Help me give my students a 27-inch iMac to produce professional music in class!
$2,639 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.
Imagine for a moment, that you are 12 years old and have been a primary caretaker for your siblings the past year in a pandemic. Your dad is in prison and you live in a one bedroom apartment with your mom (who has terminal cancer), grandparents, and three siblings in a lower socioeconomic part of the city that has a high rate of crime and gang activity. This and many variations of it are the reality for many of my students. Daily, they face barriers in the form of socioeconomic inequality, racial injustice, and violence.
Despite these enormous factors in their life, the quality that I see shine through my students is their resilience, creativity, and love for learning.
What makes them special is that they don't allow their circumstances to define them and instead their response is to faithfully attend class, make use of their resources on campus, and to adopt a growth mindset to realize that failure is their stepping stone to success.
I feel honored to be a music teacher because I get to witness sacred moments of their own self expression in the form of playing instruments, singing, and writing lyrics or poetry.
My Project
The Apple iMac is essential to our recording studio as the operating system (MacOS) is the only one that supports the industry-standard digital audio workstation (DAW), Logic Pro X. No other computer OS supports this program as it is owned and developed by Apple. This was the primary DAW that I used and witnessed my peers using in the film and music industry. Apple hardware and software is generally the standard for most music tech related recording studios throughout the world. In other words (and without exaggeration), our recording studio would be unable to produce a high-quality recording without this computer and DAW. Student (and even staff) devices lack the OS and specs to achieve this standard.
The music technology program trying to be established at Fort Miller will focus on composing and producing original music and audio content (podcasts, spoken-word poetry, etc.) Each year the music department will produce a student-driven album featuring original student work that reflects the theme of the album (decided on by the students).
This process will teach students how to write, record, and produce original music from start to finish. Our product (songs, podcasts, etc.) will only be as good as our technology allows us to be. By purchasing high-end industry-standard microphones, interfaces, computers, and software, this barrier will be removed for our students and the door is open for them to take their creativity as far as they'd like with a professional quality sound.
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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. Byers and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.