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“I feel there’s no limit to learning,” says Charles. “I feel there is nothing I can’t understand.”
It may come as a surprise to his countless fans, but singer/performer Gregory Charles wants you to know that he keeps an encyclopedia in the bathroom of his Montreal home. His friends often laugh at the unconventional location, but to Charles it’s no joke.
In fact, it’s a perfect example of the popular entertainer’s belief that lifelong learning should have no boundaries.
“You can put stuff in your brain all the time,” he says after a recent performance. “I figure, when I’m not doing anything in the bathroom I might as well be learning something.”
It’s a credo that Charles has taken to heart. Known in Quebec as “Super Gregory,” the 40-year-old singer, composer, dancer, actor, talk-show host and choir director is a one-man powerhouse—he even holds a law degree. And starting next year, he plans to pass on some of that knowledge when he opens his own private school in Laval, a booming suburb just north of Montreal.
“I feel there’s no limit to learning,” he explains. “I feel there is nothing I can’t understand.”
The only child of a Trinidadian father and a French-Canadian mother from Drummondville, Que., Charles credits his piano-teacher mom with fuelling his passion for learning. When he was a little boy she nurtured his natural curiosity with a series of homemade learning games. Charles remembers her stenciling the name of a country in big letters and taping it to the refrigerator. He would then sound out the word. “Malawi,” he’d say, and then, invariably, ask “Where is Malawi?” His mother would take out a map and show him.
His mother was definitely on to something. Research shows that attempts to foster emergent literacy (or literacy in children who are not yet literate) in the home can contribute to stronger language and vocabulary skills later in life, and heightened appreciation of learning in general.
Versatility has always been his trademark. A classical pianist prodigy, by the time he was seven Charles had performed in piano competitions in Paris, Mexico and New York. In addition to this, he also displayed strong vocal skills as a member of a vaunted Montreal choir. By the time he was 16, his choirmaster suggested he take a job tutoring a youth choir in Laval but Charles turned him down. Luckily his choirmaster wasn’t prepared to take no for an answer: “Good,” he told Charles. “I’ll tell them you’ll be there.”
More than 20 years later, Charles is still there directing a choir featuring some of the same people he coached two decades ago. In fact, Charles became so invested in choral singing, and so attached to the city of Laval, he founded Le Mondial Choral Loto-Quebec, the largest choral festival in North America. Held annually in Laval since 2005, Le Mondial Choral attracts some 12,000 participants and half-a-million spectators each year. Performances take place in large concert halls, intimate theatres, massive parks and celebrated churches. “Choral singing is the most popular leisure activity there is,” says Charles, whose eyes sparkle with enthusiasm behind his signature black-rimmed glasses. “It has more participants than tennis or golf. I call it ‘citizen art.’”
Charles also runs a music camp every summer in Laval for kids ages eight to 14. He recruits campers who can sing, dance, play musical instruments or do it all—just like he did at that age. His experience working with young people runs deep. For 10 years, he tutored dropouts at a community centre in St. Henri, a working-class neighborhood in southwest Montreal, and from 1989 through 2002, he served as host of a popular TV science program for kids on Radio-Canada called Les Débrouillards. Young fans of his music are often surprised to discover that he’s the same guy who guided them through a science experiment on television when they were pre-teens.
When asked about the source of his enthusiastic attitude to lifelong learning Gregory Charles quickly thanks his mother, a piano teacher who played homemade games with him that helped to spark his youthful curiousity.
Research has shown that parents can play a major role in not only what their children learn, but how they approach learning for the rest of their lives. Parents who encourage emergent literacy from an early age tend to have children who are more literate and better educated.
CCL’s February 2006 Lessons in Learning, How parents foster early literacy, explores the issue of emergent literacy further and offers a series of practical ways parents can nurture it.
One of the best known methods is to read to your child on a regular basis. Others include:
Charles compares the teaching process to the operation of a pinball machine—all energy and movement on the thrust forward, but lacking momentum on the return. “Your job as a teacher is to send [the pinball] back again,” he says.
Charles himself is propelling forward on two new projects. He plans to return to the stage with a more ambitious version of Black and White, the cabaret he conceived in 2002. The first half of the show consists of a biographical sketch in song and dance. In the second half, Charles takes requests from the audience and interprets them with his band. Charles performed Black and White more than 80 times before audiences in Laval, at the Bell Centre in Montreal, at the Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre in Toronto and at the Beacon Theatre in New York. But in late 2005, while performing Black and White at the Bell Centre, he fell off the stage and broke his elbow. Surgery followed and doctors weren’t certain if he’d play the piano again. While recuperating, Charles began composing songs. The result was his breakthrough album I Think of You. Now Charles is eager to expand Black and White and begin performing it again in 2010.
His other project has been lying dormant for decades. When he was a kid, says Charles, he would dream about running his own school one day. He’d think about the courses he’d offer and the grading scheme he’d use. Now Charles will make that childhood daydream a reality. In September 2009, he’ll open a private school in Laval that will cater to boys and girls who excel in both arts and sports. It’s one more project in an already bustling schedule, but he clearly relishes the challenge.
Will he ever slow down? He answers with another story about his mother. When he was young, she used to tell him that the worst word in the French language—not to mention the most misleading—was ‘satisfaction.’ That’s because, Charles recounts, when you examine its Latin roots, “satis” means enough and “factum” means to do.
“How is it possible,” he says “that to do enough equates to satisfaction?”