Music In Our Schools Tour Makes a Difference
Last year, our Music In Our Schools Tour brought local and national attention to five school music programs AND provided grants This is what the school principals shared with us about the impact of those grants.
Adrienne Koger, Principal, Antioch High School
Antioch High School was a proud 2014 grant recipient of the Music in our Schools Tour on behalf of the Give a Note Foundation, Disney, and the National Association for Music Education. This grant allowed us to support our music program through the purchase of needed equipment and by offsetting student costs to participate in performance competitions. We were honored to receive additional program support through a financial gift from vocal star Danielle Bradbery. We have experienced a heightened awareness of music in our school, benefits for students participating, overall student interest and engagement in our program. This experience has supported us in being recognized as a “noteworthy” school and music program option for high school students in our district, state and around the country.
Dr. Ashley Davis, Principal, Classen School of Advanced Studies
Classen School of Advanced Studies is an inner city application school in Oklahoma City Public Schools offering a Performing Arts Program. Being recognized by the Give a Note Grant was an amazing honor! The students and faculty were surprised and humbled with the recognition of the hard work they give every day. The grant funding provided new microphones for our school program and the recognition that this provided in the local media was terrific! Thank you to the Give a Note Foundation, Disney, and the National Association for Music Education (NAfME).
Martin Sandoval, Principal, Eldorado High School
Last year, Eldorado High School was honored by Disney, NAfME, and the Give a Note Foundation. We held a special assembly which showcased Eldorado High School’s top jazz ensemble, the Screamin’ Eagles. During the assembly, our District Fine Arts Coordinator spoke about the importance of music in our district. The assembly also featured a wonderful performance by Ms. Danielle Bradbery.
Our music program at Eldorado is one of the very finest in the state and the region. We have been recognized at festivals, state honor concerts, and special assemblies for many years. The collaborative efforts of the department are something that we are very proud of at our school.
With the grant we received from the Give a Note Foundation, the band, choir, and orchestra departments were able to continue to build our music libraries with much needed classroom instructional materials. Music is our text and we feel very strongly about making sure students have a variety of music literature to read on a daily basis. We used the grant to purchase sheet music for concerts and festivals, as well as purchase instructional texts for daily classroom activities.
On behalf of the choir, orchestra, and band department, we are very honored to have received this grant and have our school recognized for its achievements in the fine arts. Thank you very much for the recognition and the gift.
Melody Sears, Principal, Northwest School for the Arts
The Give a Note grant was instrumental in raising awareness of the excellence of our program within the community. While our programs were uniformly excellent, they were widely perceived within the pool of students from whom we pull as being in a ‘rebuilding’ phase. We are similarly hampered by our lack of a marching band program. Indeed it could never be said we have a quality problem, but rather we continually struggle with a perception problem.
The attention placed on our program by the Grant worked to change that. It opened doors and raised awareness of what our music program was capable of and how good our students and teachers truly were. Other programs have traditionally received more attention from the public, but this put the music programs front and center. Our students and teachers were treated as the stars they are, and that energy could be seen all year, as it helped promote recruitment all over the county.
It gave us the confidence to premiere a new work by a North Carolina composer, and to do it so well, we ended up having it simulcast on a local classical music radio station. It allowed us to truly reach out to the entire district for recruiting, and this year we are visiting more than 30 schools to show what the Give a Note Foundation recognized — that music education matters, and that we are second to none. We expect that to pay dividends for years to come. And we are truly grateful.
-Catherina Hurlburt, National Association for Music Education
