Music and Kids was founded in February of 2017 by Chuck Murphy with the intent of give free music instruction to students 8 to 18 coming from underserved communities in the Antelope Valley. Music and Kids is a 501(c)(3) community non-profit focused on teaching and enriching the lives of our students through music and the way we communicate. Developing ongoing learning opportunities to develop greater racial justice competence skills. The tone in the way we speak can be as musical as a song.

We are a direct learning and direct teaching program. We also have a one-to-one teaching ratio. Music is both a mental and physical study, along with music lessons we also are teaching our students performance.

A student enrolling with Music and Kids has several decisions to make to get started. First, they must determine what instrument they want to learn. They are not locked into one instrument, but they can only study one at a time. Lessons are one hour a week in person with a paid qualified teacher that focus on the instrument they are learning. As the student grows comfortable with their playing, the student is moved into a performance band. We split their one-hour lesson in half with the first half of the lesson learning music and the second half is learning music and performance. When the performance band has a full rehearsal, we add additional 3-hour blocks for rehearsals in each week.

Qualified music instruction, regular progress check-ins, monthly student reports and multiple performances keep the student on track and the teacher and parents informed on the student’s progress. Once a student is enrolled his or her objective is to improve, if the student improves every month with good attendance they are move forward in the program.