Lena Shaw Elementary receives $18K MusiCounts grant for culturally relevant, tech-forward instruments

Lena Shaw Elementary is the latest Surrey school to receive a grant from MusiCounts, a Canadian charity that supports schools with funding for music education. The school received $18,000 from the Slaight Family Innovation Fund, which was used to purchase instruments and technology for students, including these marimbas. (Photos by Jacob Zinn)

New sounds are emanating from the music room at Lena Shaw Elementary where students have some new instruments and technology to support music education, courtesy of a significant grant from MusiCounts.

Last month, the Canadian charity named Lena Shaw as one of 85 schools across the country to receive funding for new instruments out of a $1.1 million investment, the largest disbursement in MusiCounts history. The school received $18,000 from the Slaight Family Innovation Fund, which supports schools in need with funding for culturally relevant and technology-forward approaches to music education, reflecting the diversity of Canadian students.

“When I started teaching at Lena Shaw, I noticed that a lot of the students were really enthusiastic about music but we didn’t necessarily have all of the best equipment to support that enthusiasm,” said core music teacher Siobhan Waldock. “I really wanted to make sure that the kids who wanted to be a part of something like music had that support, and I also wanted to honor a lot of the kids’ heritage.

“We have a super diverse population, there are some countries that I only learned about from working at this school, and I wanted them to feel they could represent their cultures through music.”

Photo by Jacob Zinn

Waldock noted the school community has many students who are from Africa or are of African heritage, which inspired her to look into instruments that acknowledged their backgrounds in preparing her grant submission in September 2024. The application process took almost the entire school year before she heard the good news, allowing Waldock to purchase, among other instruments, authentic Zimbabwean marimbas for students to play.

“The marimbas are cool because they tie into traditional cultural Zimbabwean and African music, and marimbas are also huge in Central and South America and Guatemala, many places in the world,” she said. “It represents a lot of different cultures for a lot of kids and their identities.”

MusiCounts has supported cultural musical programming at many schools in Surrey, including Indigenous drumming programs like Morning Beats at École K.B. Woodward Elementary and at Old Yale Road Elementary, as well as grants for Prince Charles Elementary and École Kwantlen Park Secondary, Tamanawis Secondary and Forsyth Road Elementary. Their latest investment also includes funding for Betty Huff Elementary from winning the Innovation Passion Prize in the Canadian Music Class Challenge.

In addition to the marimbas, Waldock said the grant afforded the school tech equipment, microphones and speakers for the choir club, and beat-making equipment, recognizing the popularity of hip-hop and rap music among students.

“A big cultural identity in the school is urban and hip-hop culture, and I wanted to get beat-making things so the kids can feel represented in the music they already listened to at home,” she said. “The music they hear on TikTok, the music that their older brothers and sisters are listening to, and they can start to engage in music that is culturally relevant to them today.”

Beyond her core music classes, Waldock said she has made the instruments available for kindergarten to Grade 7 students through the school’s extracurricular music club. When registration opened at the start of the school year, she said 50 students signed up almost instantly, filling the music room and prompting her to seek creative solutions for scheduling music time.

“We have a school where the kids are just hungry for music,” said Waldock. “Especially in this community, in this area, students don’t have the opportunity to do music outside of school. They don’t have access to private piano lessons or to be a part of an orchestra or to join a band.

“I want to give them the chance to come at lunch or recess, make a band of their own or join a bigger group band or choir, so they can still engage in music outside of Lena Shaw.”

Waldock expressed gratitude to principal Natalie Roberts and vice-principal Jessy Sandhu for their ongoing support of the music program and giving her the space to have a music room, as well as to MusiCounts for generously funding music education for schools in need. She said many music programs have small budgets that make it challenging to afford instruments and repairs, so having such a substantial grant goes a long way in sustaining these programs.

“MusiCounts really comes through for a lot of teachers in that way to advocate for its place and to give those opportunities to students,” she said. “I wish every single school in Surrey had something like this.”