Music can be path to language and math San Francisco Gate

The challenge was to come up with an idea that can transform public education particularly in poor communities. The winner an educator with a passion for making school fun. Michael Bitz won a national competition with his idea for helping students learn academic subjects while creating their own record labels. Now he ll try to bring that idea to schools across the country as the first recipient of a fellowship awarded this week through the Mind Trust an Indianapolis nonprofit. The group s stated goal is to encourage entrepreneurial solutions to problems in U.S. schools. An adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University the year old Bitz previously founded the Comic Book Project a popular program in which kids work on reading and writing by creating comic books. He already is testing his new idea in New York City after school programs. The kids write songs create digital tracks design cover art and market their CDs. Elementary schoolers have recorded tracks about civil ri! ghts heroes and favorite holidays while middle schoolers have rapped about edgier subjects like weapons crime and love. Through the fellowship worth about Bitz hopes to put the program in place during the school day in Indianapolis schools. That can be a challenge in many districts where an intense focus is often placed on core academic subjects tested under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Such a focus can come at the expense of other school activities. Bitz says his program might boost reading and math scores. For example he said the children who work on the CDs build math skills by coming up with marketing and business plans. I don t think it s so explicit as to be like Oh by the way you just learned something about the quadratic equation. But it s built into the process of what the children are supposed to be doing he said. Madelyne Giron says she was surprised one day to realize that the fun she was having in the music program had a lot in common with the traditio! nal work she was doing in her English class. We were writing the songs and we did similes metaphors and personification she said. The program also seems to have social benefits. Madelyne s friend Katherine Saldana said making CDs got kids in the after school program to get along. In the beginning we used to have a lot of conflicts she said. Since the program began we came more together. Andre Joyles who coordinates the program at a Queens high school says it also can help with the tough task of building teen confidence. He noted one sophomore was painfully shy at the start of the year but secretly loved writing poetry. Through the program she began putting her words to music and sharing the effort with her peers. She never really used to express herself Joyles said. She s open with us now. A goal of the Mind Trust fellowship is to create programs that are inexpensive so that they can easily be replicated. Bitz said his program costs about to put in place in a school a relatively low cost for a high tech initiative. There were nearly applicants! in the Mind Trust competition with ideas that included connecting school children with people who work behind the scenes in the sports industry and creating an after school book club for girls with themes relevant to the girls lives. Like the winning idea other applications focused on encouraging hands on student engagement in school said David Harris the Mind Trust s president and chief executive officer. Bitz who played bass guitar and the upright bass as a kid said bringing music making to schools is a sure way to draw kids in. There s just something about music that helps kids connect to themselves and the world at large he said. I m trying to capitalize on that in some way. 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Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/30/national/w102106D45.DTL


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