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Disabilities Advocate Annie Ray Wins 2024 GRAMMY Music Educator Award

February 1, 2024, 1:03 PM · "Music can come from anyone, anywhere, you just have to be willing to give them a voice."

Those are words from music teacher Annie Ray, who will receive the 2024 Music Educator Award during the Recording Academy's Special Merit Awards Ceremony Saturday as part of GRAMMY Week 2024.

Selected from more than 2,000 initial nominations from all 50 U.S. states, the Music Educator Award recognizes current educators who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the music education field and demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools.

Ray has a remarkable story - she is a passionate advocate for providing universal access to music education, and her work with children with disabilities has shown that it is indeed possible to create programs that reach students who have traditionally not been included.

A professional harpist who earned Bachelor of Music degrees in Music Education and Harp Performance from the University of North Texas in 2017, Ray came from a musical family - her mother was a music teacher, her aunt an orchestra director and her uncle a band director.

As orchestra director and performing arts department chair at Annandale High School in Annandale, Va., Ray has created several innovative programs to expand participation in music education. Her innovative Crescendo Orchestra program, which she started in 2021, serves students with severe developmental or intellectual disabilities (those classified as "Category B" or "Cat-B"). This includes children with Down's Syndrome, severe autism - some who are almost completely non-verbal.

She began by teaching them with "music movement scarves" to learn to follow symbols on the board, then introduced egg shakers, to help learn to start and stop sound together. They moved on to cardboard instruments, to learn how to take care of an instrument. She even found a charity to provide real instruments for the students. The program was featured January 2022 in Washington Post article.

Additionally, Ray created an orchestra for parents, the Fairfax County Public Schools Parent Orchestra, which allows almost 200 caregivers annually to learn to play their child’s instrument.

Here is the Ted Talk that Ray gave in April 2022, called "The Sounds of Success":

As the recipient of the GRAMMYs Music Educator Award, Ray will receive a $10,000 honorarium and matching grant for the school’s music program. She was one of 10 finalists; the other nine finalists will receive a $1,000 honorarium and matching grants for their schools. They are:

• Meg Byrne, of Roosevelt Elementary in Bettendorf, Iowa
• Ernest Chicklowski, of Ipswich Middle and High School in Tampa, Florida
• Michael Coelho, of Ipswich Middle and High School in Ipswich, Massachusetts
• Antoine Dolberry, of P.S. 103 Hector Fontanez School in Bronx, New York
• Jasmine Fripp, of KIPP Nashville Collegiate High School in Nashville, Tennessee
• J.D. Frizzell, of Briarcrest Christian School in Eads, Tennessee
• Coty Raven Morris, of Portland State University in Portland, Oregon
• Kevin Schoenbach, of Oswego High School in Oswego, Illinois
• Matthew Shephard, of Meridian Early College High School in Sanford, Michigan

You might also like:

• Inclusion and the Story of Violinist Adrian Anantawan
• Discussion: Learning Disabilities in Students
• Repairing 1,500 School Instruments with a 'Symphony for a Broken Orchestra'

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