Blog: Stories

Category Archive (Page 4)

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Mariachi Music

It that time of year! It is Cinco de Mayo (5th of May). I would like to share how I celebrate this holiday in my music classroom. In the United States, Cinco de Mayo is a day to celebrate Mexican music, Mexican food, and Mexican cultural arts. On television, we see many products such as […]

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Make Every Penny Count

  Goal-Setting and School Grants Give a Note board member Renier Fee connected with the Music & Arts 2017 Music Educator of the Year, Christine Cumberledge of Central Junior High School, Hurst, TX, to discuss goal-setting and school grants. As a music education veteran for 21 years, she knows how to make every penny count. […]

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Strumming New Guitars in Tar River, North Carolina

Last year Give A Note Foundation presented a grant to Tar River Elementary School in Tar River, North Carolina. Music educator Angela Mangum shared the impact of that grant with us recently. How has the Give a Note grant made an impact on your program? “Having the [Music In Our Schools] Tour come to Tar […]

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You Must Be Present to Win

  Segue 61: You Must Be Present to Win When Damon Atkins walked into my office on the campus of Catawba College in December, 2015, the words he spoke left me speechless, a foreign state for me. “Whatever you tell me to do next, I’m going to do. I think I want to quit school […]

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The Healing Power of Music

There are simply no words to describe the impact Give A Note Foundation has made not only in the lives of our students, but also in my teaching. Student participation is like never before — 100%! Because we have an adequate and abundant array of instruments, we can reach a multitude of student interests. Our […]

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From the Rehearsal Room to the Retail Floor

How Piano Led to a Passion for Music Retail   Music has been an integral part of my life for as long as I can remember. My father started teaching me to play the piano when I was 4 1/2 years old, and seeing my immediate interest and love for the instrument, he enrolled me […]

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Celebrate Day of the Dead with the New Disney●Pixar Movie ‘Coco’!

The new Disney●Pixar film Coco offers educators a chance to introduce Mexican culture and Mexican music into their classrooms and engage students with the film as well. The movie’s central theme is the “Day of the Dead” (Dia de Los Muertos) which is a traditional celebration in Mexico and now has become very popular in the […]

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Finding the Sweet Spot

  Walking in to Tony Cosby’s advanced woodworking class at Sisters High School in Sisters, Oregon, is just what you would expect in many ways. You are greeted with the smell of sawdust and the pitch of sanders and saws whirring away. But what is somewhat unusual, and at first pass seems like a huge […]

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Vision . . . Required (& Delivered)

  SEGUE 61: Keys to the Musical Highway (Owen Bradley’s Vision Revisited) Those who know me best say I am an INFORMED CONSUMER of music, with what is described as an unusual (unhealthy?) amount of information about and passion for a creative craft in which I was never a participant. It’s what likely armed me […]

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