This year’s survey recognizes a total of 174 school districts across 30 states for their commitment to providing music education for their students.  According to the NAMM Foundation, the “Best Communities” designation represents both a distinction worthy of pride and a call to action for local music education advocates to help preserve their current music education programs.

Teachers and school district administrators participated in a web-based survey to select this year’s winners.  Districts were measured across curricular and programmatic criteria, as well as public support of their music programs.

The complete list of Best Communities appears below, and can also be viewed online at www.nammfoundation.org.

Here in California, the California Arts Council is attempting to combat this issue by encouraging residents to support the arts through the purchase of a personalized Arts license plate.  According to the CAC, sales and renewals of these plates have raised over $20 million for California arts since they were first made available in 1994.  In fact, over 60% of the California Arts Council’s current budget comes from the Arts plate.  All fees for the Arts plate are considered a charitable contribution; the CAC’s goal is to raise $40 million for the arts in California by selling 1 million plates, which would put California among the top states in the nation for arts funding.

Many other states including Florida, South Carolina, Texas and Alabama (just to name a few) offer special Arts license plates; you can find more information on your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles website.

The week will kick off with “Music Monday” on May 3, an event in which schools, community and professional organizations will perform one piece of music simultaneously at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 11 a.m. Mountain Time, 12 p.m. Central Time, and 1 p.m. Eastern Time.  NAMM hopes that by having everyone sing the same song at the same time, music will transcend all genres and unite people through the melody and the act of performing the piece together.

NAMM is also encouraging people to pick up an instrument of their choice and play any time on May 3 as part of the Music Monday celebration.  This is the sixth year that NAMM has supported Music Monday, which is also hosted by the Coalition for Music Education in Canada and has grown to more than 2,000 schools since its inception.  You can register your school or organization as a participant in Music Monday by e-mailing musicmonday@namm.org.

If you plan to take part in Music Monday on May 3, tell us how you’ll be getting involved!  Will you be participating in the group song, or playing an instrument?

When we explain this to parents, another concern usually arises – “How can I help encourage my child to practice and stay engaged in lessons?” The good news is that there are many ways parents can help keep their children excited about their lessons. We asked some of our talented TakeLessons music teachers to share how they encourage parents to get involved and got some really great feedback.  Check out this piece written by one of our Dallas guitar teachers, Jerry W. Jerry lists some interesting ideas for parents to make the musical learning process more enjoyable for their kids. Once the kids are engaged and practicing regularly, they are more likely to see their results faster!

Jerry writes:

Tips for Music Teachers: Young Guitar Students, Parents & Practice

Each year, I am approached by parents who request that I teach guitar lessons to their children.  I am always flattered that they would choose me to teach their child.  The child is usually enthusiastic as they begin their musical journey.  After about a month, the student’s attitude begins to shift from enthusiasm to the realization that they have undertaken a lifelong journey of learning.  Based on my experience, I have observed a number of ways parents can help keep their kids engaged in the process.

1. Stay informed about the lessons.  Parental involvement in the learning process is essential.  Students, oftentimes, get caught up in the details of the lesson that they are learning.  In this situation, they tend to lose sight of the long term goals.  Parents can lend a “big picture” perspective to the child.  Parental involvement can be anything from visiting with the teacher after each lesson to view the material that has been assigned to actually taking lessons with the student.  Taking lessons together is a great way for parent and child to foster a common interest.  Oftentimes, the parent can actually assist the student at home and can even practice together.

2.  The importance of the teacher’s attitude toward each student, and their progress, cannot be overstated.  The teacher must communicate with the parents each little “victory” in the learning process.  Honest communication to the parents of the areas which are going well, as well as areas which need improvement is very helpful in keeping the student engaged in the process.

3.  Parents, just like teachers, can develop creative ways to keep students practicing.  These strategies can include:  seeing that the student use play-a-long Cds, recording practice time, practicing with the student, and taking the student to performances of great artists.  Parental involvement in this way can be very effective in helping the student achieve both short term and long term goals.

Learning is, quite simply, not a “one size fits all” process.  A Harvard education professor once stated that “you cannot make some learn something.  You can only create circumstances under which they want to learn the subject.”  Therein lies the great challenge for any teacher.  Common sense parental involvement can go a long way toward creating such an environment.

-Jerry W.

The music began in a pair of settlement houses in 1910. Within those institutions, the Community Music Center of Boston initially offered education and a sense of community to recent immigrants. Since 1971, the center has been housed at the Boston Center for the Arts in the South End, but its mission has remained consistent: to provide music instruction to urban students of varying ages and skill levels. They include some 5,500 students each week, many of them enabled by the $150,000-plus in scholarships given out annually.

The Community Music Center is marking its centennial with a series of 100 concerts, the first of which is next Friday at the Boston Arts Festival in the North End’s Christopher Columbus Park. The concerts will run through June 2011 and will range from solo recitals and orchestral performances to jazz and world music. According to David Lapin, the center’s executive director, virtually all of the concerts will be free, and more than half will take place in Boston schools. The Boston Public Library will also host an exhibition of Center memorabilia from January through April.

Lapin says that in its first years, the center focused on Eastern European immigrant children and the small African-American population that had migrated from the South.

“Obviously, we have a much fuller orbit to travel today,’’ he says. The school’s population now includes students from Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America. In the 1980s it began working with people with AIDS; more recently it has been reaching out to children with autism and older adults with Alzheimer’s disease.

“What we’ve tried to do, in each decade, is not simply look to respond to demand that’s out there for music lessons, but to create demand where it might not otherwise exist,’’ says Lapin, who has led the center since 1983. “We’re not just waiting for people to come through the door; we’re trying to create new relationships in the community and nurture a demand for arts education generally.’’

That’s why the concerts – which Lapin calls “a gift to the city’’ – will be as much about outreach as about public music-making. Many will feature students from schools with which the center has had long-running partnerships, but there will also be what Lapin calls “reasonably high-end performers’’ in the recital series and in special events.

“It reflects the twin goals of access and excellence in both education and programming more generally,’’ Lapin explains. “It’s part and parcel of what we do on a regular basis, but we’re trying to enhance the visibility of the music center and use [the concerts] as a way to not only celebrate the music center [but also] try to raise higher the banner of arts education throughout the city.’’

Some of the notable events include “Performathon,’’ the center’s annual daylong fund-raising concert, and a student composer venture with the new-music ensemble Dinosaur Annex. One set of performances seems particularly intriguing: the entire cycle of Beethoven symphonies in arrangements for solo piano, four-hand piano, and two pianos. That series – which opens with the first two symphonies on Dec. 10 – should provide an interesting counterpart to the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s performances of the symphonies.

Like other arts institutions, the center has been affected by the recent economic downturn. Lapin found that “the demand for arts education is relatively inelastic; people will still pay for education more than they might pay for tickets to a performance.’’ The largest decline has been in contributions: Lapin says that during the winter, “no one knew what was going on, and so basically, people stopped giving for a few months. And that was pretty scary, quite frankly.’’

Though the situation has since stabilized, Lapin is taking nothing for granted. “We’ll see,’’ he says. “Like everyone else, we have more than one set of fingers crossed.’’

We at TakeLessons avidly support music education for all and wish the very best for the Community Music Center and all organizations that facilitate in providing music education to children and adults alike.