This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
I work at a very unique elementary school in Alabama. I call it "unique" for four reasons: 1) it is part traditional and part magnet, with about 52% of students receiving free lunch; 2) it offers 8 different arts programs to students, allowing them to discover and pursue their passion from a young age; and 3) it houses one of the only elementary public school strings programs in the state of Alabama, of which I am the very proud director.
Violin, viola, cello, and string bass-- in my classroom, students have the opportunity to play any of these instruments, and the continual growth of their talent and character amazes me day by day.
My Project
My students borrow their instruments from our school, and all are good quality. Their strings, however, are not. In fact, most of the strings are much older than the musicians using them! This has a huge effect on each student's feeling of success. At least once a week, a student is raising their hand to tell me, "Mrs. Brock, I'm trying, but my string sounds weird. It looks like it is starting to break." I never tell them this, but there is often no amount of practice or effort that could fix the "weird" sound they are experiencing.
Fresh sets of strings for everyone would open up a new world of multi-faceted sound to my students, challenging them to stretch their skills to the highest playing potential of their instruments and make a sound of which they can be truly proud.
No longer would I have to tell my students, "I know it doesn't sound great, but it hasn't snapped, so let's wait" or "Don't play too loudly on this string, it can't take it." No longer would I have to search through our closets to find a poor, unused violin that might have another (old, rusty, but functional) string to give up. Every time I do this, I wonder...what will happen next year when new musicians join our Strings class, needing instruments to borrow? I know I will search our closets for more, but many will have no strings left at all--mere skeletons of what they could be in the hands of one of our talented students.
The strings listed here are by no means a fix to all of our string shortage problems, but their impact on students currently playing our instruments would be immediate. (And to our future growth, enormous.)
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
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 Mrs. Brock and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
