DENVER — Clayton Early Learning in northeast Denver is teaming up with community partners to introduce music to low-income students to help close the education gap. The campus that serves about 500 early education students created an immersive, interactive music program as a way of bringing music to students ages 3 to 5 to connect them with the world of music by listening to an orchestral concert and providing a hands-on learning opportunity to explore instruments like the violin, trumpet, and drums.
“We are about the whole child experience here at Clayton,” President and CEO William Browning said. “It’s really giving children access to not only good health care and nutrition but things like the arts where they really get to see things that they might not get to see in their regular life.”
The students got the chance to meet professional musicians and talk to them about the instruments they play. Browing said it’s all about giving all students accessibility to the arts.
“I think the arts are vital,” Browning said. “I think the ability to have children of all ages to have accessibility to those arts is critical.”
Musicians from a group called Inside the Orchestra performed and talked with the students about their instruments as a way of introducing them to orchestra music. Dawn Kramer is a trumpet player from the group that’s setting the tempo for the students' early childhood music education.
“All the arts are important,” Kramer said. “Being influenced at an early age by different styles of music, different instruments I think is really important and it's very fun to see them light up and dance.”
The immersion program was started after the school received a $160,000 grant from PNC Foundation to enhance sensory learning opportunities, including hands-on exposure to music and newly designed sensory work areas adjacent to the Clayton Early Learning campus. The funding celebrates the 20th anniversary of PNC Grow Up Great®, PNC’s $500 million, bilingual, signature philanthropic initiative to help prepare children from birth to age 5 for success in school and life.
“This was a fantastic opportunity for us to bring two amazing organizations that are focused on early childhood education and exposing kids to arts and culture,” said PNC Bank Client and Community Relations Director Nicole Dorsey. “The brain is at that development stage where it’s going to be something that regardless of if they want to be musicians or not, that they just have access and opportunity and people that showed up to care today.”
According to the school, the grant will allow Clayton Early Learning to enhance its early childhood education and family support services with experiences that promote curiosity, exploration and problem solving. Children receive a strong start with high-quality early education, including enriching experiences like the music program.
“We provide 1,000 meals a day for the children on this campus, we have behavioral and mental health and other types of services for our kids,” Browning said. “I really think (the music program) may inspire some of them to think about the arts and what they may be able to do in their own long-term life.”
Clayton’s Park Hill campus serves low-income families in the area, 99% of whom live at or below the federal poverty line. The school believes programs like the music immersion program will help put their students on equal footing with higher income schools.
For more information about the PNC Foundation, click here.
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