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At Bigfork Middle School on Monday, 10-year-old Samuel Plummer picked up a dark blue acoustic guitar and strummed the strings.

“This is my first time playing,” Plummer said.

Sitting next to him, his sister, 9-year-old Ione Plummer, turned a tuning key at the top of her guitar.

Both are students in the Bigfork ACES beginning guitar class sponsored by the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation and Bigfork Mountaineer Outdoor Store.

This is the second year the foundation has sponsored the guitar class as part of its mission to foster guitar education opportunities for youth.

Sitting in front of the Plummers, 11-year-old Lydia Rehbein clipped a digital tuner to her guitar and explained how it worked.

“That says it’s D,” Rehbein said, strumming a string, a “D” appearing on the digital tuner. “If you want that you want a green line on both sides.”

This is the second session of the class, which is held once a week through Feb. 27 and is offered to fifth- through eighth-graders in the Flathead Valley.

Diane Kautzman, director of development and operations for the Crown Of The Continent Guitar Foundation, said 12 students graduated from the first session held in November and December. There are 10 students currently taking the second session.

“The Crown’s mission is to mentor the next generation of musicians so it just seemed natural to fill the gap in the schools and offer a beginning guitar class so kids can try it out and see if they like it,” Kautzman said.

A $25 fee that includes workbooks and loaned guitars makes learning an instrument affordable. Scholarships are also available to students.

For some students, the guitar is the first instrument they have learned to play, and for others, like Rehbein, who also plays the piano, it is a new instrument to add to the mix.

“I thought it would be fun and I wanted to learn,” Rehbein said.

Guitar teacher Tim Torgerson walked around the room helping tune guitars. Torgerson, who began playing guitar when he was 12, drew a vertical fretboard on the white board. He has studied guitar for more than 30 years.

“If you were in A minor you could play any of these notes and they all fit. And if you were in C major you could play any of those notes and they would fit,” Torgerson said. “So, what I want you to do is I want you to take these three strings and play them. Start with open E, play F, G, A, B, C, D, E, F, and then back down again. After that we’ll play the whole scale.”

Torgerson later traced his hand on the white board, numbering each finger and demonstrating proper finger placement. He then had students play each note very slowly, ensuring the sound is clear and crisp rather than sloppy and fast.

“Sometimes you just need to do the ‘how’ to understand the ‘why,’” Torgerson said to the class. “We learn some things that don’t really make a ton of sense, but later on when you start incorporating those things in what we play and the things that we’re beginning to learn makes perfect sense.

Torgerson described it as eating food with a bit of seasoning — learning a little bit at a time, and learning by demonstration in addition to learning from a workbook.

“I don’t like to take a handful of salt and put it in my mouth right,” Torgerson said to which students’ replied “ew and blech.”

“That’s what the traditional method of teaching feels like to me,” he said. “When I only do the book I felt like I just ate a handful of salt, but when I do the book along with some of the things we can learn together [it works].”

After finishing the hour-long class, Torgerson recapped what students learned and reminded them to practice a scale several times a day in order to be ready to learn simple, three-chord songs.

Learning guitar, or any instrument, is restorative, said Torgerson, who also teaches at therapeutic boarding schools.

“It’s kind of an oasis in a desert,” he said, or an outlet for students to be creative in instances where they feel, “forced in certain directions socially or academically. Especially with the student who embraces it, it really gives them a place to explore the things that are the core or most significant in life.”

For more information call Kautzman at the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation office, (855) 855-5900 ext. 5 or visit Bigfork ACES at (406) 837-3414.