Spring Cleaning: Dry- Cleaning Choir Attire for Spring Semester
Help me give my students freshly dry-cleaned choir costumes for 2nd semester so they look sharp and feel fresh as we prepare for our concert and contest season for Spring.
My singers come from diverse backgrounds and attend a large urban high school of more than 3,800 students. More than 50 percent of our students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Approximately 25% of our school are English language learners (ESL), including refugees and students new to our country. Approximately 25% of my students have special needs with an individual instruction plan.
Many students are not able to pay choir fees or provide their own supplies due to financial need: therefore we try to provide almost everything that the choir students will need for performances so that all can participate.
Many of the students have language barriers, making it hard to communicate with parents regarding costume needs. Although we have great parent support, it is not possible for parents to pay or donate all the funds needed to train and equip a choral program with more than 400 singers.
Our choirs provide a community and global connection for students. My students are very proud of their performances and want to look and sound their best on stage.
My Project
Our choirs and performing ensembles are well-known in our community and state. We perform at Contests, Festivals and Community meetings, as well as our own school sponsored programs and athletic events. Our intermediate show choir has 43 members who love to sing and dance to a variety of musical selections including Broadway, classical, and standards. Our choir personnel is very diverse and reflects the great melting-pot of our urban high-school. Participation fees are kept low and scholarships are provided for any student in need. Costumes are altered by talented community volunteers. All our singers look professional and elegant when they represent our school in the community and at our many performances . They spend many extra hours perfecting their music, dancing, and and singing techniques and musical experts from the community often volunteer.
Many of our singers do not have personal funds or means to get the school provided costumes dry-cleaned.
We are fortunate that a local company gives us a half-price rate for dry-cleaning and simple repair. The local cleaning company also picks up and delivers the cleaning. Because we take such good care of our costumes, we are able to use them for many years and our team of volunteer seamstresses easily adapt them to new singers. Grants also provide much needed resources, so that we can include all singers even with declining funds and more than 50 percent of the student population qualifying for free or reduced lunch.
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