Transforming Young Lives though Music

executive director said to me carol why don't you start music for minors in the east bay and i started you know so i guess it was within me the desire to help children and my love of music see i really believe when you have a passion you should follow your passion and probably then find a way to get paid for it in some way to survive but follow that passion and so i modeled our program after the mother organization but i had to connect with ohlone college to get the college credit so i had never written an a non-profit status application and oh my gosh i just did it i don't know it was a power beyond me that helped me to get through that but i know i was just driven by that desire that children need music and they need it in their classroom and their lives especially when they're young like that when they're the most susceptible and that has been proven true we've been doing this let's see that was 1988 when i started the organization recruited parents got a board of directors going and now we're in our 33rd year wow so you think music has helped your students who were going through reading uh problems right they were not at the level but you were also saying that music has helped other students also in your non-profit do you have any stories like you know how do you think that music has actually helped some of your students right oh yes for sure and i really want to shout these out because to me it made the whole 33 years when with these three these three cases and who knows how much more because i've run into students that were in the music reminders 2 program and one's a high school student she says you know mrs zilley i was in my high school class and the and the teacher asked if anybody knew the preamble to the constitution she says and i recited it and he couldn't believe i knew it from memory and it's because we learned it in music for writers to put to a song and a rhythm pattern and you know you you don't forget it so anyway um you make it more interesting by putting music to something that's not so interesting remember and it's it's using and music gets into the brain and integrates the brain both hemispheres and we did a lot with sequencing and memory retention but these three stories one happened in the 1990s in milpitas because our program i started in fremont we are now in newark unified fremont castro valley unified we've been in for many years and milpitas at that time and then we found out that they weren't wanted to hire music specialists we do not compete with music specialists we we work hand in hand and we would therefore go to schools that didn't have anything we always target children that don't have music and so this one little girl was in the class with one of our docents who was doing the dance pat tapata which is so popular in africa and she she started to cry and the docent noticed it and then the teacher came over and of course the docent continued with the class until it was over and then the children went out to recess and she walked over to the teacher and the child says oh i'm so sorry are you sick or what happened and the teacher said no no she is really very happy because that dance was danced in her homeland every saturday night and when she came to this country she thought she would never dance it again like connecting this child to her country and you know something that she really wanted to through right music is all about making connections because because it's shared with people and there's always emotions and feelings and things that we can connect to and reach the second one was in newark and that was an autistic child who was in his special day class and our music for minors two docent was teaching a kindergarten class and the special day teacher thought you know let's let's put him into that class and see how he does with 23 or four or four other students normally the class size is six or seven you know for his special day so he did and the docent was sharing a rhythm pattern and we usually clap tah for one beat and tt if there's two short beats two half beats in that one top and she put it to a poem and she wrote on the board our symbols for ta and tt and it was really fun the kids loved it he went back to his class and walked right up to their white board and started writing the ta's and the tt and reciting the poem that he had just learned that made the teachers realize that he can learn in a setting with larger children more children and so they they changed his whole course of study started mainstreaming him into other subject areas and what a tremendous wow improvement he made in the joy that he had that the repetitive basically the child needed some kind of repetitive learning and that's what he learned from your program such a simple way right like what did and the third one story is about a little girl who never spoke she had come to i think it was vallejo mill school she had come uh i don't know too much about her background but all i knew from the docent was she never spoke but she would be there sometimes she'd smile sometimes not sometimes she would kind of use her arms because we do a lot of sign language we do a lot of gesturing because we want to involve the whole person and the fact that we are a musical instrument our bodies can make music and rhythm as well as our voices so anyway several months i think it was in the spring i don't know exactly the date but the first thing that little girl did was to sing not to speak but to sing so music can break through barriers and help the brain function better because it is integra integrative i don't know if i said that right but it integrates both hemispheres here's a visual that will prove it this is the left side of our brain and the right side brain scans are seen when an individual is walking and talking and eating and this is what their brain looks like and the minute that person experiences music this is what the brain looks like you mean music builds neuron bridges and connects both hemispheres of the brain and the brain is working at fuller capacity yes well how can we afford not to have it in the schools in in not only children's lives in our lives that's what i was going to ask you when are you starting music for adults with your passion and all the stories i think i want to be involved in learning music i've never learned music we have thought about music for seniors yeah and when we have time we gotta pursue that uh because you know that's what is needed you