Education United States Project #25802

Exceptional Learners Deserve Music, Too!

by Guitars in the Classroom

Project Report | May 15, 2017
Check Out This GITC Special Education Classroom!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Shiri in Annette's Class!

Dear Friend,

Thank you so much for your help funding this project to include students with special needs in music making at school through Guitars in the Classroom. In April, I had the pleasure of visiting our regular and special education classrooms to observe 4 GITC teaching artists in their 7 week residencies in high poverty Los Angeles schools.

These residencies pair a GITC teaching artist with a motivated, participating classroom teacher who has previously taken 6 hours of training in teaching literacy through music. The classroom teacher will learn how to independently lead music for literacy in her classroom by watching and co-teaching with our artist for the first 5 weeks. As the weeks progress, she develops greater courage, competence and confidence, our “Three Cs.” By week 6 she can lead all activities independently and in week 7, families are invited to come celebrate the learning their students have achieved during the residency.

These residencies are crucial because they give teachers who have never before made music the chance to try leading music as a teaching and learning strategy with guidance and support. We are so hopeful that you will fund this effort so we can give more educators the experience they need to truly succeed.

My favorite special education observation took place at Haddon Elementary in Pacoima. This school in the eastern part of the San Fernando Valley serves many students with special needs. Teaching artist Shiri partnered with special educator, Annette and her assistant to bring her group of students in grades kindergarten through second, with very diverse disabilities, together to play ukulele and sing as a class. Some students had head gear. Others had other medical equipment. Some rocked on the floor or roamed the room. As you might imagine, figuring out how to get them all on the same beat was quite a challenge.

Students with physically disabilities needed to hold ukuleles in adaptive positions to strum. We got that figured out. Others needed hands on guidance to sit with their instruments and coordinate a hand movement. Others who were easily distracted found themselves pulled in by the music when we changed the classroom set up. Shiri got everyone sitting in chairs in a circle where they could make eye contact and concentrate together. Ukes went under their chairs until it was time to play. That made everything possible.

The teacher and teaching aide sat in the circle giving great guidance to the students with Shiri at their side. This gave everyone clear focus. The teachers led clapping and rocking to the steady beat and everyone caught on! The mood was jubilant as students learned to count the beat out loud, then pick up the ukes and strum together.

Once they had accomplished that, Shiri and the teachers led the easy song “Row Row Row Your Boat” and every single child sang the song! Shiri modeled for the teachers and led games for playing and singing at faster and slower tempos. The surprise element delighted the group and their engagement was total. In a special ed class like this one, THAT is a major achievement.

As the students followed their teachers, moving from changing tempo to changing volume, they sounded fantastic and they KNEW IT. Their singing got stronger with each time they played the song. A look of surprise and new confidence crossed many of their faces that day including one boy who was so excited he leaped out of his chair when his dad arrived to show him his newfound talent.

This is the power of music to bring us together, focus our minds, impart skills to our ears and hands, and help us learn.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this true account of one of the classrooms you are helping us support! We can only share this one photo because of protecting the students’ privacy but hopefully reading about the kids leaves you with images in your mind.

Just to give you a sense of impact of these residencies, here is an email that came in from one of our LAUSD classroom teachers this week, Elena Kelly at 4^th Street Primary Center in East Los Angeles.

Dear Amanda,

I wanted to thank you for your teaching, your inspiration and for sharing with us your passion. It is going to be hard to replace you, you were the best! My students loved you and I feel that you have helped me understand some of the things that I may have been doing naturally but now I can put a label and do the the proper way.

AMANDA YOU ROCK with and without a guitar.

With all my love,
Elena

Contributors, please know that in our hearts, YOU ROCK. You are why we can do this work. Please stay with us and let’s make the world a little better together everyday.

With gratitude,

Jess

Sitting in Chairs Works Wonders!

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Feb 14, 2017
Ukes and Beamz in Special Education!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

EUSD Farm Lab

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for supporting GITC's efforts this year to make musical learning an empowering experience for students with special needs. We are glad to let you know that teachers with GITC are busy including music in their special ed classrooms this year in San Diego, California and Clay and Charleston, West Virginia, our pilot locations. We also look forward to including teachers in our Whidbey Island, WA and Loveland, Colorado programs in the work as well by next month.

You may have chosen to support this project because you care deeply about a young person in your life who learns differently and experiences challenges with traditional education. I hope this project brings you a sense of hope. As we work on a relavtively small scale to make thoughtful improvements through music in our most engaged classrooms, it is my intention that we develop a model that others can learn about in time. Perhaps one day in the near future, any special educator or classroom teacher differentiating instruction will have the GITC examples by which to begin to enrich their instruction and classroom community for all learners through hands-on music. In addition, this model can help regular educators who are teaching students with special needs who are mainstreamed into their classes.

The fact is that this project is especially important because most special ed and general ed teachers don't get any music training during their graduate level credentialing programs. And general educators also don't get enough training in working effectively with students with extreme special needs. This project you are supporting addresses both problems. We are individualizing teacher instruction through music so that both special and general educators can do the same thing for their students! And we are offering the training for free on an ongoing basis.

Our goal with this project is to continue to bring this important "differentiated" training to the teachers who are most motivated to make music a part of their students' learning experiences.We are also getting feedback from the teachers to understand the impact of music for their students. Hopefully you will continue to give to this project so we can achieve these goals.

Because autism is so present in our schools, we have chosen to address the needs of autistic students first this school year. About 1 percent of the world population has autism spectrum disorder. (CDC, 2014) Prevalence in the United States is estimated at 1 in 68 births. (CDC, 2014). The rate of children being born with autism has climbed by 119% in just 10 years.

This means that in any regular classroom you may have at least one student with autism. In many GITC classrooms, we see 2 or more students who are "on the spectrum" because teachers who sign up for our classes tend to be seen by their principals as highly capable. Strong teachers are always called upon to teach students with greater needs than others. Music becomes a source of positive teaching and learning for these teachers because in general, autistic students respond beautifully to learning through making music.

We are supporting teachers to help students with autism participate in music by becoming active music makers. We are training teachers to teach their students to hold and strum ukuleles when they or their classmates sing. By strumming and singing, the students find that they have command over the music they make, rather than reacting to the sounds that disrupt their focus at volumes or frequencies beyond their tolerance. We are also still helping GITC teachers learn to use their Beamz devices to teach subject areas and social skills in addition to music.

GITC has now placed ukulele sets and Beamz devices in 14 special education "pilot program" classrooms that are all working with us to develop ideas and best practices that other special educators and regular educators who are mainstreaming can utilize. We are so grateful to the charity arm of the Beamz company, called Share Your Blessings for assisting our participating teachers with equipment and training!

In our regular Strum & Sing training classes for teachers this fall, we have been sharing techniques for successfully leading musical learning for students with Aspergers Syndrome and other forms of autism. In particular, we are coaching teachers to help students with high sound sensitivity to learn to navigate their sound environments by:

judging the volume level of sounds near them from 1 to 10, very soft to very loud.
covering their ears in class for anything louder than a 7 on their "sound meter" such as loud singing, student applause, class bells and fire drill signals.
covering their ears outside of school for anything louder than a 7 on their "sound meter" such as loud recorded beats and music inside a car, emergency vehicle sirens and low flying planes overhead, and movie sound tracks
asking adults to lower the volume of sounds that are bothering them
protecting their ears by using noise cancelling head phones where possible.

Thank you for being a part of this important work. We look forward to keeping you up to date with our progress and encourage you to share about it with your friends and family who might support and echo your compassion.

Very best wishes and thanks,

Jess

Michele's Class Photo

Sound Levels

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