Oscar-winning directors Ben Proudfoot (left) and Kris Bowers (right) pose with student musicians who were their guests at the 96th Oscars Awards ceremony on Sunday, March 10, 2024. Photo Credit: John Shearer, Black Entertainment Television, LLC

Composer and director Kris Bowers delivered remarks about the power and importance of music education during his Oscar acceptance speech on Sunday, March 10, 2024. He was recognized by the Motion Picture Academy for his film The Last Repair Shop, which he co-directed with Ben Proudfoot. The production garnered the Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary Short Film.

“Music education isn’t just about creating incredible musicians,” declared Bowers. “It’s about creating incredible humans,” he said. Bowers went on to explain the importance of music education in a time of increased technology usage by young people. “We’re living in pretty traumatic times and spending less than 30 seconds on Instagram I can feel pretty anxious and depressed,” asserts Bowers. “And you have so many kids that don’t have the tools to process those feelings,” he continued. “The arts are an incredibly important vehicle to communicate through these times.” Proudfoot added, “We hope young people will put down their phones and pick up a saxophone.”

The film’s subject matter shines a spotlight on the inspirational story of a Los Angeles workshop that repairs broken musical instruments that are loaned to over 80,000 public school students free of charge. Los Angeles Unified is the only big city school system that provides free bassoons, trombones, sousaphones, cellos, piccolos, and every other kind of instrument to their student musicians.

In this downtown workshop, a team of four technicians maintain the instruments. The four technicians profiled in the documentary are Dana Atkinson, who repairs stringed instruments; Duane Michaels, who works on woodwinds; Paty Moreno, who repairs brass instrument; and Steve Bagmanyan, who began as a piano tuner but has. now become supervisor of the shop.

Throughout the month of March, teachers all over the country will be celebrating Women’s History Month with their students. The annual observance features women’s contributions to history, culture, and society, and has been celebrated in the United States since 1987. Here’s a list of some resources and materials teachers might want to examine for inclusion in their Women’s History Month lessons.

The National Women’s History Museum (NWHM) provides many resources for Women’s History Month, such as articles, online exhibits, virtual field trips, and classroom resources. You can also find information about women history makers and biographies at this site.

Have a look at the teaching resources available at Scholastic.com. On this site teachers can find women’s history month articles, book lists, lesson plans, and online activities for grades K-12.

Some of the resources available at www.history.com include background information on the annual observance, and photo galleries of important women figures in history, divided into such categories as women in politics, sports, the arts, and science, There is also a dandy timeline of milestones in women’s history, a list of famous firsts in women’s history, information about women’s suffrage, and more.

Take a look at the website www.womenshistory.gov, which is currently offering online exhibitions about women’s suffrage, Rosa Parks, Native American women artists, and more. The website is supported by the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Still need more? Here’s a list of additional resources compiled by Edutopia, an offshoot of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Includes links to websites that offer lesson plans, printables, digital exhibits, primary sources, and STEM materials.

Enjoy!