By Jessica Baron | Executive Director
Dear Amazing Supporter,
Thank you for believing in the power of music to shape and change lives. What your kindness has and can make possible is taking place right now in hospitals and homes all across the largest school district in California. Los Angeles Unified's school for homebound and hospitalized children sends 75 teachers out across 760 square miles to support and teach children who cannot leave their homes or hospitals for a wide range of reasons. But with your help, our faculty is training the faculty members from the Carlson Home Hospital School this fall, and we will be joining them to visit the children and families with music instruction!
The teachers are learning together how to adapt music making for access and inclusion. Through a free professional development training held every other Tuesday, each teacher who wishes to participate is learning to guide music according to what children can do, like, and need special help to accomplish. Our teaching artists are preparing to accompany the visiting teachers who request a short residency to see their students each week, collaboratively guiding the music.
Measures of Joy is an approach we created that asks parents, caregivers, and teachers to explore a wide range of instrumental sounds and sensory musical experiences to find the ones that bring children relaxation or enthusiasm, or both! Once those special instruments have been indetified through play, exploration, close observation, and dialogue, the families will receive that instrument and learn to include it in family time. From ukes to keyboards, bells to drums, you kindness is bringing music to the children who cannot attend school. Thank you so much!
We need your help this winter to keep the residencies going. Each one requires instrument purchases, training time, travel/mileage reimbursement, and covering the wages of our teaching artists. And each one changes the lives of the whole family when music becomes a way to connect, cheer up. express a range of emotions, and learn. We'll be sharing photos, and hopefully videos of the work in progress during this exciting school year so you can witness it for yourself.
To understand the power of music to change a child's life, I hope you will view the video below of Teif strumming a uke on her own for the first time. Teif was 8 when her family escaped from Syria to Turkey, bringing Teif, who has cerebral palsy, across the border in an improvised wheelchair made of a lawn chair and 2 bicycle tires. By perseverance and luck, her family made it all the way to San DIego, and she was placed in a moderate-severe special education program. This is where she met her teacher, Val Simons. Val saw how Teif brightened when she heard music and determined to help this child gain access. Together teacher and student made life changing progress. Please enjoy the moment that started Teif on a path toward increased mobility, joy, and achievement!
Sending my gratitude to you for helping us move this work forward, especially now when funding for special education has been cut. I know we can go far with you on our team!
Wishing you health and happiness,
Jess
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