2019-20 Education Report
Smiling students from Larimore Elementary School in Hazlewood School District
Dear friends,
The 2019-2020 school year was an exciting time of growth for St. Louis Classical Guitar’s (SLCG) education programs and this month marks the end of my first year as Director of Education. It has been a truly amazing experience and an honor to continue the work that SLCG embarked on 5 years ago. I feel so fortunate to meet and work alongside the dedicated and hard working teachers and students of St. Louis. I am also inspired after having met so many members of our community that believe in the significance of quality music education. Support from people like you allows us to impact the lives of young people across St. Louis. Thank you for helping SLCG become a leader in music education.
The success of our 2019-2020 education programs is difficult to understate and something I am very proud of. It was our biggest year and SLCG provided twice weekly guitar instruction to 350 students in 31 programs. These programs were in several school districts throughout the St. Louis Metro area including St. Louis Public Schools, Jennings School District, Normandy Schools Collaborative, Hazelwood School District, and the majority of 3-12 schools in the Ferguson-Florissant School District. We also had a second year of important work with our program in the juvenile detention center in Clayton and began a new partnership with the St. Louis County Library where we now offer free guitar instruction at rotating branches.
While the majority of SLCG’s programs take place after school, we were able to offer daytime programming at 8 locations. SLCG believes that every school should offer daytime guitar courses, and I am thrilled to announce that Ferguson-Florissant School District will begin their first for-credit elective courses next school year. This has been an organizational dream since the inception of our education programs and is a direct result of the support SLCG was able to provide over the last five years.
William Ash with students from Kennard Classical Junior Academy in St. Louis Public Schools
In addition to the success of our education programs, SLCG’s founder, William Ash, was awarded the Arts Hero Award for Arts Education in 2020 by the State of Missouri and The Missouri Arts Council. This important recognition was a direct result of his commitment to equality and dedication to providing guitars and guitar instruction to under-resourced areas of St. Louis. Because a variety of complications impacted the recognition of this award, we hope you will send some nice words our way to share with Bill!
Of course, SLCG now faces new and unprecedented challenges due to COVID-19. After the statewide shut down of schools, we transitioned to creating digital content and providing remote instruction. One of the many new challenges facing our students and one that I am especially concerned about is extreme isolation. This new library of online content is an important step to ensure that students in our programs will have fair and equal access to music education regardless of the impact of COVID-19 and their zip code. It will also benefit our programs as a resource long after the threat of COVID-19 has passed. I am particularly proud of the hard work our teaching artists did in assisting with the creation of this content by composing several new St. Louis themed compositions during the stay-in orders in April and May. As we continue to prepare for the future we can safely say that students enrolled in our programs during the 2020-2021 school year can receive both online instruction and have access to digital content to assist with their study of music should the need arise with the potential of additional stay-in orders.
These exciting developments are all because of your belief in SLCG and the power of music education. St. Louis has a rich musical legacy and together we can continue to build upon this tradition by impacting the lives and musical development of youth all over this great city. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to furthering our mission together with you!