United Sound, a Mesa music education program for special education students, recently received a $12,500 grant award from Arizona Financial Credit Union via its local causes program.
United Sound creates chapters in various schools across Arizona and nationally, where volunteer music teachers are given curriculum material to train student peer mentors. Those student peer mentors are then paired with individual special education students who the peer mentors teach to play an instrument of their choice. The learning is specifically curtailed to accommodate for the special education students and their needs.
It’s the second year in a row that AZFCU has given the United Sound program a grant award — the program was awarded a $15,000 grant in 2024. Grant awards are funded via the local causes debit card. Foundations and organizations send in their applications via a video package describing the work they do, and the winning recipient of the grant award is picked via community voting online.
“Our local causes program was inspired by programs like United Sound. We want to really be able to capture the heart of our community and get our members engaged with a seamless way to give back through the local causes debit card,” Arizona Financial Credit Union marketing partnerships manager Rachel Galvez said. “Every time one of our members utilizes our local causes debit card, we make a contribution to a community fund, and that community fund is what allows us to give grants back out. United Sound has really stood out several times from the work that they do.”
According to United Sound executive director and founder Julie Duty, the grant will give the organization additional money to create more United Sound chapters throughout the state and more funding to ensure the programs have all the materials and resources they need.
“We have this awesome system that really relies on teacher volunteers at every single school. So what we’re doing is providing support to those teachers so that they can create the United Sound chapters in their schools,” Duty said. “The impact is that we now have the time and the staffing to spend as much time as needed with every single school so what they craft is unique and sustainable for their school in the long-term.”
One such example is Osborn Middle School. Julia Georges, the band director at Osborn, has been running a United Sound chapter at the school for about three years. Thanks to the curriculum, funding and resources provided by United Sound, she is able to provide a quality learning experience for the special education students and the peer mentors participating in the program.
Since the curriculum has to be specialized to accommodate for its participants, standard music education won’t cut it. The special education students learn the material in their own way, which requires unique curriculum material that United Sound distributes to schools. Grant awards provide the crucial funding necessary to ensure teachers and peer mentors have all they need for instruction.
“What United Sound does is provide a curriculum that our students can follow and it makes music learning much more accessible. When I am teaching a band class, we’re learning how to read standard notation. And sometimes, standard notation just doesn’t make sense,” Georges said. “So instead of differentiating half notes from quarter notes or eighth notes, we give them a food quantity. So instead of saying 1234 for quarter notes, we say cake, cake, cake, cake. Breaking it down into something like that helps make it easier for students to comprehend.”
Duty said that the program benefits special education students in numerous ways. Not only does it give them a skill to hone and practice, but it also helps them with learning how to socialize with kids their own age better, and encourages them to not isolate themselves in a school environment.
“Our program is really a social inclusion program through music. Our main goal is not to create the next Carnegie Hall musician, but to create a situation that is socially inviting where everybody can get to know everyone,” Duty said. “When you’re walking down the hall of your high school, people know you and can say hello to you. It’s difficult for all kids, but it’s especially difficult when you’re a child with a disability in a self-contained class, who might come to school after it starts and leave before it ends. It makes sense as a safety procedure to not overwhelm the kids, but it can also be isolating. When we give those kids an opportunity to do things together that matter, they build community and they build safe spaces to get to know each other as individuals.”
Peer mentors are an essential part of the program’s modus operandi. Assigning a volunteer student to be a peer mentor for a special education student helps both parties. The peer mentors, who may not have much experience interacting with special needs individuals their own age, learn how to interact and learn to be more empathetic as well.
“They work so well together. I’m always really surprised. I think at the beginning of the year, both parties are a little shy, and I think that’s probably from fear of the unknown,” Georges said. “Some of our students haven’t had a lot of interactions with people with special needs. So they might be a little hesitant, but then at a certain point in the year, they’re very comfortable speaking with them like they would any other of their peers. They’re giving high fives and saying happy birthday. It’s really awesome to see how normal it feels in our United Sound class.”
At the end of the day, Galvez hopes that United Sound realizes how much people appreciate their work and the impact it has on students.
“I am just so honored that we’ve been able to work with United Sound and see how they continue to invest in our community and to invest in our youth,” Galvez said. “The joy that they bring into everything that they’re doing, whether they’re teaching, whether they’re performing, whether they’re just mingling around. I hope they understand that taking one moment to listen can have such a beautiful ripple effect.”
United Sound is located at 136 E. Harmony, Ste. 201 in Mesa. For more information, visit https://www.unitedsound.org/.
By 
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here