By Peter Elacqua
Staff Writer
COLTS NECK – Seventh grade pupils at the Cedar Drive Middle School will be able to learn how to play guitar during the 2016-17 school year.
The Colts Neck K-8 School District Board of Education has accepted a grant from the Traveling Guitar Foundation which will provide pupils with equipment and a guitar instruction program.
The Traveling Guitar Foundation, founded in 2010 by Livingston native Damon Marks, is a nonprofit organization which provides free musical equipment and instruction to school districts across the United States.
Cedar Drive Middle School will be visited by the foundation’s team. Pupils will hear a live performance by Marks and other musicians, be given a one-on-one interactive workshop, receive a donation of new guitars, amplifiers, cables and percussion instruments, and be given an eight- to nine-week curriculum on guitar.
According to the board, Colts Neck High School music teacher B.J. Willis will teach the course.
“After a final discussion over the summer with the music teacher, principal and superintendent of schools, the Traveling Guitar Foundation will identify the needs of the music course,” said Chris Johnston, a representative of the foundation.
On May 29, 2015, representatives of the foundation visited Colts Neck High School and provided the school with a bass guitar, two amplifiers, an electric guitar and instrument cables.
Colts Neck Superintendent of Schools MaryJane Garibay said K-8 administrators got the idea of partnering with the foundation from Colts Neck High School Principal Dan Simon.
Garibay spoke about the music program after the grant has expired.
“As we are using grant funds to purchase materials for our music program, we as a district plan to design and implement a program that is engaging for students, meaningful for students, valued by our parents and guardians, and fiscally sustainable beyond the term of the grant,” Garibay said.
“I have been doing this (the foundation) for six years across the country,” Marks said. “I have been in schools like Colts Neck and I have been in schools in Compton (Calif.). We go in for a purpose and the purpose is to give quality instruments to the music programs so (students) can use them for a purpose, which is an outlet.”
The Traveling Guitar Foundation recently partnered with Guitargate, a “virtual classroom” that provides students with professional guitar instruction and the opportunity to post videos for peer and instructor feedback.
Marks spoke about the importance of school music programs on the foundation’s website.
“When the country faces budgetary restraints, arts programs are always the first to vanish from the schools,” Marks said. “Our mission is to foster creativity and intellectual growth through arts programs and to ensure that elementary and high school students have access to high quality musical instruments plus comprehensive instruction throughout their formative years. The schools work very hard to keep these programs alive. We are proud to help by presenting them with guitars and equipment, along with musical performances.”
