Band Together Hits All the Right Notes
BEF NEWS
Band Together Hits All the Right Notes
Friday, March 18th, 2022
Over the past eight years, Beaverton Education Foundation’s Beaverton Band Together initiative has expanded musical education for students in all Beaverton public schools, from providing musical instruments and performing opportunities to opening their minds to new genres, artists, and experiences.
BEF’s awards repaired and purchased more than 1,500 instruments to date across all grade levels. They’ve facilitated bringing music mentors to ten schools, giving unprecedented access to leading local artists and helping students refine their musical knowledge and abilities. During remote learning, many elementary students received recorders, xylophones, and kazoos so they could practice reading and composing music, singing, rhythm, and pitch-matching skills from home. And other schools now have a class set of ukuleles, one of the few instruments that allow students to sing and accompany themselves at the same time.
As we celebrate Music in Our Schools Month, we sat down with Blake Allen, Beaverton School District’s K-12 Visual and Performing Arts Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA). He told us how BEF is helping students find creative outlets that set them on a path to success, and described how BEF supports teachers as they bring music to life in schools.
Why is music education important for our students?
Music is part of what makes us human and connects us to something bigger than ourselves. There’s something magical about making music with other people that can’t be put into words. There’s a lot of research that shows music helps build critical thinking, creativity, self-discipline, confidence, teamwork and empathy. Many students find their place socially through our music programs. I’ve seen music classes make a huge difference for a number of students who struggle in other areas of school. They might have trouble feeling connected in their other classes, but you put a trombone in their hands and surround them with a supportive team of other students working toward the same goals, and they find a place to excel in school.
Why does each student need their own high quality musical instrument?
We try to provide an instrument for each student, but there aren’t enough instruments to go around in our schools without BEF’s support. Some families rent or buy an instrument for their child to use at school, but many families can’t afford to do that and require use of a school instrument. We want to make sure the school-owned instruments work just as well as the ones rented from music stores. We want everyone to have a functional instrument they can be proud of, whether they’re provided by school or rented by their families.
We should think about musical instruments the way we do the Chromebooks and iPads that we check out to the kids. We want each student to have a well-functioning device so they can do their schoolwork and be successful. That’s a Chromebook for their math or science class, and a musical instrument for band.
Why do you turn to BEF as a funding partner for music education?
We’re trained as teachers, not grantwriters. BEF makes it easy and efficient to raise money to bring our ideas to life. It gives us access to donors and funders, and makes connections for us with community members who want to help. BEF also matches donations and helps us meet our project fundraising goals. Other fundraising platforms take a cut of the donations or put a lot of restrictions on how the money can be spent. With BEF, we put all the funds to use for our projects and have a lot of flexibility when it comes to vendors for purchasing items. We couldn’t accomplish all that we do without BEF’s support.
