Teacher Wins a Grammy
Music teacher Annie Ray was honored at the Grammy Awards for her work with students with disabilities.
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Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, and SZA may have dominated the 2024 Grammy Awards, but not all the winners were recording artists. The 2024 Music Educator Grammy Award went to Annie Ray, a music teacher who started a program for students with disabilities.
Ray, who is orchestra director and head of the performing arts department at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, started the Crescendo Orchestra to give all students the opportunity to learn about music. The students in the program have developmental and intellectual disabilities, and many are not verbal. But music is a language everyone shares, says Ray, who comes from a musical family and has played the harp since she was 5 years old.
That belief helped spark the idea for the orchestra back in 2021. Ray teamed up with special education teachers to design the program. Students start by learning about rhythm, first with scarves and then with egg shakers. Eventually, they practice on a cardboard version of an orchestra instrument, learning how to care for it and store it properly. Finally, they receive the real thing. Ray also started a parent program that gives the students’ caregivers the opportunity to learn the same instruments as their children.
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In this 2021 photo, Annie Ray uses a projection screen to teach music to nonverbal students.
The Crescendo Orchestra program isn’t only about learning to play music. It’s about learning to work together—and realizing the value of making a mistake. Ray says the program has also given her a greater sense of the power of music.
“I really push my students to be bold, go outside their comfort zone and realize…we have to learn how to make bad sounds before we learn how to make good sounds,” Ray told National Public Radio (NPR).
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Along with the Grammy Award, Ray received $10,000, which she’ll use to expand her music program. She also had a chance to attend the Grammys, where Taylor Swift hugged her, and Meryl Streep told her about how a music teacher changed her life.
“This is the students’ award,” she told NPR. “I’m just lucky enough to have been a part of their journey and their process and to have been taught by them.”
