Stories of the Orchestra

Students in my high school General Music classroom overcome daily challenges to make it to my class everyday. Living in an inner-city neighborhood means they face violence, alcohol and drug abuse, homelessness and poverty in their everyday lives. I teach at a neighborhood school which accepts all students, regardless of test scores and behavior. Regardless of these issues, I'm inspired daily by students' creativity and resilience in the face of adversity. As you probably know, the arts are not well-funded by the state and successful music and art programs depend on support of local community and parents. Since most of the families of students at our school have limited resources, my music classroom is often left at the bottom of the list for funding in our school. Therefore, I have to be creative about getting instruments and supplies into my students' hands. One topic that always grabs my students' attention is studying the instruments of the orchestra. Because many of them didn't have regular music class in elementary school, they are often not familiar with the instrument families and the diverse timbres of each instrument. I would like to purchase various resources to help my students explore these instruments in creative ways. For aural/visual learners, we'll play instrument bingo which allows students to learn to differentiate between instruments in the same family just by listening to their timbres. For visual/hands-on learners, we'll examine posters and children's books geared toward teaching about instruments and then work in small groups to create our own instrument picture books. The end goal of this project will be to take the books to a local elementary school where my students can read them to younger students and then leave the books as resources in their classrooms. Not only will these materials increase student learning in music class, but the organization and creativity necessary to outline, compose and illustrate a captivating children's book involves a set of skills students need in order to be successful beyond high school in a college setting. I attempt to orient students to more in-depth, long-term projects that require sequential planning and pacing. It is my hope that any student who aims to succeed in college has experiences in my classroom that will benefit them to this end. Your donation to this project will allow students to see and hear examples of real instruments, rather than just talking about them theoretically. I know from experience that project-based learning far outshines textbook-based, reading, question and answer learning. Please help us make this project possible in our classroom.