My students need 25 violins to start music lessons in April.
$13,108 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
The sound of silence is not exactly what you hear at our urban downtown school. If you step out into the playground you'll hear the usual sounds of children at play mixed with the roar of the nearby freeway. In order to make things right we need to add music to the mix.
With the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel as conductor of the L.A.
Philharmonic, California is in the middle of a musical revolution inspired by the Venezuelan model of taking music to all children across the country. Our school, located in the heart of this metropolis is a prime candidate for adding a rigorous music program to our curriculum. We figure that if Venezuela, the country that created Dudamel, can have youth orchestras all over the country, we in California can do it as well. Our school has recently established a relationship with Education Through Music-Los Angeles, a non-profit dedicated to offering music to children, so everything is set and ready to go for musical instruction to start after Spring Break. Everything, that is, except for the absence of violins. We have plans to start offering violin lessons to all 3rd graders this year, and to 4th and 5th graders next year. In order to carry out our plans, we will need to have twenty-five violins before the end of March.
My Project
The effect of a musical education has been researched extensively, and it is widely accepted that children that learn music from an early age benefit in a variety of ways. First of all, they develop an understanding and appreciation of music as a discipline and as a tradition that is designed to challenge and entertain, not just the practitioner, but also the listener. They also learn how to take care of their instrument and to structure their time. They cannot help but notice that the time and effort they put into the music pays off as their sound and speed improves. We recently had a visitor at our school, a young violinist from a local musical academy, the age of our students, perform a couple of classical pieces for them. Our students, who come from families that don't usually even consider offering their children a musical education, were quite awed by the ability of this young performer. In the future we would like our students to be the ones standing on the stage.
Our students, like most children, are deeply affected by music.
They are finely attuned to the nuances of the music they are exposed to. In the same way that text literacy opens up a universe that would be closed to them if they were illiterate, musical literacy is crucial for them to become fully able to participate in that wonderful world that they admire so much. When I tell them about our plans to offer them violin instruction they just about jump with joy and anticipation.
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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. Reyes and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
