Infuse U.S. Classrooms with Music for Learning!

Hello, Friends!

What a busy time this is for GITC as it most surely is for anyone involved in the schools these days. With September come brand new opportunities, challenges and dreams for children and teachers alike. Thanks to your magnificent support of the efforts of Guitars in the Classroom to bring hands-on learning through music to children from coast to coast, we are there this fall to meet those challenges, provide those opportunities, and feed those dreams. In Title 1 schools in Massachusetts, West Virginia, New York, California, Michigan, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Arizona, South Carolina, and more teachers will be making lessons come alive when they pull out a guitar, bring song lyrics up on the board, and count in the kids on a song for learning!

This is a near miracle, considering what Mother Nature has done around the US lately. Clay, West Virginia flooded this summer, lost power, and things were bad. Hurricane Isaac flooded the streets of Madisonville, LA and Pascagoula, MS. Heat made Boston a big brick over complete with sauna capabilities. But GITC keeps chugging because the people who run the programs locally are inspired, tough, and full of love. That is what it takes to make our little engine go. The music must go on!

Why? Because it makes a world of difference for the children. Nothing less than that.

Whether a homeless child gets his only two meals a day for free at school or enjoys a homemade deli sandwich neatly tucked into a lunchbag by loving hands from home, that child has great creative potential that can be mobilized, sparked, and channeled through making music with GITC at school..Everything will be provided to make music a reality at no charge to the budget-poor schools or cash-strapped families.

Whether a child is shy during class discussions or loves to be the center of attention, music will affect, inspire, and light up her mind. No special talent or money is required for her to participate meaningfully in GITC's music-infused lessons. GITC removes all the common barriers to musical access.

And whether a student has a profound learning disability or limiting medical condition or is the class math genius or star soccer player, making music can open a channel to deep learning that is surpassed by none; it can empower every kind of kid to excel. The music and rhythm open hearts and carry the facts, figures, ideas and messages in lessons to embed them magically in children's memory. And GITC sparks a passion for learning that grows brighter each day as children sing, strum guitars, invent new songs, write lyrics and perform together. That the songs deliver math, science, social studies, English, language arts and so much more is why their grades and test scores improve. But it is the love of learning and creating that matters most.

Thank you for helping us get to this point where we can offer training in so many places of need. Please stay with us. donate what you can, and let's keep making over-crowded classrooms where kids stress over testing into places where learning and jpy come alive, where teachers feel passionate and adventurous about their work, and where all students are creatively engaged and motivated to achieve. We are in this together, and the changes you've empowered so with your gift are making a difference! Please join us again to do more.

Thank you for being the change you want to see in the world,

Jess

Links:

• Why Music Matters in Learning

Dear Friends,

I am writing with wonderful news. For the first time, Guitars in the Classroom is going to break the mold of teaching just during the school year and a handful of our programs will actually be training teachers around the country this summer because of you! In the past, we've held back from teaching in the summer nut we are hearing from the teachers this year LOUD and CLEAR that they want this opportunity and are willing to commit to training even during their "off" months. Since schools have become more pressured environments in the past year with increasing pressure from testing and massive budget cuts to education all around the country, many teachers have felt limited in their ability to learn something new. Summer is becoming"their time" in several places now. We are eager to adapt.

In Traverse City, Michigan, trainer Chris Kuchuris will be working with the teachers of students whose parents are migrant farm workers. He will be teaching them songs in Spanish and English so they can help their "newcomer" students acquire important new vocabulary and the ability to communicate in their second language.

In Madisonville, Louisiana, veteran GITC trainer Iris Vacante will be training teachers who have been to busy and burdened with test pressure and environmental stressors to make time for music during the school year. Iris always finds a way to re-engage the teachers in her community, just 30 minutes away from New Orleans.

In Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Kate Macmahon will be training Head Start teachers to lead music with their young students and with your help she can reach out to teachers in Pascagoula in the fall.

In northern California, trainer Alisa Peres will be training student teachers in University of California, Berkeley's Developmental Teacher Education program!

In the Boston area, GITC will be offering its first ever 1 week intensive for teachers who want to explore learning to make, lead, and write music in a short period of time. Hosted by the Passim School of Music in Cambridge, we will be developing a curriculum we hope to share around the country NEXT summer. If you know teachers in the Boston area, please write or call them about this special opportunity. We will cut off enrollment at 8 teachers so we can study and refine the pace of teaching with this small group.

We are also in the final stages of completing our new website which we hope to launch on May 1. You will get an update about that very soon, and when our donor page is ready, you will find your name there among those special individuals who are making GITC possible.

Thank you for standing strong with us for the arts, for children, for education, and for the quality of training our teachers receive. It is all so important and we are truly in this endeavor together each step of the way.

Sending much gratitude,

Jess

Jessica Baron, founder, executive director

Links:

• our website