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
