Music and Mentorship: How an Austin Org Is Helping Foster Kids Survive the System

Working as a prosecutor in the juvenile justice system can be a daily lesson in despair, so when Karyn Scott left her job as a felony prosecutor in Austin, Texas, in 2000 she wanted to find some way to work with troubled youth, especially children in foster care. She had grown discouraged watching a parade of foster kids get shuffled through a burdened system, failing to receive the added help many needed to overcome upheaval, neglect and sometimes abuse.
The courts just don’t have the resources to keep up. There are some 400,000 kids in foster care in the United States and about 30,000 in Texas, according to federal and state agencies. About 59 percent eventually are reunited with a parent, legal caretaker or a family member, and only 22 percent are legally adopted, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The rest are left under court supervision or transferred to a variety of agencies, including, unfortunately for a few, juvenile correctional facilities. Some 10 percent are emancipated, given adult status, by the courts and 1 percent run away. During their time in foster care, most children live in family homes, while a small minority are placed in group homes. Many kids bounce in and out of the system.
Scott wanted to find a way to keep children from becoming unmoored as they traveled through the foster care system, a tempestuous journey that can be dispiriting and difficult. She also wanted to offer the courts more resources to address each kid’s particular needs. “They need a consistent friend in their life,” Scott says, especially since their lives are marked by so much volatility — they’re moved often from one care setting to another, disrupting their home and school routines.
Scott’s mission was to create a program that would help encourage bonds with a child or teenager that would last. In 2009, after exploring various programs targeting foster kids, she came up with the idea of using music to ease that connection. Austin, which touts itself in true Texas style as the “live music capital of the world,” seemed like the perfect spot to launch her new initiative: Kids in a New Groove (KING). In its early days, the program, which pairs music teacher-mentors with foster kids in one-on-one relationships, “grew organically,” says Scott, as word spread quickly among Austin’s abundance of music teachers. To date, hundreds of kids have graduated from KING, with 80 children in the program at any one time.
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KING uses both volunteer and paid teachers — the latter are those who have served with the program over the long haul. One veteran is Missy Hance, who studied music education at West Virginia University, before moving to Austin to teach music to both public- and private-school kids. She’s been teaching and mentoring KING students for more than four years. Working with foster care children requires her to be “more sensitive to their needs,” Hance says, since many of them are “down on themselves and do give up a lot easier.” It’s taught Hance a lot of patience, and led her to explore new methods of instruction and communication to better reach foster kids, many of whom may have been neglected or abused. She says music allows her students “to express emotions that they are not always able to express in words. It gives them a voice.”
The program uses a reward system that offers both stability and motivation. Each student earns stickers as they reach a series of curriculum goals set by their teacher. Achievements are continually reinforced: Five stickers earn a small reward, perhaps a T-shirt. Then, as students progress, the rewards grow larger, and if they complete the program, the ultimate reward — they get their own instrument. “I always push myself and try to get the child to get better,” says Hance. “Foster kids or not, theyʼre kids and they are just like any other kids.”
But the programʼs true success stems from its core element, says Scott — mentoring. KING emphasizes developing each teacherʼs mentoring skills and the cementing of a steady, personal connection between teacher and student. Over time, the kids learn to trust an adult, even though so many grown-ups have failed them in other areas of their lives. That “consistent friend in their life,” as Scott characterizes it, never deserts them, not when the child is adopted, moves on or comes of age and graduates from the program. One student, Anthony (his last name is withheld for privacy), learned to play the guitar during his stay in a group home. He was so enthusiastic that he began teaching his roommates how to play. Eventually Anthony, now 14, was placed in a rural home outside of Austin, but he continued to get lessons from his teacher via Skype.
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The act of learning an instrument may confer immeasurable benefits too. Research has shown that studying music can rewire the brain in ways that may affect the processing of emotion and self-awareness, which is “why this program works for kids who have been abused,” Scott says. A 2012 study by the National Endowment for the Arts showed socially and economically disadvantaged children and teenagers exposed to the arts did better both in academic and social development. Studies by the Society for Neuroscience released in 2013 also found that music education helped boost neural pathways in the parts of the brain associated with creativity and decision-making.
One of the programʼs notable graduates is Joshua Moore, a member of the Austin alternative pop band Scarecrow Birdy, which plays in the city’s clubs and, thanks to KING underwriting, recently recorded its first EP. As a child, Moore was in and out of foster care, living in various temporary homes and a shelter while his parents grappled with drug addiction and prison. Moore, a guitar player and songwriter, credits KING for helping him survive his childhood, and has performed at the program’s fundraisers to give back. “Music is not so much expression of life as it is and life as it should be. It’s life as you want it to be,” he told the newspaper Austin American-Statesman in 2012.
Austin’s music community has come out to support KINGʼs efforts wholeheartedly. The organization relies on donations — it holds an annual major fundraiser — to pay for kids’ lessons. A yearʼs worth of instruction for each KING student costs about $1,000. This yearʼs Music for the Soul fundraiser, which will take place on May 1, will headline Martie Maguire and Emily Robison, the founding members of the Dixie Chicks, who now perform as the Court Yard Hounds.
Further down the line, Scott is planning to expand KING’s mentoring-teaching model beyond its current geographic limits — for now, KING works primarily with children in Austin, and also with some in Houston and Dallas. But wherever KING’s future students may come from, Scott has the same aspiration for all of them: using long-term loving relationships to teach them skills like goal setting, accountability and perseverance that will help them navigate the foster care system and life thereafter.
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How California’s Scorching Sun is Saving the Arts

The glorious power of the sun is saving arts programs in California schools. Now that’s music to our ears.
As Truth Atlas reports, the state’s 2011 deficit swelled to $27 billion, which meant that school districts had to find ways to slash their budgets. Teachers were laid off, summer school was cancelled, and in the case of the Firebaugh-Las Deltas Unified School District in Fresno County, their entire music program was silenced.
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However, in 2012, the small, rural school district found a way to offset the crippling cut. Truth Atlas writes that after borrowing a zero percent loan from the state, Firebaugh was able to install solar structures in three of its five district schools — saving money on energy costs and revitalizing its music program. In fact, thanks to clean, green energy, the district is reportedly on track to save $750,000 over the first five years and about $9 million over 25 years.
Since the 2008 recession, cash-strapped schools across the country have been faced with brutal cost-saving measures. Unfortunately, arts programs are usually first on the chopping block. Some may think that the arts are an expendable luxury, but studies show that music education can actually increase IQs and raise test scores. And anyone who’s seen an episode of Glee  knows that music class is a place where students who might feel like social outcasts can fit in.
The importance of arts in schools is clear and the show must go on. Thanks to California’s powerful rays, it will.

Meet the Musicians Helping Veterans Write Their Own Country Songs

Everyone’s heard the old joke about what you get when you play a country song backwards: You get your truck back, you get your dog back, and you get your wife back.
Some Nashville musicians hoped their efforts would be more uplifting than reversing a sad song when they recently teamed up with veterans in Columbus, Georgia to write country songs — often about painful experiences these vets have been carrying with them since their service.
The participants included Bob Regan, who has written such songs as “Busy Man” by Billy Ray Cyrus and “Thinkin’ About You” by Trisha Yearwood, and Tim Maggart, a singer-songwriter and Army veteran himself. These two, in addition to  other musicians, first spent time getting to know the vets, then collaborated on a song about their life before performing the songs around a campfire at the Warrior Outreach retreat.
Don Goodman, who wrote several songs for Lee Greenwood including “Ring on Her Finger, Time on Her Hands,” and “Angels Among Us” by Alabama, told Dante Renzulli of WTVM that the vets’ songs all tell different personal stories. “Sometimes it’s a story about their car, their truck, their girlfriend, their mom, their dad. They get things out that they want to say to them, but they can’t. But when we get in there, playing the guitar, and get caught up in the music, they let go of demons that they’ve been carrying around for years. I just worked with a man who fought in Vietnam who let go of a demon he’d been carrying fifty years. He finally told another human being what was killing him. And from that day on, his life has changed, and that was more important to me than any number one song I’ve ever written.”
Now that sounds like a song worth singing.
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Can a Quieter New Orleans Still Be Fun? City Officials Are Betting Yes

Can a city play the role of parent? After former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s earnest public health efforts like curbing large soda sales and banning smoking in restaurants and workplaces earned him the dubious nickname “Nanny in Chief,” it would seem the answer is no.
And yet New Orleans, known as much for its rollicking bon temps atmosphere as it is for its Cajun flavor, is trying to lower its laissez-faire music reputation a bit. The New Orleans City Council introduced revisions to the city’s noise ordinance on Dec. 19, setting new limits on decibel levels, and with this year’s annual Mardi Gras parade filed away, it’s trying to strike a delicate balance between fun and order.
“It may be one of the biggest challenges anybody could imagine,” David Woolworth, a nationally-known sound expert with Oxford Acoustics in Oxford, Mississippi, who presented a report commissioned by the council on how best to revise the city’s noise ordinance, told The New York Times. In the wake of last week’s Mardi Gras, Woolworth is taking decibel measurements on the French Quarter’s infamously raucous Bourbon Street. “People just take for granted that that’s the way it’s going to be,” Woolworth said of the noisiest place in the city, and the biggest target for complaints by the neighbors.
Challenging (and nebulous) as it may be, the noise ordinance has some concrete points: Enforcing a maximum decibel level of 85 on the popular eight-block stretch of Bourbon Street, and maintaining a maximum level of 75 decibels in commercial areas between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. In perspective, the current ordinances puts the ceiling at 10 decibels above the ambient noise level, or 60 (whichever is higher) on Bourbon Street, and 80 in other commercial areas. Those five or ten decibels make a big difference when you’re trying to get a good night’s sleep.
Interestingly, business owners on Bourbon Street are willing to participate. Robert L. Watters, who owns Rick’s Cabaret and Rick’s Saloon on the strip, is so invested that he’s now the chairman of a state agency that manages the French Quarter. Though civic activists like Nathan Chapman doubt club owners’ ability to permanently enforce rules, Watters is intent on getting the “wild and woolly” band of Bourbon Street proprietors involved in the city’s power structure.
All that should placate locals like Glen David Andrews, a trombone player who has led a parade in the City Council chambers. Tamping down noise on Bourbon Street sounds tantamount to removing lights from Times Square, but both landmarks have something in common — they’re beloved by tourists, but they can be a nuisance to city residents, particularly ones who live near the ever-expanding tourist districts.
“The problem with Bourbon is you have a bunch of these new clubs and they’re not the essence of the city,” Andrews said. “They got jam bands and they’re just blasting music. At least in the ‘80s you still had classy joints.”
The ordinance doesn’t touch the nature of the clubs, but it has a chance to keep them under control. A well-managed, fun party scene may be the Bourbon Street of both tourists’ and locals’ dreams.

Homelessness Didn’t Stop the Music From This Teenager

Whether it’s jazz, hip hop, or classical, music has the ability to lift a person’s mood. Seventeen year old Dominic Ellerbee, of Denver, Colorado, found that to be the truth when his family hit hard times.
Last year, Dominic was forced to live in a minivan with his mother, Madonna, and his little sister Dejaune. But Dominic had a creative outlet that enabled him to keep his spirits up: He’s a multi-instrumentalist and composer making a name for himself in the Mile High music community by playing and starring in the Denver Public Schools’ Citywide Honor Band.
Dominic, who plays the six-string bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, drums, the piano, the vibraphone and the recorder, also writes music for his school’s drum line and gives music lessons to other students. Of his difficult life, he told Alison Noon of the Denver Post, “It was hard sometimes, but it never really got to me because I had music and stuff.”
For months now, Dominic has moved from house to house, staying with friends and family members. But he expects his transitory life to become more settled now that his mother has found a job and they plan to move into an apartment this month. Meanwhile, he’s writing an original musical that, if completed, the school director at Denver South promised to stage next year.
Our guess is this young musical talent can finish anything he tries.
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Every Disabled Kid Should Have a Music Teacher Like This

Kevin Smith, a music teacher at Balwin, Mo. middle school, couldn’t bear the fact that one of his students, 12-year-old Melissa Henricks, wanted to learn to play the flute but was constrained by her disability. Henricks was born with Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension and suffered from a form of cerebral palsy as a result of the bleeding on her brain.
But the young survivor has always had a passion for music, so Smith worked with the school district to make a flute for her that she could play with one hand, and he even spent his vacation developing a fingering chart that she could use to play it. “If someone is that determined, we want to help that passion, “said Kelly Mignerone, assistant principal at the school. But Smith went above and beyond, working with his wife to find a shop to build the special instrument in Texas. “It’s amazing how wonderful he could be to make this for me,” Henricks said. Every kid should be so lucky to have a teacher like Smith.
 

Music Can Change a Troubled Kid’s Life. Here’s the Proof

More than a decade ago, Margaret Martin was at a farmers’ market in Los Angeles when she saw a group of swaggering gang members with shaved heads give money to a little boy playing Brahms on his violin. “Those gang members were teaching me that they would rather be doing what the child was doing than what they were doing, but they never had the chance,” Martin told Josh Aronson of the PBS NewsHour. So in 2001, Martin established the Harmony Project, a non-profit providing low-income Los Angeles youths with instruments and at least five hours of instruction per week. The program now helps more than 2,000 students with stunning results.
In the neighborhoods the Harmony Project serves, on average 50 percent of students do not graduate from high school, and 80 percent of black and Latino students do not read at grade level. This year, students in the Harmony Project graduated at a rate of 93 percent.
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Dr. Nina Kraus of Northwestern University conducted a study that demonstrates even more clearly the profound effect music education is having on these kids. She selected a group of 80 youths from a gang-ridden L.A. neighborhood, and assigned half of them to the Harmony Project, while the others waited a year before enrolling. The group taking music lessons showed a marked increase in language comprehension, gains the second group didn’t begin to make until they also started music lessons. It’s possible, Kraus thinks, that music education may enhance a child’s neurological development enough to help those who perform below grade level catch up. “Early sustained music learning is actually the frame upon which education itself can be built for low-income kids,” Martin said. That’s music to our ears.

“Stand Up for Heroes” Turns to Music Therapy for Wounded Veterans

Stand Up for Heroes gets a lot of well-deserved attention, with recent celebrities including Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jon Stewart rising in support of veterans and helping raise funds to support injured veterans. But one innovative piece that’s getting less coverage is MusiCorps, based at Walter Reed. Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters took notice and started drawing attention to the program, which uses cutting-edge research and creative techniques to let music work its magic on wounded warriors. The initiative is creating some beautiful music and inspiring stories, and on the way it’s showing off the legitimate benefits and successes of music therapy in the healing process.