Hello all,
I checked with Dale before posting this and he gave me the go ahead so here goes.
My daughter is in a gifted and talented program along with about 60 other kids. Last year they were in a lovely new school with all the facilities, including a brand new fully stocked music room. This year, her program was moved to an older more poorly equipted facility because the school superintendant says he cannot justify the space in a new facility for such a small program. Anyway, the music room here has no instruments. Right now the program consists of teaching theory and clapping out rythms. The school district says it has no funding to supply instruments. I thought I would appeal to this community to donate any spare cheap whistles they can to help out. Sweetones, clarkes gens whatever you may have that you feel you can part with.
You don’t list an address or protocol. First of all, have you spoken to them about this plan? I’d hate to see you or others go to trouble and expense, only to have the school or school board reject the offer for some bogus health issue. Second, assuming you’ve already covered hurdle #1, are you offering to coordinate, i.e. should donations be sent to you? If not, is there a music teacher or administrator who’d agree to be that person? Just sending a bunch of long, narrow, tubular packages to a school with no personal contact would probably get them grabbed and drowned or blown up by some understandably overzealous local bomb squad.
Writing letters wouldn’t do a bit of good. Parents held a protest over moving the kids and they just blew it off.
I spoke with the principal about it and she told me any help would be appreciated and that if I thought I could pull something together to go for it, so I made the post here.
I forgot, I will be coordinating so if anyone has an old feadog or gen e-mail me and we’ll work something out.
Thanks
[ This Message was edited by: Ron Rowe on 2002-10-11 19:26 ]
Why not ask parents to chip in for the instrumements, they’re cheap? And the kids get to keep the whistles? I’m applying for a $500 grant from a local foundation, if I get it, I’ll send ya a few.
Do you have a local Arts Council in your area? Sometimes they have individuals that will try to help out with things like that. If your not sure, check with your Chamber of Commerce or local tourist center, they should know. If that isn’t an option, do you have a local college near by? The music dept. may have some ideas or some old instruments they would give you.
There are lots of grants around but you need to know where to look and how to apply for them. I think the local library usually has books with grant listings in them.
Oh! Just thought of something else. Our schools have fund raisers all the time. Why not have the kids sell hoagies or something like that to make the money to buy some instruments? We always had to get permission to sell something so be sure to ask the principal first.
As much as I like whistles I would recommend the good old recorder for beginning school music programs? Why? Because they are chromatic, and learning about the chromatic scale early is probably the best thing which is not really easily demonstratable on a whistle’s weird D or G scale only. Plus recorders are just about as cheap as whistles. The local music store here sells them for 3-4 bucks a piece for the least expensive model.
On 2002-10-14 06:26, Tantus wrote:
As much as I like whistles I would recommend the good old recorder for beginning school music programs.
Nick
I disagree. Kids who are learning to play for the first time usually have an easier time picking up the whistle because there are only six holes to cover. This means much less “squeaking” from the very first day. Having taught recorders to three classes of kids, I switched to whistles last year and don’t plan to switch back.
Ron, I’d recommend that you set up a bulk order. In my case, I emailed Thom at the Whistle Shop and he arranged a bulk price for the kids that was cheap (a big help, that guy Thom!). I had the kids pre-order them from me and ordered a whole set. The kids take good care of them because they paid for them, and get to keep them.
Good luck in your quest. It’s a damn shame that teachers (and in this case parents) have to exert so much energy working for something that should be a given. Can you imagine a framer asking the boss for enough lumber, or a public health nurse begging to have enough vaccine?
Jef