Provide Life-Changing Music for Fragile Students

Dear Friend,

I am writing you today with glorious news!

This coming week, our leadership partners in Home Hospital Education are joining GITC at the international NAMM Show in Anaheim, California to share about the impact of music on the students in their care. They'll talk about what they are doing, how students are responding, and how they're working together to sustain this effort going forward.

The NAMM Show is an unconventional trade show for the international music products industry. It's different because in addition to showing all the latest instruments, accessories, gear, innovations, and more, the NAMM Foundation also offers a very robust educational program throughout three days, where music educators, experts, and arts and nonprofit leaders meet to grow their individual and collective knowledge. (See the link below). GITC will be kicking off the NAMM Show on Thursday morning with a 2-hour hands-on training workshop for sharing techniques and strategies in adaptive music with educators and leaders of many stripes. This will be co-taught by two Home Hospitalists Kristy M. and Jennise C.

The workshop will cover deconstructing music into sounds, playing the steady beat for entrainment and language acquisition, chanting for mirroring and validation, self-esteem and belonging, singing for self expression, connection and joy, songwriting for skill building and social thinking strategies, adaptive percussion with specialized drums and shakers, adaptive ukulele, accessing creativity and composition with music apps for students with limited movement and manual dexterity, and incorporating Social Emotional Learning (SEL) throughout to help all students navigate needs, feelings, and social interactions more successfully. The REMO Comfort Sound Table Drum, designed specifically for autistic students, will also make its' NAMM Show debut with GITC. We are beyond excited!

After the workshop, we'll be holding a panel discussion with leading experts about how they are working to make music accessible for medically, developmentally, or psychologically fragile students. Each leader will tell their "heroes journey" story leading to the current moment, and then we'll open up the floor for Q and A!

Then, on Friday, Home Hospital Principal, Sylvia E. and former Director of Special Education for San Diego Unified, Andrea V. will both be serving on a panel of esteemed leaders in the field of education, to share with others about their visions, efforts, challenges and break-throughs in creating access to music for these marginalized students on our panel Education Leaders Speak.

This is a most amazing time for the work you've helped GITC launch, develop, sustain, and grow over years. People from around the world will be hearing about these efforts, most for the first time. Your belief in the importance of this effort continues to be key to its success.

Our deepest aspiration is for participants to return to their districts and ask these burning questions:

1) What happens to students who suddenly become ill, traumatized, or injured in our district when they are suddenly unable to attend school in person and require extended care?

2) What is the path to education when a child's medical, psychological, or physical needs exceed the services that a regular classroom or school setting can provide? What support is offered to them and their families? 

3) Where and how are these students receiving educational services?

4) What is being done to make sure these students have access to the arts as a part of their healing, learning, and daily living?

5) Who in my district who could partner with me to explore making musical learning available to these students wherever they are?

We want the teachers, administrators, arts leaders, music manufacturers, retailers, and other musically-motivated participants  in the room with us at NAMM to leave the show feeling inspired, with skills, tools, resources, and information to share!

Looking ahead, I believe this delicate, personal, life changing work will travel. We will see concentric circles of activity begin to move outward, reaching children wherever they are isolated and in need of musical upliftment and opportunity. Thank you, dear Supporter, for giving GITC the chance to arrive at this beautiful and promising moment. We will share photos from the NAMM Show with you in the next report, along with early outcomes.

Let's keep this light shining brightly. When you next think of donating to a project here on GlobalGiving.org, I hope this one will rise to the top of your list for ongoing support. There is a lot of work we can accomplish in 2023 and beyond if we all do it together.

With gratitude for your faith, encouragement, and generosity,

Jess

Links:

• Music Education Days at the NAMM Show 2023
• Our Website
• Our Facebook Page

Hello Friend, We’re sending our deepest gratitude to each of you who is supporting GITC’s effort to bring musical learning to students in Home Hospital and Transitional Support environments. The students who receive an education through special visits to their homes, or from teachers working with them in the hospital need the joy, calming, and fun of making music to get through the tremendous challenges in their young lives. Your donation has been empowering GITC to make this critical difference by providing us the opportunity to continue to train their incredible teachers in adaptive and responsive music facilitation.

Because of you, GITC teaching artist Mr. J provided musical engagement and connection for students learning from hospitals and homes through weekly Family Music Time, creating more opportunities for their parents to participate and make a musical connection with their children. The parents train along with the home hospital teachers to facilitate music with their children, using instruments supplied to them by Guitars in the Classroom thanks to YOU! Meeting together with the other families every Friday over Zoom, the parents and teacher engage with the families of other medically challenged students, and everyone shares the power and joy of strumming, drumming, singing, and more. Your gifts are creating access for these students by helping GITC teaching artists train their teachers and include family and medical staff in the process. Thank you so much for making this possible in 2022!

In addition to these Family Music Hours, Ms. S creates a sense of community and connection every week for students who have been removed from their homes by Child Protective Services, as well as teens “in transition,” who have continued to learn the art of songwriting. In October we held a very inspiring in-person adaptive music training for teachers from Home Hospital and from special education classrooms. They learned to play and incorporate new instruments including very exciting Casio keyboards that make 200 sounds! Our plans for 2023 include holding one of these Saturday free workshops in a different area of San Diego each month so Home Hospital educators and special educators throughout the region can all come together to learn in a community that encourages them to be creative, innovative, and courageously musical in the name of inclusive and effective instruction. All of that is to say that when it works, lives change. Eyes open, hands move, bodies tingle with musical excitement, voices emerge, pain dissolves, troubles fade, and hope motivates medically fragile children to believe in themselves and try something new.

We at GITC are most appreciative of your enduring support.

Wishing you a joyous holiday season,

Jess and Gail

Links:

• Our Website