Education United States Project #25802

Exceptional Learners Deserve Music, Too!

by Guitars in the Classroom

Project Report | Aug 2, 2019
Our Special Ed Conferences were AMASE-ING!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Gentle strummimg soothes souls

Dear Friend of GITC and Musical Inclusion,

I am writing to thank you for the lift you have given our work creating musical inclusion for students with special needs. We've just completed our first two AMASE Conferences. These were initially supported by compassionate donors like you who believed in the work. And thanks to those early gifts, we were able to write grants to three benevolent foundations. All agreed to help with this important mission and we could not have gotten this far without YOU! Please feel our love here. Now the Nordson Foundation, the Qualcomm Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts are each lending their support and prestige to our efforts now.

AMASE was our name for this work last year. It stands for Adaptive Music for Achievement in Special Education. Now we are seeing so many general classroom teachers signing up for the training because they have been tasked by their school districts to include more students than ever with identified special needs. These days, any elementary classroom will most likely have 5-10 students whose challenges may include special challenges. The word used to describe these classrooms in "Inclusion." So we have renamed AMASE into AMAISE: Adaptive Music for Achievment in Inclusion and Special Education!

This summer in Chula Vista Elementary School District and in San Diego and our 42 surrounding county-affiliated districts gathered to participate in 2 days of AMAISE training. Special educators, staff members, therapeutic specialists and inclusion teachers joined together for two days to learn to play, share and adapt music making for their students. They learned to play drums and percussion, led adaptive drum circles, and incorporated movement with hand percussion. They learned to play ukelele and guitar, sing, teach and lead songs for learning. They composed and co-wrote original lyrics for teaching Social Emotional Learning, classroom rules and academic content, and well, so much more!

Not only did they learn with our team (Desirée Cera, Dan Decker, Amanda Johnson, Sam Cadwell and myself), they also benefited from workshops and trainings given by awesome guest presenters.Ashton Fulcher and Ignatius Nguyen of Urban Beats/Pathways presented on addressing mental health through hip-hop, rap and movement. Educator of students with hearing impairment or blindness, Mimi Seney shared her interventions for teaching music using specialized techniques. Lead trainer for the Beamz Interactive, Tom Reidy showed teachers how to use their table top laser light musical instrument with midi files, and music therapist Lindsay Zehren with Resounding Joy led drum circle instruction using Remo Comfort Sound adaptive drums for students with Austism everyday.

Music therapist and Founder of the Music Therapy Center of California, Julie Guy gave a dynamic workshop on ways of using music to calm, focus and channel the energy of students who are prone to feeling overwhelmed and reverting to aggressive and destructive behavior. Her techniques empower teachers to circumvent that possibility or address it with sounds and songs that help them regain self control quickly and successfully.

AMAISE participants left each conference feeling equipped, inspired and ready to bring music into their teaching this fall. We will be following up with everyone and starting teaching artist visits to their classrooms to help them get into the swing of music leadership beginning in September. Please stay with this project and support these courageous teachers to achieve their goals of giving music to their students every day. Let's help them succeed this year!

Our charity us immensely grateful to the dedicated leaders from Visual and Performing Arts and Special Education divisions of the San Diego County Office of Education, San Diego Unified School District and Chula Vista Elementary School District. We owe the progress that was made this past school year and summer to the advocacy and support of these great individuals and their unanimous receptivity to our unusual approach to making music accessible to ALL students.

We hope this news has lifted your heart as someone wanting to improve the quality of education. When power is invested in people who genuinely care about the students and staff, such good things can happen.

With devotion to this mission and doing this work on your behalf,

Jess

Hand-Eye Coordination & Rhythm!

Songwriting Lyrics for Social Emotional Learning

Comfort Sound Tabletop Drum

Links:

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May 13, 2019
Looking Forward to an AMASE-ing Summer!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Join us in San Diego for AMASE!

Dear Friend of Special Education and Music,

Thank you for your continuing support! In the past week, many people have been asking us to share with them about our AMASE conferences coming up this summer. These trainings are open to anyone wanting to attend and we are offering them at no charge thanks to everyone who is helping out. Thsi means any teacher, aide or specialist regardless of their ability to pay can learn to bring music into teaching and therapy.

So how we are going about training special education professionals to lead music each day? And how is this process different for children with special needs?

For most of us, learning to make music is a complex process that involves putting a myriad of motor skills, small and large to work. Our arms, hands and fingers, our legs, feet and toes, our ears, eyes and mouths, our hearts, our lungs, our heads, necks and torsos, and all that gray matter that connects the musical and physical dots for us are involved. We are all born with musical potential, no matter what our bodies and brains can or cannot do with ease.

But what happens to children if some part of their anatomical tool box doesn't exist or doesn't work very well? Can a person with limiting conditions develop alternate ways to approach making music? The answer, of course, is "Yes, they can, and they must be given that chance."

Think of superstars like the irreducible Django Reinhardt, Stevie Wonder, Evelyn Glennie or Rick Allen of Def Lepard to get a glimpse of what is possible. There are so many musicians who have not let impairments stand in their way.

Not only can all students learn to enjoy making music, but those who face major challenges physically, cognitively or emotionally stand to gain a great deal by having this opportunity. We can help them accomplish this by preparing teachers to break down the assumptions and barriers. Then THEY can teach and assist students with special needs to lead the way.

AMASE Conferences last two days. During this time, special education professionals gather together to learn and to improvise exciting ways to create inclusive, effective music instruction. We share adaptive practices and techniques for making instruments more accessible for students. Trainers in innovative technologies participate as do local music therapists who teach specialized interventions such as the artful de-escalation of aggressive behavior and refocusing students away from stressful triggers and toward productive participation.

GITC is able to offer these trainings to 45 participants each time and to do this at no charge thanks to very important grants from the Nordson Foundation, the Qualcomm Foundation and the NAMM Foundation, and with charitable participation from generous music products sponsors and amase-ing individual donors like YOU! We are deeply thankful to each and all for your compassionate support.

At GITC, we know AMASE has to offer a broad array of musical opportunities so that we can include students regardless of what kind of mountain they might be climbing. Ukuleles are fantastic but so are drums! We are crazy about REMO's Comfort Sound Technology drums created for students with special needs and hypersensitive hearing and so is the Beamz Interactive Unit!

Paralysis might look like a barrier but it need not be. With eye gaze technology, eye movements are enough to trigger musical instruments that work with computers. Spastic muscles might make it hard for students with Cerebral Palsy to strum strings or strike drums, but adaptive grips. picks and mallets solve that. The variety of approaches to making music accessible is pretty good now and will only grow with time and exploration. We want to make sure these approaches reach the kids who can benefit from them the most.

This is why, through AMASE, we are "gathering the tribe" - calling all sorts of innovators together to join us in training special educators and paraprofessional staffers, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, counselors and others to bring music making to students with special needs. Are you hearing the call? Please reach out to us. Let us know. It takes quite a large village to make this endeavor possible! To discuss ways to get involved, please drop us a line! And to see when our next AMASE Conference is taking place, please visit our PROGRAMS PAGE.

We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for supporting the creation of AMASE.

With you in service for the children,

Jess

Links:

Our Website with Course and Registration Info

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Feb 1, 2019
Taking it From the Top!

By Jessica Baron | Executive Director

Russ Sperling, SDUSD & Lauren Shelton, CVESD 2019

Hello, Friends of Special Learners,

I am writing you this month to share some amazing news. Thanks to your generosity and encouragement, our special education team has grown and we are on the move! Since the last time you got a report on this initiative some fantastic education leaders have taken up the effort to get music to kids in special day classes with GITC.

Longtime GITC Classroom Teacher at Kearney HS in San Diego, Meghann Hughes has become the chair of the Special Education Caucus for the California Teacher's Union. She invited GITC to share her table at the recent New Teachers Conference for the Southern California Region. We put ukuleles and a guitar out and were approached by 65 different special ed teachers who are interested in training to bring music into their classrooms. Now Meghann wants GITC at each state level conference and is hoping to help us offer a workshop in 2019-2020. Thank you, Meghann!

And in January, Director of Visual and Performing Arts in San Diego Unified, Russ Sperling put together a meeting with the leadership in SDUSD's Special Education Services Department. Russ and I met with the new director of Curriculum & Instruction for Special Education, Ms. Andrea Vinson and she is onboard to help any special ed teacher in San Diego access GITC training through a carefully structured implementation plan for this- our home district. We are in the planning process now and welcome district Home Office teacher Stefanie Torres to the team. Stefanie has been assigned to help implement GITC for the district. This is a great bit of progress. Andrea Vinson and Russ Sperling ROCK!

Next Month (February) we begin planning to make great progress in our neighboring district, Chula Vista Elementary School District with the great Lauren Shelton. Lauren directs VAPA in Chula (on the border with Mexico) and she has grown that music program into a formidable one in which every sing student gets music education. Three cheers for her and Chula Vista. We are so excited to serve there!

I realize that this report is all about grown-ups. But these grown-ups are special. They are all heroes for the kids and because they care so deeply, hundreds of thousands of children are going to benefit from their desire to champion this cause and to take action. Please stay tuned because good times and important lessons await just up ahead.

We are here because you care to be a part of the solution. Thank you for your amazing participation and encouragement!

For the children,

Jess

Meghann Hughes (right) at CTA Conference

Links:

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