FORT COLLINS, CO – Thanks to your donations, Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation donated an ALESIS 8-pc Drum Kit and a Flagship Music Rug for the students at O’Dea Core Knowledge Elementary School in Fort Collins, CO!

Students will enjoy an updated music room as the music rug encourages group activities, singing and dancing at a critical age of their development.

Mrs. McLaren, a teacher at O’Dea Elementary says “My students have a love of learning, creating, and performing music! A general music classroom is a bit different from a standard grade level classroom in that every student in the school is a student in my classroom. This brings vast diversity into our classroom culture and into my teaching!

In our daily learning we move, sing, dance, and play along with various styles of music to meet both the needs and interests of students and the requirements of our music standards and curriculum.
Students come in to my classroom with varying levels of musical skill, knowledge and exposure, this makes my students and their learning needs unique.”

Students at O’Dea were learning modern music with outdated materials and technology; crowding onto an ancient rug, doing their best to master skills and concepts of both modern and classic music with the limited and outdated resources available to them.

“Updating our rug and drum set would allow students a comfortable learning environment along with the equipment and instrumetns they need to excel in the Little Kids Rock/Modern Band program offered as an enrichment opportunity here at O’Dea.

A bright, clean, new rug will allow students more learning space when seated; students would have a clean learning space to sit, listen, write, sing, play instrumetns, and respond to music through our engaging lessons and activities.

An electric drum set will bring new life, energy, and excitment to our fledgling Little Kids Rock/Modern Band program, through this program students as young as third grade are given the opportunity to form a band with their friends and learn music in a new way. Through modern rock and pop music students learn a new instrumen and how to work together as a band to master new skills and learning concepts such as chord progressions and song writing. Adding electric drums will give more students the opportunity to learn the drums as my clssroom currently only houses one standard drum set. Electric drums save space and offer quieter rehearsals with less disruption to the classrooms surrounding mine.”

Thanks to the generosity of Joe Bonamassa fans and music lovers like you, Keeping the Blues Alive has funded Mrs. McLaren’s project and the materials will arrive just in time to prep for the new school year 🙂

Mrs. McLaren expresses her gratitude:

Dear Keeping The Blues Alive Foundation, Inc.,

Words cannot express how thankful I am for your support of music education! I can’t wait to see my students faces when they see the new resources they will get to use to enhance their experience this year! I am especially grateful for my students with special needs who will be able to better engage in classroom activities with structured seating and adaptive equipment. Thank you all so much!

With gratitude,
Mrs. McLaren

Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation is a 501c3 organization that makes a donation to a school in need of music instruments, supplies, sheet music, and more every week!

Your donation helps us keep music in schools, while preserving blues heritage. Without your support, we would not be able to reach as many students around the country.

We are grateful for your generosity.  To date, KTBA has reached over 63,000 students by sponsoring over 400 various music projects! The journey has been incredible!

If you would like to help us to continue to grow, click here to make a donation! All donations are fully tax-deductible!

Thank you for keeping music education in schools!