Teachers and Staff for Special Needs Students Were Amazing at AMASE SDCOE!

It's Sunday afternoon and we just completed our first AMASE Conference that was supported by three incredible foundation sponsors, including the Nordson Foundation, Qualcomm Charity and the National Endowment for the Arts!

AMASE stands for Adaptive Music for Achievement in Special Education.

Special educators, staff members, therapeutic specialists and teachers in mainstreamed general ed  joined together for two days to learn to play, share and adapt music making for their students. They learned to play drums and percussion, led adaptive drum circles, and incorporated movement with hand percussion. They learned to play ukelele and guitar, sing, teach and lead songs for learning. They composed and co-wrote original lyrics for teaching Social Emotional Learning, classroom rules and academic content, and well, so much more!

We will be sharing a whole blog and telling you more about the people in these photos very soon. But for now, we are SHOUTING OUT CONGRATULATIONS to these phenomenal educators and therapists!

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Thank you, Nordson, Qualcomm, and our brand new funder, the National Endowment for the Arts a.k.a. the NEA!

Thank you to our guest presenters, Ashton and Ignatius of Urban Beats, music therapist Lindsay Zehren of Resounding Joy, and Julie Guy of the Music Therapy Center of California!

Thanks also California Teachers Union for supporting our participants with breakfasts, and especially to the CTA- CEEC Caucus for Educators of Exceptional Children for your advocacy for special education students and teachers. Thank you to our sponsors, Kala Brand Music for ukuleles, Dunlop Manufacturing for pics and capos, David Broza and One Million Guitars for our guitars, TKL for our gig bags, Korg and Soundtree for our PitchClip tuners and Smartstart Ukulele books, and to the wonderful team at BEAMZ Interactive! It was also wonderful to host Babies and Beads!

We are immensely grateful to the San Diego County Office of Education Special Services team as well as the San Diego Unified Special Education leadership for being open to our unusual approach to making music accessible in special education. Thanks, Cara Schukoske, and Andrea Vinson (right) for taking creative steps to supporting special educators and encouraging your faculties and staff members to bring music into their classrooms so EVERY student can benefit from learning to make music!

#nationalendowmentforthearts,  #SDUSD, #SDCOE

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