing the harp and asked her to teach them how to play the instrument.

“Pretty soon, there were more and more of them,” she said.

About eight years ago, then-principal Jeff Matty noticed the interest in the harp. He “loved the sound, and he asked me to turn it into a class,” Sandrock said.

The students raised money, and she used it seven years ago to purchase eight harps.

“We have 40 harps now,” she said.

Her students for the past four years have been attending the weeklong summer training program at the Ohio school.

“I like the experience of the sound. It’s very graceful,” sixth-grader Kirra Gerard said Tuesday while practicing her harp in Sandrock’s room.

The Ringgold harpists in May were asked to perform at a memorial concert for a Pittsburgh harpist.

“I think they were pretty surprised at how good (my students) were,” Sandrock said.

“Here we are in the Ringgold School District with the only harp program of its kind in the United States that we know of,” Sandrock said.

The harpists will perform at the school’s annual Christmas concert at 7 p.m. Dec. 17.