As the semester is coming to an end, Maddy and I have been wrapping up our project and tying up the loose ends! We hope to get everything sorted out before the last week of school.
Our most recent focus was tallying up our final donation pool and distributing it as needed to the different schools in New Palestine. In total, we have raised $1,300. We are extremely grateful to those that were willing to send money on behalf of this project. It is beyond uplifting to be met with such generosity and kindness! This money will be sent out to New Palestine Elementary, Sugar Creek Elementary, Brandywine Elementary, New Palestine Intermediate, and New Palestine Junior High (Band and Choir Programs separately). After crunching out some numbers, we decided that each of those groups would receive $216 to put towards funds for their music programs. This will allow them to purchase rights to new music, different instruments/pieces for classroom learning, and potential field trip travel fees. We worked with Mrs. Patty Glover to keep all the money organized and equally sent out. When the checks were made and ready, Maddy and I went to each of the schools to hand deliver them. All of the staff we met with were so kind and overjoyed to receive the checks! We were able to talk to them briefly about the progress of our project and thank them for their participation in it. A few weeks ago, the show choir auditions for next school year were held in the cafeteria. Over 50 kids are signed up to be a part of the show choir program, with the incoming 8th grades taking up a large portion of them! According to the choir director, over 100 kids have signed up to be involved in some sort of choir class next year. These are outstanding numbers in comparison to the numbers we have had in the past. It is encouraging to see that enthusiasm and participation in the music classes offered here in New Pal is growing! Maddy and I have high spirits for what the future of these programs might hold. As the semester wraps up, we plan to take a couple more visits to the elementary schools in our district. We want to continue to make as much of an impact as we can! It has been so inspiring to be a part of something so important to our community. Maddy and I want nothing more than to see New Pal music flourish over the next couple years. With the increase in music class participation, and the willingness to donate from various organizations within our community, there is no doubt that the excitement for music in New Palestine is on a rise!
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Over the course of February, Maddy and I successfully got 155+ letters delivered on behalf of our M.U.S.I.C. Foundation fundraiser. We are very optimistic about the potential outcome of our project, as we were met with much enthusiasm from the community. We hand delivered a large portion of our letters, so we were able to explain to them our cause in more depth and receive their feedback. It was a great opportunity for us to learn real-world communication skills and business interactions!
Currently, our project has raised over $1,000. We are extremely grateful for those who contributed to our cause. This project has received an abundance of support from the community and staff here at our school- And we couldn't have done this without them! A special thank you to Mr. Large for all of his guidance and aid on the logistics of this project, as well as Mrs. Glover for all of her work managing the donations given to us. This really has been a team effort! Finally, Maddy and I began our meetings with the Junior High music students towards the end of February. Similarly to our elementary class visits, we prepared a powerpoint presentation to show the students, explaining our passion for music and encouraging further participation from them. So far, we have visited an 8th grade brass-majority band class, and an 8th grade treble choir. They were very enthusiastic about our presentation, and we hope to have inspired some of them to continue their music education as they transition into High School. It's very important to us that these students understand the value and benefit of their participation in such classes, especially as they get older! Maddy and I will continue to visit more classes at the Junior High - hopefully reaching the majority of the 8th grade music students. There's been a lot of progress this month for the M.U.S.I.C. project. We hope to continue to build on this in these last few weeks before spring break, and then wrap everything up in the final semester! I'm very grateful for the opportunities this class has given so far - and the progress we have been able to make towards our end goal! Things have been pretty busy in class lately!
Maddy and I got right to work on the second half of our project after winter break. For these next couple months, we're really going to focus on building up the music programs in our community before we leave. It is super important to both of us that the works of our project leave a lasting impact on New Palestine! As of right now, we have two primary focuses: First, we plan to continue visiting the younger students in our community to positively represent the NPHS program and encourage student participation in the choir/band/guard/dance/theater programs offered at New Palestine schools! This semester, however, we plan to focus primarily on the 5-6 grade NPI and 7-8 grade NPJH students. We want to help prepare them for transition into the high school, and enlighten them on the benefits that music has had on our lives throughout our experiences at NPHS. We also want to help out directly in the NPJH music classes and hopefully use our passion/understanding to build confidence in students’ playing, singing, and dancing and encourage them to further develop musicianship skills! We hope that our presence at the schools will inspire a motivation and change within the students we visit. The next focus of ours this semester is the fundraising project we have been planning since August! Throughout the first semester, we considered/planned logistics and prepared this half of the project so that after winter break we could really hit the ground running. In this half of the project, we plan to raise money for K-8 music education to hopefully provide schools and staff with resources to strengthen musicianship at all levels and show a tight knit community and commitment to its music programs. So far, Maddy and I have had to plan all of the financial logistics for raising money. Our first step was to set up an account in the school treasury that the money we raise could be distributed to. Thank you to Mrs. Glover for making that a reality and setting up the M.U.S.I.C. project account! Next, we had to formulate the letter that would be distributed to local businesses, explaining our project and asking them to consider making a donation to K-8 Music Programs! We spent a lot of class time revising, printing, folding, and prepping this letters. Maddy and I created a spreadsheet to organize the addresses and businesses we wanted to reach out to. Once all of the letters were printed and placed into an envelope with an address, it was time to distribute them. During the long day class periods, Maddy and I have visited dozens of different businesses all over Greenfield/New Palestine/Cumberland/Shelbyville and more. We have super high hopes for the results of this fundraiser! When we have some spare time in class, Maddy and I like to create posters to hang around the school advertising various shows or upcoming community nights for different programs in the arts. Just recently, we printed posters highlighting the Show Choir's "Cabaret" night! Thanks to help from our Service Learning classmates, Camille Massari and Vivian Hart, we were able to hang up 75 posters in the halls to encourage students to attend! Maddy and I have made a lot of progress over the past month!
Each Wednesday, we've continued to visit one of the three elementary schools in our school district! Mrs. McDaniel's 2nd grade class has been working on their end of semester Christmas Show. Each time we visit we review music and dances with the students. (See photo 1 below!) Maddy and I have been lucky enough to watch their progress over the semester, they've done fantastic! In Mrs. Krug and Mrs. Bockelman's classes, the students have started their recorder work. This involves them learning how to read and understand sheet music, and then figure out how to apply that to the instrument. This process allows for many opportunities for Maddy and I to assist these students. They ask lots of questions and are eager to learn the techniques to play their recorders. Its been very rewarding to be able to help them during this crucial learning time. (See Photo 2 below!) During the second semester of our M.U.S.I.C. project, Maddy and I plan to spend the majority of our Wednesdays working with the older students over at the Junior High. However, I will miss working at the elementary schools and hope we can still stop by their classrooms every so often! When we aren't helping out with the younger students in our community, Maddy and I have gotten to work planning the exciting second half of our project. In the upcoming semester, we plan to kick off our fundraising efforts in order to create some sort of financial aid for all kinds of New Palestine youth music programs next year. So far we have drafted our letter that will be sent out to all sorts of businesses and organizations in our community. In the letter, we provided a detailed explanation of our project and what we are working towards. We described what we were raising money for and asked them to consider contributing to our efforts. Along with the letter, we have began meeting with staff in our building that can help us make this project a reality. Maddy and I met with Mr. Dean (NPHS Choir Director) and Mr. Carney (NPHS Band Director) to brainstorm and discuss the best method to go about our fundraising. The meeting was extremely beneficial and successful. Similarly, we met with Mrs. Glover and Mr. Large to go over what it would look like, logistically, to collect money for this cause. Once again, this meeting was a huge help. Thank you for all of the staff that has helped to make the M.U.S.I.C. project possible! Finally, during slow work times for our project, Maddy and I have gotten to help out some of our other Service Learning classmates with their projects. Audra Bloomer and Sydney Oliver were in charge of the Giving Tree project this year. It involved distributing Christmas trees decorated with donation ornaments to each of the schools in our district! Maddy and I were put in charge of the NPJH tree. We set up our tree in the school cafeteria with help from some staff over there. (See photo 3 below!) I also joined with Vivian Hart and Camille Massari to help collect the tree donations when the week was over. We went to NPI and gathered the donations to bring back in my car. Our plan was to try and take them all in one trip; We were successful! It was so fun to get to see what other students in the class are working on, and even take part in helping them carry out their goals! Overall, this semester has been very busy and very successful. I am very pleased with the amount of opportunities we have been able to take through this class over the 18 weeks. The progress for out M.U.S.I.C. project has been very encouraging. Maddy and I have so much planned to take action once winter break is over. Hopefully we experience the same amount of success in the new year as we were able to this year! I am very excited to see what we will accomplish in the upcoming semester. Last week, Maddy and I got to take our first trip to Brandywine Elementary for this semester. We were introduced to their new music teacher and got to meet the kids! They worked on reviewing the treble clef notes and we got to give a presentation about space and line notes. Afterwards, they did stations for practice. Maddy and I walked around to give them any help they needed! It was very exciting to help out at a new school and meet some new students.
Another exciting piece of our current project is the class cup point feature! At our school, student can ear accumulating points for their grade level. At the end of the year, the grade with the most points gets rewarded. Maddy and I were able to add a new event to the class cup point reward system! This year, student who attended the marching band's "End of Season Community Night" earned points. We hung over 50 flyers around the school to spread the word. This resulted in such an enthusiastic turnout! So many students showed up to support our marching dragons. They did phenomenal! On top of this, Maddy and I began the work on our scholarship program for the end of this school year. Mr Carney and Mr. Dean have began to help us consider logistics and figure out a solid plan to get this opportunity in motion. Although there hasn't been much specific progress on the scholarship itself, we have been able to discuss plans for getting started and setting ourselves up to be in a good spot when the spring rolls around. Hopefully there will be a more thorough update once we have been able to meet and plan a little more. Next week is the Veterans Day programs for both NPE and SCE. Maddy and I have had a wonderful experience helping those students learn their pieces for the show and we can't wait to see all of their hard work pay off! It is so rewarding to be able to help these kids and make a difference in their musical lives. These past few weeks have been very busy! Each Wednesday (and occasionally Friday), Maddy and I travel to one of the three elementary schools in our district. We help out directly in their classroom with games, music rehearsals, and audition practice! It has been a great experience so far. The kids are very enthusiastic about the idea of having a special guest in their classes - They get so excited! Maddy and I have gotten to be a part of so many young students music experience already so early on in our project.
At NPE, we have begun to help the 4th graders prepare for their Veterans Day concert in early November. We sing along to their music with them and demonstrate the correct melodies if they are struggling. We also got the opportunity in our most recent visit to take them out to the hallway and learn their audition solo piece. Maddy and I were able to help them build their note accuracies and confidence before the actual audition day. There was so much progress for them! At SCE, the 2nd graders' Christmas show has been our main focus. They have many components that go into that show so we have had plenty to work on. Whether it's running through their song set over and over, or helping everyone stay focused during the script auditions, we always have something fun to do! They also love to play music-themed games each class period, which Maddy and I have gotten to participate in each week. We've gotten to learn many new line dances taught to us by the students! Another opportunity we've been able to partake in is our presentations to the classes! The teachers have kindly made time for us in their schedule to present different educational slideshows to the students in attempts to boost their enthusiasm for music, as well as their basic musical knowledge! We have been met with great feedback throughout this process. Both the teachers and students seem to be enjoying our presentations. So far our progress has been fantastic - I can't wait to see how much further we can take this project as the year goes on! Hey, my name is Ellie Strong and I am very excited to make an impact this year through opportunities presented by Service Learning. My service project this year focuses on expanding and spreading enthusiasm for music/arts programs within our community!
This core foundation of this project is outreach and engagement within our community. Our focus will be on connecting with the students in the district in hopes to increase participation in our arts programs. We will educate on the benefits and importance of music through presentations and leading classrooms. There will be a lot of hands on participation required from us over the course of this project. We will be actively visiting elementary classrooms to interact with the younger students in our community and increase their enthusiasm towards music. Another focus that will be vital to our project is the scholarship opportunity we hope to create. There are many programs within the arts that are unfortunately very costly and high in participation fees. This can deter students from evening considering joining these programs. Maddy and I want to create a new scholarship program directly for the arts so that we can provide financial aid to students in need. Money should never be the reason that someone can't get involved with something they are passionate about! So far we have really hit the ground running with this project. Below is an example of the constant emails shared between Maddy and I and the music staff at schools in our community. So far we have really focused on communicating with them and putting our program on their radar. They are very enthusiastic about our vision and we have received a lot of positive feedback! Soon, we hope to visit with some elementary classes in the district and begin sharing what we love! |
AuthorHi, my name is Ellie Strong! I am very passionate about music and want to spread my enthusiasm with others. |