Students at Sierra Vista Junior High School received a truckload of new instruments, strings, tuners and supplies thanks to a donation from the WiSH Education Foundation.
“This donation follows the WiSH Foundation mission for the year which is STEAM with an emphasis on the arts,” said Amy Daniels, executive director of the WiSH Foundation. “Mr. Copenhaver emailed me and said we need some help, we need some instruments, we need some strings and thankfully we were in a position to say alright we can do that.”
When Daniels purchased the instruments, she was also able to give money back to the WiSH Foundation by using smile.Amazon.com.
“I was able to make a donation to the foundation through our giving here,” Daniels said. “We’re very excited about that.”
For about a month, students in Michael Copenhaver’s guitar class were anxiously waiting for the new insturments—guitars, a banjo and a banguitar—to arrive.
On Friday, the students grabbed each new instrument with smiles as they began to tune and test them right away.
“This really augments the program in the fact that it adds more texture to their ensembles having the low range with these basses,” said Copenhaver, who is also a social studies teacher at the junior high school. “The banguitar adds some flavor to the small groups we put together.”
Over the years, the guitar program at Sierra Vista has grown thanks to donations from individuals and organizations like the WiSH Foundation.
“Our program started with 20 guitars and we built it up, we have four electric guitars at this point,” Copenhaver said. “I always say all the cool stuff that kids really love to play is all the donated things.”
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