Give In-School Music Education to NYC Youth

Greetings from ETM – we are honored to have had your support throughout the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year! Thanks go generous donors like you, we have provided regular music classes and enrichment to 20,000 students this past semester.

Over the course of the Fall semester, ETM teachers and their students were thrilled to have the opportunity to make music together in the classroom once again. In addition to the social and emotional benefits of learning and experimenting with music in the same room, many of our students were fortunate enough to safely perform together at the end 2021.

While it varied from school to school, classes from more than half of our 49 current partner schools were able to share celebratory end-of-semester performances – 40% of these were pre-recorded virtual performances and 12% were safely-distanced in-person events.

Many teachers chose songs for their Winter programs from our fall/winter repertoire reading – when our Programs staff regularly gathers to do a sing-through of new potential performance materials. Musical themes included Community, Nature, and Peace, and songs came from a wide variety of cultural traditions.

Teacher Alina Eckersley of P.S. 340 in the Bronx did just that. Her selections included nondenominational selections such as I Lift my Voice and The Little Birch Tree. Said Ms. Eckersley, “I chose these songs because I was thinking about something that would be inclusive, and would make us think about community . . . they resonated with me; especially about coming together even though we might be different.”  Her students’ recorded concert, streamed on December 16^th, was a resounding success.

Other teachers, such as Zachary Bohanan of M.S. 287 in the Bronx, took a creative angle to sharing and celebrating student work. Mr. Bohanan, who teaches a Music Tech curriculum for grades 7-8, was able to use technology to distribute his students’ final projects – digitally composed scores for video games – via QR codes posted outside the music room. In this way, music students’ peers and families have been able to access and enjoy their musical work on-demand.

ETM is proud of the thoughtful and creative ways our teachers and their students have been able to share and celebrate music safely throughout the first part of the school year. We thank you for your support of our work and look forward to sharing our progress throughout the year!