 This is an extra special blog as you will see. We are sending a big CONGRATULATIONS to GITC teaching artist, Michael O'Brien and his phenomenal Morse High School students who just graduated from a full year of free guitar learning in our afterschool Strummers Club! Most started the year as total beginners, learning about this glorious instrument and how to hold, strum, pluck, and play notes, chords, and songs independently and together. A few club members started the year with some informal, self-taught ability, and Michael taught them the theory and skills they needed to understand and build upon those basics. Everyone learned to play songs on acoustic guitars first, and then the whole club explored learning to play electric guitar, thanks to Mike's wide-ranging knowledge, caring, and heartfelt interest in his students, their musical interests, and their special qualities. The students were so touched by Michael's honesty, kindness, and commitment that several of them surprised him with truly endearing thank you notes - a guitar teacher's dream. Thank you to program coordinator Desiree Romero, champion of GITC Guitar Clubs in San Diego, and to onsite facilitator, Jaime Walker, and Morse Guitar Club's incredible faculty sponsor, Theater teacher and actor, Rebecca Rankin. It took a village to bring the music, and that village also includes the Guitar Center Music Foundation, the Martin Guitar Charitable Foundation, and every donor who makes it possible to award deserving high school Guitar Club students with instruments of their own. Without all of you, these students would not have found their guitarist voices, developed their musicianship together, or been heading into summer with their own beautiful instruments! Thank you from the bottom of our guitar-loving hearts! 💗💗💗 Jess, Gail, Tanya, Ben, and Debi
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 Thank you to each of you Golden Givers for providing powerful community support for GITC in December!
Thanks to your heartfelt, generous gifts, we were able to reach our year-end goal of raising $30,000, along with receiving dozens of donated ukuleles to sustain and expand free music programs! To each of you who contributed, or held a good thought for GITC, your dedication is about to shape thousands of students' and teachers' lives this year. It's so exciting! We know some donors like to contribute anonymously so we respect those wishes. So if you are one of our behind-the-scenes supporters, your name is not on this list below. The following individuals donated to GITC during End-of-Year giving, and we deeply appreciate each and every gift. All gifts were matched! Thank you for supporting GITC to accomplish important work initiating, supporting, restoring, and sustaining music by teaching through the power of song in classrooms across the U.S. in 2025! Acoustic Coffee Company Scott Andreiko Jess Baron Marcia Bennett Fred Berkowitz Scott and Melissa Fischell Ruth Haller Damon Hein Ronald Greenwood & Angeline Stotis Victoria Hamilton Roy Katzen for the Judith Seltz Charitable Foundation Trust Dr. Della Peretti Dolores Pretorius Jan and Judy Radke Bonnie Raitt's Aria Foundation Bruce & Elaine Robbins Salmon Family Foundation Ms. Molly Stewart John Unger Deborah Pate Elaine Rabuchin Dave Piehl Theresa Ford Lee Blum Patty Atkins Judy Cottle Diane Ciral Jody Williams Michael Berman Randall Clark & Thomas Maddox Sharon Beales Kimberly Whittaker Delia & Roberto Batalla Margaret Kreiner/ Cleo Weiss Elaine Rabuchin Patricia Guthrie Rebecca Zauderer Chuck Wimpee Christopher Clarke Dan Allmann Pat Soares Suszi A Sutherland Doriann Jaffee Ana Anita Robles MS Mr. Robert Drummer Richard Bostock Ms. Michele I Muller paul hartley Connor A Glass Laurie Gee Mrs. Alicia Mendoza La Fetra Frank Howie Barry Smith Margaret Okeefe Ellie Hanna Connie Goodman Bruce L McNeel Alberto DeCima Mrs. Donna Marie Baker William Schildge Anna Covici Greg Monahan Naomi Buckwalter Daniel Slater Tina Tan-Zane Sandy Yvonne Obitz MA Patricia Guthrie Steve Richards Rebecca and Norman Cole Ms. Elizabeth Uyehara-Smith Ms. Candace Bonnie Travis Mary Anne Umekubo Teresa Brockmann Ira I Wiss Ms. Yvette Rodriguez Ronald and Lorraine Turner Audrey and Joseph Casciani R. Cary and Cathy Hill Susan Whiteman / Byron Nilsson Barbara and Darryl Woodson Kimberly Wade / Kent Smolik Dale and Yvonne Gatz David and Barbara Zucker Donna Mulcahy  A man for all seasons, Christopher Clarke first found Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom when he was the principal in Los Angeles Unified School District's Lankershim Elementary, located in North Hollywood. A champion of diverse, economically challenged, devoted, and resourceful families, he was determined to pour more musical learning opportunities into the lives of their children by giving GITC training to his faculty members. As we say, "Train a teacher and inspire a generation!" Mr. Clarke got the majority of his faculty members involved, and Lankershim became the host site for teacher training from educators all over the San Fernando Valley! In his role as principal, he visited every classroom with his own ukulele, supporting and accompanying the teachers and students while they learned. He set the GITC bar for cool administrators. In addition to hosting and supporting teacher training, Mr. Clarke launched after school uke clubs, and got kids performing not just for their families, but for the school district! If you are reading this, perhaps you are one of the amazing educators who has embraced making and teaching through music, changing the lives of your students. Thank you so much! We are so thankful you and Mr. Clarke have become part of the GITC family.  After many fruitful years of service at Lankershim, Mr. Clarke answered the call to serve as the principal at Canterbury Elementary in Arleta (also in LAUSD), and found himself surrounded by a wildly enthusiastic group of teachers who embraced our developmental teaching method and began teaching through the power of song within a very short time. GITC teaching artist Kristen Lynn Herbert lit the flame in the hearts of these teachers, and Mr. Clarke fanned those flames daily. The school became alight with music through GITC's capacity building co-teaching artist residencies. Each GITC capacity-building residency gives highly engaged teachers the chance to learn to teach through music with their own students, while receiving techniques, strategies, modeling, support, and coaching from a highly qualified GITC teaching artist, personally chosen for them and their students. We ask that teachers take at least our Total Beginner Uke course before requesting a residency so they have foundational musical skills when they start. You can learn about GITC capacity building classroom residencies are structured right here. Collaborative student songwriting plays a major role. In our work teaching Math Through Music, we've seen the need for focused songwriting in multiplication rise. Pairing math with literacy building leads to the memorization of the times tables using a heightened awareness of sounds (phonological awareness), letter blends, rich vocabulary, and rhyming. Here are some lyrics generated by the whole 4th grade class. They are pretty clever - please have a look!  Fast forward, Mr. Clarke retired a few years later, and decided to make GITC his retirement career! Since that time he has joined our board, and our teaching artist faculty, and is now an exceptionally popular teaching artist in LA. This year he has already been serving in classrooms at San Fernando Elementary and Canterbury Elementary, both during the school day, and in after school Strummers Clubs. This winter will take him to Chase Elementary, Glenwood Elementary, and more. This week he is teaching uke with GITC to middle schoolers during LAUSD's Winter Academy. I invited Mr. Clarke to share some highlights about what his teachers and students have been learning through music this fall. Here is his report.  San Fernando Elementary was established in 1885, making it the oldest school in the San Fernando Valley. It has a dual-language program (English and Spanish) and a high percentage of students identified as English Learners. I’m working with four classrooms - a first grade, a second grade, and two fourth grade rooms. In the primary grade rooms we’ve been working on phonemic awareness, blending, and short vowel sounds (which do not appear in the students’ primary language). The fourth grade teachers identified lack of mathematical foundational skills as an impediment to progress, so we used the anchor song “Down in the Valley” to have students work in groups to write verses based on a provided math fact, and incorporate an important school rule in the verse. Many of the verses they wrote mentioned the importance of regular, punctual attendance - a major LAUSD focus. The teachers and I agree that having students memorize times tables in the context of identifying important rules to follow is a very powerful lesson. A bigger success story, though, is when I walked down the school hallway last week and saw a teacher who had participated last year in an 8-week Professional Development, playing the ukulele for his Kindergarteners, and having them independently write verses to an anchor song he had taught them.
At Canterbury Elementary/Gifted Magnet, I’m working with a teacher whose practice has been rated as “Highly Effective” on the Teaching and Learning Framework, and every visit is pure joy. Once a week the students put down their Mesoamerican pyramid projects, or whatever they’re currently working on, and pick up their ukuleles. Many of the students come with ukulele experience, having been with a prior teacher already trained in GITC, so they are musically very strong. In addition to learning more complex chords and strumming patterns, when they return from Winter Break they’ll be using their songwriting skills to demonstrate thematic understanding of the book they’re reading - “Adventures of Don Quixote” - a retelling of Don Quixote de La Mancha. This is an ideal application of high-order thinking skills, where students go far beyond recalling basic facts and instead demonstrate their learning in creative and innovative ways. The ukulele may be a diminutive instrument, but its use as a teaching and learning tool is enormous, as evidenced by the students and educators I have the pleasure to work with." Thank you, Mr. Clarke for your immeasurable service to GITC in so many roles and seasons of your life as an educator! Dear Friend, Season’s greetings to you from GITC. Thank you for taking time to read this little letter. I am especially grateful for the kindness and support you’ve bestowed upon our nonprofit, making it possible to provide a record-breaking year of service. Thanks to you, we’ve been able to increase the reach and depth of our programs bringing musical learning to students from preschool through high school. Since 2023, ninety-seven classrooms in San Diego and L.A. have participated in capacity-building classroom residencies during the school day. We’ve sustained year-round online learning for teachers at every grade level in 40 states, and led in-person instruction across 5 regions of California including presenting at three statewide conferences. Our After-school and summer Strummers Clubs have been going strong, serving students directly whose classrooms teachers might not have trained with us yet. This creates greater equity in participating schools. Additionally, our work in Adaptive Music has grown, equipping greater numbers of special educators and music teachers to support student learning in moderate-severe special education. Innovation requires champions to succeed. Thank you for helping when it counted the most! Last year, Federal funding for childcare programs was lost and many child care centers and programs closed. Your donations along with a grant from the San Diego Women’s Foundation helped us launch the GITC ECE Initiative, training 226 ECE teachers throughout San Diego County in intensive workshops. 663 more early childhood educators around the U.S. also participating in special training through our free, ongoing, virtual classes. With your assistance, GITC supplied over 200 childcare programs and classrooms with student ukuleles! We’re excited to share this initiative has now gained traction, receiving grants from the California Arts Council and the Cushman Foundation to carry it forward. Thank you, educators for participating with GITC! Thank you, generous donors, for funding this effort. Together we are making a difference.  Also, thanks to your generous support, GITC was able to fund instruction for over 2100 K-12 educators and support staff with specific 8-week courses and workshops in guitar, ukulele, singing, songwriting for learning, classroom implementation strategies, literacy and math through music, and very importantly, social-emotional learning (SEL) through music. Teachers have overwhelmingly reported witnessing improvements in their students’ abilities to get along with each other, identify and regulate their emotions, express needs constructively, and focus their attention on learning. These gains are significant, and will help America’s students catch up. 2024 marks a 67% increase in the number of teachers served by Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom. In 2024, to meet the demand for our services, we’ve welcomed new faculty members, and also encouraged established faculty members to step into leadership. Guitar Club leader Dan Decker has become an inspiring coach for others on the faculty. Sharon DuBois and Reagan Duncan have both begun presenting GITC’s work at state conferences, bringing energy, joy, and effective methods to teachers from remote and rural areas of California as well as large urban centers.  Reagan’s story is a shining example of how and why GITC has been growing steadily since 2000. She began taking classes with us in 2020, engaging her kindergarten students in virtual learning at the start of the pandemic. She proved an adept songwriter for teaching literacy skills, penning catchy songs that many teachers now sing every day in their own classrooms! Once in-person teaching resumed, Reagan launched successful after-school uke clubs at Maryland Elementary, in Vista, CA. Then she joined our faculty in 2023, training teachers to start their own after-school uke clubs, and to teach SEL through music. In early 2024, she was asked by her district to teach in-person GITC workshops. We also invited her to present to teachers from around the world at the international NAMM Show, and at other conferences. She is a cherished member of the team, inspiring others lead the way! GITC’s train-the-trainer model is designed to hold steady in hard times. Bruce Robbins explains why here. Given the incoming administration’s plan to decrease funding for public education and eliminate the Department of Education, GITC must persevere. If you believe that every child deserves to learn to make music, this is an important moment to contribute. Your tax-deductible gift this month will empower us reach the teachers and students who without GITC, would not have access to learning through music. This includes students in moderate-severe special education classes, as well as medically fragile, physically challenged, homebound, and hospitalized students who learn with their teachers and parents. GITC’s train-the-trainer model is designed to hold steady in hard times. Bruce Robbins explains why here.  Given the incoming administration’s plan to decrease funding for public education and eliminate the Department of Education, GITC must persevere. If you believe that every child deserves to learn to make music, this is an important moment to contribute. Your tax-deductible gift this month will empower all of us to reach the teachers and students who without GITC, would not have access to learning through music. This includes students in moderate-severe special education classes, as well as medically fragile, physically challenged, homebound, and hospitalized students who learn with their teachers and parents.  Your donation will support our small nonprofit to continue providing all of these services, pivoting as we go to meet challenges that lie ahead. Every gift helps. Now through December 31st, your contribution will be matched by GITC board members so that our 501 (c)3 may continue to support teachers, staff, and students to imbue learning with passion, peace, kindness, and beauty through the power of making music. Giving to GITC is truly a vote for education, the arts, and for hope, and promise for our children and youth. This year, you can make one simple donation here, and let us know if you wish it to support a particular GITC program! https://www.guitarsintheclassroom.org/donate.html If you'd prefer to contribute with a check and note, that's great! It will go right into a locked box. Please mail us safely at: GITC 1286 University Ave #389 San Diego, CA 92103 We also appreciate other kinds of donations, and would be happy to speak with you if you want to donate an instrument, stocks. or time. Please reach out to Gail Wingfield at [email protected] or call us at 619-840-1010 anytime.  Thank you for seeing GITC through a wonderful year of caring and growth. Whether you took a class or taught one, provided a residency or participated in one, got students, teachers, colleagues, or friends involved, or volunteered with us as a Tuning Angel, you are a very important part of this supportive community, and your efforts are significant!
On behalf of our faculty, staff, board of directors, and volunteers, I wish you health, energy, resilience, self-care, and a new year filled with friendship music. See you in 2025! With love, Recently, Laurence Juber, master of the guitar, and former guitarist for Paul McCartney's Wings spent a day inspiring and educating the community with us in San Diego. "LJ" made the rounds starting with an early morning visit to the local KUSI Newsroom, to teaching a dazzling master class at Hoover High School, and ending the evening by giving a breathtaking intimate concert for GITC supporters! With this recent visit, Laurence continues his epic legacy with Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom. He has been instrumental is starting and nurturing GITC since Day One. His life has been all about music, and he embodies character traits teachers hope they can instill in their students. If not for LJ's immense talent, wisdom, integrity, care, and generosity, our organization wouldn't be here today. From encouraging the formation of the work, donating his time and resources, advising me as GITC'S founder, and performing in participating GITC districts and schools for our students, we have him to thank. New ideas need a champion, and he is our Number 1. Now, please enjoy moments from his stellar Day of Service, nearly 25 years later, as he brightens hundreds of lives in our home community. The morning of November 8th started with this very musical interview with LJ and KUSI's warm, perceptive, and undaunted anchorwoman, Lauren Phinney! Thanks to Little Tommy, and C3 Communications for making this interview possible. After breakfast, we headed to Hoover High School, a dynamic San Diego Unified Title 1 school that. along with strong school spirit and a phenomenal faculty, offers outstanding educational opportunities in the Arts! Collaborating with our district's department of Visual and Performing Arts, we invited every music student at Hoover to join our Hoover Guitar Club students for a brilliant hour of guidance, performance, and conversation. LJ shared about his incredible career, gave insights from music history, and demonstrated and amazed students with his powerful yet delicate guitar interpretations. The big thrills came when he listed the films, television shows, and video games for which he played guitar. We don't know which credit got more astonishment- Pochahontas or Super Mario Brothers! When he shared about his daughter, Ilsey Juber's phenomenal career, and mentioned that she wrote "High Hopes" for Panic at the Disco among many other hits, this put the reality of shaping a modern career in music that much closer.Now for most of us mere mortals, this might have been enough good deeds done for one day, but not for Laurence. With just a few minutes to spare, he raced to the site of our evening event in Hillcrest at the gorgeous 525 Olive St. Sky Club, and went right into his sound check. The room filled to capacity, he poured out beautiful energy for the audience, lifting spirits, bringing laughter with his stories, and wonder with his beautiful playing. In a season fraught with election tension, Laurence's kindness and emotional playing restored a sense of peace and balance to the room, elevating everyone's well-being. Please join us in enjoying his touching rendition of the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields," the song he told Lauren Phinney is his favorite. Thank you to Laurence, to our 525 Olive St. hosts at the Sky Club, Marty Goodman and Marcia Bennett of San Diego Social Venture Partners, to Mr. Boertmann at Hoover High School, to Anne Fennell at San Diego Unified's VAPA Department, to the Asian Story Theater for sound and lights, to Juniper Turner and Kent Brisby for running sound, and to our incredible team of volunteers including GITC board members Molly Stewart, and Ruth Haller, Director of Strum & Sing, Dan Decker, and GITC teachers, volunteers and auction angels Lorrin Boyer, Patrice Maller, Myx Swanson, Patti Steele, and Rodney and Joyce Howard. Thank you so much for making this an evening beyond compare! We are so grateful to the many sponsors who helped us provide our guests with delicious sustenance and wonderful auction items to raise funds for our free programs. You will find their logos in the gallery below!              GITC Summer Strummers Are Thriving Through Making Visual Art with GITC Partner, ArtReach San Diego!6/16/2024  Dear Friends, Family Members and Faculty Members, Thanks for joining us as our summer enrichment clubs swing into action! Congrats to each of you who participated in a successful launch last week, opening 9 free Summer Summers Clubs in campuses across San Diego for 270 children. Our clubs are either oriented for children entering grades 1-3 in the fall, or entering grades 4-6. The images below are from different locations and grouped by the kind of enrichment experience they reflect. The photo above shows Dig Down Deep founder, Mindy Swanson handing out seed packets to students at Marvin Elementary. We're sharing photos from various locations to show the breath of what students are beginning to learn with Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom between now and July 12, each day, from 12 pm-5 pm. Thanks to support and coordination from the San Diego Foundation and the San Diego Unified School District, we had a great first week of music, drama, visual art, puppetry, and garden education! This first collection will give you a taste of what is going on each day! 1. Garden Education with Dig Down Deep (4 campuses only) 2. Visual Art with ArtReach San Diego 3. Music with Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom 4. Puppetry with the San Diego Puppetry Guild 5. Drama with Kids On Stage Thank you to our faculty at Marvin Elementary, Tierrasanta Elementary, Linda Vista Elementary, Salk Elementary, and Sandburg Elementary for sharing their first images on Photo Phriday! Gingerlily Lowe, Brittany Cook, Patty Bertram, Ina Soliz, Teresa Adams, Christine Shepherd, Sharon DuBois, Tricia De Luna, Melanie Bruce, and Sophie Bello, our Phirst Photographers. We appreciate you!
GITC Summer Strummers Are Thriving Through Making Visual Art with GITC Partner, ArtReach San Diego!7/14/2023 K-5 Strummers are making music everyday, and creating visual art with GITC newest partner, ArtReach! Each day in our Summer Strummers Clubs here in San Diego, students in our "Littles" and "Bigs" Summer Strummers Clubs (SSCs) are making art connected to literacy, math, and music. Sometimes this is led by their club leaders, and twice each week, they're engaging in phenomenal group art lessons taught by inspirational art educators who serve with our awesome partner, ArtReach! We're highlighting some of their visual arts projects here, and we will share everyone's music making in the next blog! The Collaborative DREAM QUILT Project at Bay Park Elementary, The Final Dream Quilt at Hage Elememtary  Summer Strummers' Drums, and Making Uke Box Ukes at Bethune and Hage! At Euclid Elementary, Students Make Art with Ms. Mindy from Dig Down Deep as a part of learning about science through the garden! Check out what is living in each child's ecosystem! Students at Foster Elementary Making and Playing Funny Membranophones! Sparkling Firework Art Brought July 4th Smiles at Nye Elementary!  Exploring the lines, shapes and sculpture with Alexander Calder at Dewey and Hage! Exploring whole, half, colors, and shapes with Butterfly Art at Nye! San Diego, CA Happy June, Friends! In San Diego, thanks to support from the San Diego Foundation in partnership with San Diego Unified School Distric, we have been preparing our third year of Summer Strummers Clubs for children in grades UTK-5. The whole initiative is called Level Up San Diego This pandemic recovery endeavor is funded by the federal government. It's a massive effort to engage children in joyful learning that will boost their well-being and academic progress. We're blessed with an immensely dedicated, creative faculty of certificated teachers and student support providers who you'll see in training below. Our tiny staff worked to the exhaustion point to get this huge faculty training and supply disbursement ready on June 11th, and thanks to everyone's efforts, it worked! We've just finished the first week of Summer Strummers Clubs as of this writing. 440 students have enrolled, our faculty of 45 keeps the student:teacher ratio low, and with help from our volunteers and sponsors, it has all come together for a summer of joyful learning! Thanks to photographer Ayse Azcan Flanagan, we are sharing the photos below. We'll add more by photographer Binaca James, soon. Thank you to everyone and each organization helping out for bringing this group of caring individuals together with San Diego childre this summer. Special thanks to our Arts partners, ArtReach, Kids On Stage, and Malashock Dance for giving GITC kids a chance to flourish through artistic learning! Meet our Staff!Photography by Ayse Ozcan-Flanagan Meet Our Directors. Jess Baron and Gail Wingfield Photography by Binaca James Meet Our Faculty!Photography by Ayse Ozcan-Flanagan Photography by Binaca James Meet Our Volunteers!Photography by Ayse Ozcan-Flanagan View Some of Our Supplies!Photography by Ayse Ozcan-Flanagan Photography by Binaca James
Friends, thanks for joining us for this visual journey through some of the many highlights from Guitars & Ukes in the Classroom's services and experiences the past year. We were big on programs, both during and after school, and in the summer, but smaller on gatherings. Like everyone, we are hoping for a healthier and safer 2023 when community events such as our popular house concerts, retreats, and more in-person professional development classes can once again ring out with the sounds of music. Thank you for helping us take such big steps back into teaching in person in 2022! Glimpses into GITC 2022 Classrooms Adaptive Music Rocks! Adaptive Music for Achievement in Inclusion & Special Education Teachers and support staff train with us in Adaptive Music so all students can participate and experience the benefits and beauty of music's transformative power. This is a great adventure! We encourage everyone to release preconceived notions and begin exploring music as organized sound. We start by playing basic beats, rhythms, and patterns using a variety of instruments. |
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