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This teacher needs your help!

Mr. Plaks from Bronx, NY is requesting a classroom visitor through DonorsChoose, the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.

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Private Guitar Lessons for my Jazz Orchestra Students! (II)

My students need 20 90-minute individual and small-group guitar lessons from master guitar teacher Justin Rothberg so that they can succeed in our HS jazz orchestra.

  • $1,868 goal

This project expired on August 4, 2010.

This project expired on August 4, 2010.

Classroom photo
Mr. Plaks Bronx Laboratory School
Bronx, NY Grades 9-12

My Students

Were you fortunate enough to take music lessons when you were a child? Do you believe that all children deserve the challenging, rigorous experience of developing musical skill and discipline on their chosen instrument, even if they and their families cannot afford private lessons?

Unfortunately, the life-changing experience of music lessons is something that most of my students have had no access to so far in their lives, since it is an overwhelmingly middle-class, and in the sad mathematics of segregation in American in 2010, an overwhelmingly white experience today.

The students in my Bronx public high school, all low-income, almost all African-American or Latino, living in the tough reality of some very tough neighborhoods, have the talent, the drive, and the work ethic to succeed in music. What they have lacked, to date, is a means to access this experience. Think about it, how many people do you know whose lives were made richer, more fulfilling, and easier to bear because of the significant role that music learning played in it? My students are also permanently transformed by their encounter with rigorous music learning in my jazz orchestra program. But, unlike students in wealthier communities in our nation, they depend entirely on your generosity.

My Project

In three years, thanks entirely to the ongoing support of donations made by people like you who are reading these words, 100 students have undergone the sometimes magical, sometimes frustrating, but always life-changing experience of practice, preparation, rehearsal, and performance as they have gone from the very first lesson (how to assemble your instrument), through the first year (how to read conventional music notation), into the second year (how to improvise), and put it all together in the third year, the advanced level of our jazz orchestra program with performances to wildly enthusiastic audiences. If that experience doesn't give a South Bronx adolescent a life-altering foundation of confidence, and the life-changing experience of exactly how hard work leads to tangible and intangible reward, I don't know what else could!

But remember, we depend on you.

Our students and their families cannot afford instruments, and they cannot afford music lessons. Without your generosity, I might very well be able to beg, borrow, and get hand-me-down guitars to sit in the back of my music classroom, but my students will not develop the skills to access these guitars, because they will not have guitar lessons. Although I direct the jazz orchestra, I don't play guitar! My students need these lessons and they need your help.

This project will directly impact historically underfunded classrooms.

More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households

10 students impacted
Mr. Plaks Bronx Laboratory School Grades 9-12

This project will directly impact historically underfunded classrooms.

Bronx, NY View local requests

More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more

10 students impacted

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Where Your Donation Goes

Where your donation goes
Visitor Total
Justin Rothberg (20 90-minute individual and small-group guitar lessons) $1,500.00

Visitor cost

$1,500.00

Vendor shipping charges

 FREE

Sales tax

 $0.00

3rd party payment processing fee

$22.50

Fulfillment labor & materials

$9.00

Total project cost

$1,531.50

Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms

$336.18

Total project goal

$1,867.68

Our team works hard to negotiate the best pricing and selections available.

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Project Activity

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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Plaks and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.

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