Drum Corps Academy @ Olney Charter High School

There are ZERO competitive HS marching bands in the city of Philadelphia. That's 200,000 students denied this transformational experience. (If you don't believe Marching Bands change lives, just google "Marching Band Changed My Life"!)

Drum Corps Academy was piloted in September of 2019 to introduce the Marching Arts to any interested Philadelphia high school student and, in October of 2021, will become the ONLY COMPETITIVE MARCHING BAND in our city.

If selected as a winner, we would use the Elevate Prize to deepen, expand, and extend DCA.

DEEPEN

We would deepen Drum Corps Academy by adding Spanish-through-Band, a full-day option, and a comprehensive college-prep after-school program. Music is a language - so teaching Spanish through Band is a no-brainer. It extends the time students play their instruments, and it empowers and ELEVATES ENGLISH LEARNERS TO STUDENT LEADERS as they lead small groups in Spanish language activities. The full-day option would allow students other subjects with a music-infused curriculum, and the after-school program would point kids to college who weren't even thinking about it before our program.

EXPAND

We know our target audience and would advertise and do recruiting concerts throughout the city.

EXTEND

We would extend to 7th-12th grade.

The theme of my career, thus far, has been turning weaknesses into strengths through the power of the Arts and strong partnerships!

As music teacher at Francis Hopkinson School, I started a championship chess team, organized school wide events, and partnered with Accíon Colombia and After-School Activities Partnerships - all while founding a church youth music group which produced a CD and toured mid-America.

At Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School, I organized a band of 150 students, partnered with Commonwealth Youthchoirs, 2 drum & bugle corps, and completed 30 successful crowd-funding projects winning ASPIRA teacher of the year in 2014.

When I became Arts Coordinator in 2015, we began planning Drum Corps Academy and opened in September of 2019. We head to our first competition in October 2021.

In three years, we plan to expand to 125 students, become totally bilingual, make college a possibility for students who never thought about it, and maybe actually WIN a band competition!

In ten years we'd like to expand to 450 students, expand our course offerings, dominate several band competition divisions, and build our own Drum Corps stadium!

The 202,000 students in the city of Philadelphia, PA have ZERO ACCESS to the life-changing effects of competitive high school marching band. The benefits of marching band have been well-documented and include higher test scores, better grades, more efficient brain functioning, as well as improved cooperation, goal-attainment, and difficult-to-define "life transformation".

Drum Corps Academy makes this experience available to ANY STUDENT IN THE CITY. In our pilot year, we already improved attendance by 5% and improved our "diversity score" by 14 points. This year, we have connected students to college mentors, connected the band to musically distinguished alumni, and will begin intentional program evaluation to discover other benefits - including improved Academic Agency for English Learners when we implement Spanish-through-Band next year.

There are multiple obstacles to starting a band in Philadelphia, and Drum Corps Academy overcomes them through creative staffing & scheduling, partnering with arts-based non-profits, and sheer perseverance.

We are not attacking poverty, racism, gender inequality, language barriers, and disenfranchisement head on. However, we are providing unconditional love, a safe space, a path to college, pride for a community, and the power of music and cooperation which can transform not only lives, but a community!

We turn weaknesses into strengths.

Weakness: We don't have parents who buy their child an instrument or invest in private lessons.

Strength: Because we provide the instruments, we set the instrumentation. We actually use a Drum & Bugle instrumentation instead of standard band instruments - and require that students learn brass AND percussion - for more impact and higher scores in competitions.

Weakness: Our location is too dangerous for evening practices.

Strength: We are creating a self-contained academy-within-a-school so that we can set our own schedule. We will have the power to practice all-day before a competition and extend academic subjects before standardized testing.

Weakness: English Language Learners slow down practice because they're constantly looking to their neighbor to see if they are following directions correctly.

Strength: Our Spanish-through-Band program will flip the script and empower native Spanish-speakers to be small group leaders. Spanish-through-Band also doubles the number of periods-per-day that we are playing instruments. AND we will leverage the immigrant mindset of hard work to power our own practice.

Weakness: Urban schools don't have money for a big band staff.

Strength: Our full-day academy will bring in dual-certified staff so that your Math teacher also teaches trumpet!

In our pilot year, we improved attendance over our host school by 5% and improved "diversity score" (the likelihood that any two random students are not the same race) 14 points over our host school's general population.

In Year 2 the program is growing and improving by leaps and bounds. We performed our first Spring Show, our first parade, and will team up with local jazz legends for our graduation performance. We've sent students to musician-specific college access classes, connected a student to a Musicology Mentor, and arranged private music lessons for many.

This summer we will plan our Spanish-through-Band curriculum and begin a formal program evaluation process under the direction of a researcher at UPenn.

We know we are making an impact when:

• students who failed two major subjects in their previous school are passing, and even getting mostly A's.

• a parent yells "Now that's a band!" at the end of a recent practice - and goes on about the progress he hears since the beginning of the year.

• we were the only school-based music group in the city to continue rehearsing and performing despite the pandemic.