Tabathia Baldy

“Famous musician, Yehudi Menuhin once said, "Music makes order out of chaos." Many of our students' lives are filled with chaos. Some live it 24/7 as they battle poverty, food insecurity, abuse/neglect, and other traumatic experiences. This increases the time spent in a heightened state of "flight, fight, or freeze," which makes learning nearly impossible. Further complicating the issue, minority students, particularly Black/African American, are at increased risk of having negative school experiences including disproportionately receiving office discipline referrals, in-school suspension, and out of school suspension and having poor academic outcomes. Even when our schools provide a safe and nurturing environment, it isn't enough for some students. This project will implement a Therapeutic African Drumming program in order to decrease disproportionality for Black/African American students in disciplinary events, increase attendance rates, decrease disciplinary events, increase a sense of belonging, provide a smooth transition from elementary to middle school for students identified at-risk, and increase positive relationships among students and positive adults/peers in the school setting. Through a layered approach, all students and staff in four select schools (with a feeder pattern) will benefit from the Therapeutic African Drumming Program and a smaller number of students identified through multiple data sources will participate in the intensive Therapeutic African Drumming (iTAD) program as a social/emotional learning intervention, learning skills such as teamwork, leadership, self-regulation, stress-management, emotional regulation, as well as musical skills which will allow them to perform for others. iTAD participants will finally experience being in the spotlight for positive reasons.”