Exceptional Learners Deserve Music, Too!

Dear Friend of Exceptional Children,

Thank you so much for your caring support of GITC's efforts to make music accessible to ALL learners. This is such a huge effort when you think about how many decades students with exceptional needs have been left out of music education and denied access to opportunities to learn to play an instrument. With your help we at GITC are continuing our efforts to wake society up to every child’s ability to express themselves through music, and the momentum is growing.

Attendance in our online courses, AMAISE Beginners and AMAISE-ing Classroom Coaching continues to expand, and now includes special education teachers, inclusion teachers and support staff. This has allowed our musical reach to students to expand greatly. Our second level AMAISE online teacher training is providing individual coaching to the teachers, enabling them to gain useful strategies for Social Emotional development and self-regulation for their students. Also, thanks to you we have been able to supply these students with ukuleles and adaptive music supplies. 

We recently launched new “Single Skill Teaching Artist Residencies” or SSTARs for medically fragile students at Carlson Home Hospital in the Los Angeles Unified School District. These are collaborative endeavors with highly engaged teachers who have completed our AMAISE training and are now ready to adapt music for their students with exceptionalities! 

Each SSTAR offers one-on-one music coaching from our teaching artist to a highly engaged AMAISE-ing special educator while they work with an individual student whom they have identified as being receptive to learning through music. Each exceptional student has a Home Music Helper (HMH) supporting them during the music session and making music with them between sessions. In this way, the special educator is learning to lead important adaptive techniques with the student, and music is becoming a part of that student’s life at home everyday.

Each one of us has the power to encourage the people around us and these days, a little encouragement can go a very long way to make someone's day or give them hope. Thank you for encouraging all of us at GITC with your generosity. Your participation helps us spread the joy and we are very grateful.

With you, for all the children,

Gail

Links:

• Guitars in the Classroom website