By Jessica Baron | Executive Director
This fall, thanks to you, there are many students who have special needs including autism, downs syndrome, emotional disturbance, post traumatic stress disorder and a host of social/emotional issues who are learning in school through music! Your gift has helped children we refrain from naming out of respect for their privacy to develop a way to join their same-aged peers in learning in regular classrooms during integrated music for the first time! We have also trained teachers working with isolated groups of children in special education to use singing and ukulele strumming to engage, calm, redirect and connect their students into appropriate social conduct and participation in lessons.
"Juan" has discovered he can do second grade level math because counting the number of beats in music in groups of four has helped him learn to add. If he stamps, claps and counts beats out loud, he succeeds. He has gone from sitting still, staring at his empty white board to filling it with an accurate number line! For a child who is reading at a kindergarten level in second grade, this rhythm and song combination has made a breakthrough that his teacher can now transfer over to learning English with physical movement, sign language and dance. He loves to strum a ukulele; too.
"Jenny" has stopped distracting and verbally assaulting other children with impulsive outbursts during English Language Arts instruction because she loves the sound of singing. Rather than being sent out of the room, to the principal or school counselor, she is learning to control her impulses so she can sing! Her teacher is using "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to teach students to write and sing their own story songs with beginnings, middles and endings. Jenny contributes like everyone else now. She would do anything to be allowed to stay, even own and apologize to other children for her aggressive behavior which is truly much better now.
"Tyrone" began this year in a real depression, unable to lift his head off his desk. He has moved 7 times in 3 years, constantly missing school and relocating because of "family problems." He has a severe learning disability profile including dyslexia. But when given a chance to participate in songwriting about people his classmates admire, he was able to engage and contribute facts about Michael Jordan, someone he really looks up to. Songwriting is not visual, it's oral/verbal and children hear their own ideas validated and sung back to them by their classmates. Tyrone is doing a lot better now.
The stories go on and on... so please know it is very important that you gave to this project and have helped teachers begin to change the way they are reaching and successfully engaging their students in positive learning! We cannot do this work without you and we encourage you to stay with us in the new year ahead!
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