School of Music Student Renee Gastelum Used BYU Funding to Create a Two-Week Music Program to Teach Children in Taiwan Piano, Guitar and Choir
I visited the Good Shepherd Social Welfare Foundation in Hualien, Taiwan, during July 2023. Young girls had been brought there by Taiwan’s child protective services. After returning to Utah, whenever I thought of their names and faces, I wondered, “How could I not go back?” So, I applied for funding from the College of Fine Arts and Communications for the “All Kids Need Music: International” project.
For this project, I recruited three music instructors to teach with me at two child care facilities: the Good Shepherd Social Welfare Foundation and the Mustard Seed Children’s Home. The Good Shepherd orphanage focuses on girls who previously lived in abusive households, and the Mustard Seed Children’s Home provides support for indigenous families who are struggling to escape poverty.
The three instructors and I visited Good Shepherd in the mornings to teach piano, guitar and choir classes. We visited Mustard Seed in the afternoons to teach the same classes. We did this five days a week for two weeks. While the structure of the music classes was the same at both locations, I had the responsibility of training my instructors how to teach two different student populations: one class with five high school girls who each had an instrument and one class with 15 elementary and middle school kids who shared instruments with a partner. I had the opportunity to be creative as a leader and work with my instructors to meet students’ varying musical needs.
This project also taught me to be flexible in unfamiliar environments as a music educator. I learned how to gain and retain students’ attention and break lessons into small chunks with breaks in between. I was able to enable learning even with too few instruments and establish important classroom expectations. For example, to alleviate some pressure from the piano instructor during the afternoon piano classes, I ended up taking the youngest students to their own separate class. This “Junior Piano Class” was one of my efforts to increase teacher-to-student interactions.
Throughout the “All Kids Need Music: International” project, my perspective on how to get social impact initiatives off the ground changed. The prospect of finding funding, organizing travel, arranging living accommodations and preparing lesson plans was daunting. After arriving in Taiwan, I felt overwhelmed by the number of students and the lack of instruments at Mustard Seed. I struggled to know how to express love and safety to our students at Good Shepherd while they were overcoming childhood trauma.
By the second week of classes, I had lost motivation to continue teaching. That was when I realized that I didn’t have to do it alone. Heavenly Father, the employees at both child care facilities, my fellow instructors and the members of the Laycock Endowment committee made this project possible. I learned that people are willing to help me undertake initiatives that inspire learning. God had been there the whole time. The Laycock Endowment committee in the College of Fine Arts and Communications funded my project so that I wouldn’t have to go into debt. I found a piano instructor, guitar instructor and choir instructor who were each willing to travel to Hualien to teach kids music for two weeks. When I hit my limit that second Tuesday of the camps, God knew that I needed a break. As it happened, the next two days we were quarantined for a typhoon. Even though we missed two days of class, our students were ready to perform on Friday.
God and his servants were at my side helping me to teach girls who were victims of abuse and children of impoverished indigenous families. By the end of the two weeks, these students went from having no music experience to reading music for beginning songs, following along with and creating their own visual music maps and performing songs in a closing concert for friends, family and teachers. This was a life-changing experience for me and for the other instructors.
That summer helped me to see that my future as an educator will have unexpected challenges, but that I will never be alone when inspiring learning in others who don’t have access to music education. I am currently applying to receive a doctoral degree in music education with emphasis on nonprofit management and arts leadership. I hope that I can help cultural institutions such as orchestras and operas to expand already-existing educational programs to include underserved minors. I also recently received nonprofit status to create the Renee Chiu Music Foundation 501(c)3 so that I can qualify for more grants to continue these projects after I graduate. I can’t wait to see what my future holds for providing music education to underserved minors.