Infuse U.S. Classrooms with Music for Learning!

Hello Musical Friend,

Thank you so much for your support of our work with Guitars in the Classroom. You’ve made the 2015-16 school year and summer one of great empowerment and change for teachers and students. Your support has fueled hope and given new abilities to hundreds of teachers. We are excited to look back and also look forward with you into the new school year.

More Teachers Trained than Ever Before

The impact of your contribution has made it possible to train almost 700 teachers in Southern California alone, quadrupling our reach to include hundreds of early childhood educators. You sustained us to keep the music alive in towns and communities of every kind and size- from remote Jasper County, South Carolina to the heart of Brooklyn, NY, from the flooded river banks of West Virginia to the public schools just outside of remote Yosemite.

New Receptivity to Integrating Music

We are seeing new schools and school districts of all kinds overcoming confusion about what it means to integrate the arts with academic instruction. Thanks to advocacy on the national scene, education leaders are getting actively involved in promoting music as a learning strategy. This means we must work harder than ever to maximize on this new openness and bring the programs to those who care.

Thanks to you, in eastern and southeastern states, GITC doubled its programs last school year as more and more teachers sought the chance to learn and teach through the power of music. Without charitable support it couldn’t have happened.

In many GITC communities, education is badly underfunded and teachers are so poorly paid they can barely afford to stay in their jobs. But your kindness has made it so we can help out. Just last month we were able to give ukuleles and instruction to students in a school for homeless youth and a child development center so poor they depend on selling churros to pay for supplies. You are creating "miracles" with every dollar you give.

Thanks to you, every week we hear from a grateful teacher who says, “This changed my life and my teaching!”

Now as we move into a new school year, we will be focusing our efforts to grow more programs throughout the country and to coordinate them better from our main office in San Diego. The key is to keep existing programs strong while opening new ones! To do this, we need help funding staff and infrastructure. Programs are only as strong as the foundation that supports them to function.

Special Education Inclusion

Because many of you gave to our microproject for providing music making in special education, this spring and summer GITC was able to initiate a pilot program for classroom teachers in Clay and Kanawah counties, West Virginia, San Diego county, California, and Los Angeles Unified Schools! Working with The Beamz, an engaging technological instrument, the teachers are receiving specialized training in setting up, operating and integrating the Beamz with all areas of academic study as well as social/emotional development! The Beamz gives children with limited dexterity, motor coordination and with cognitive impairment a way to make music using whatever mobility they can manage including eye movements ! You can learn more by watching the video.

New- GITC Teaching Artists

Something new that you can look forward to in the fall – GITC is expanding the role of teaching artists in Title 1 classrooms. Visiting GITC teaching artists will be partnering with classroom teachers to help them gain confidence and mastery of weaving the music into literacy and math lessons where it can strengthen comprehension and abilities. For teachers new to music, this makes a tremendous difference.

Courage to Play Campaign

If you can imagine the prospect of becoming a strumming song leader for learning for a classroom full of children, you know it takes courage to play. So we are starting a support campaign for teachers called #CourageToPlay throughout the 2016-17 school year. Please look for that at our facebook page this fall!

Music for Learning Serves Juvenile Offenders

Finally, after a year of exploring the role of music with teens in crisis, we are expanding our work in juvenile court schools to bring the hope, passion, discipline and potential of music to teens in transition between incarceration and education. We are providing guitar classes in alternative county juvenile court schools helping these at risk youth while they work to earn their GEDs. This effort has our teen specialists constantly improvising and creating new curriculum to respond to their students.

More Instruments Needed!

Can you please help? As always, we are asked to help provide more instruments for schools than we can afford. But donors helped us award 1300 instruments to school programs last year alone! Your generosity is essential to the success of this effort. You can make a difference here. At subsidized prices from our sponsors, just $25 buys a ukulele. $60 buys a guitar. Every gift you give makes real music making possible.

Thank you for choosing to change the world through your support of Guitars in the Classroom!

With you for the children,

Jess Baron

Links:

• This video shows you how the Beamz helps special needs kids