Having students involved in the AYA Project is about more than just helping them to write songs. It’s about forging a relationship with a caring mentor that can help them in so many ways, musical and otherwise. Along those lines, we wanted to share the words of some of our students, who are just now completing the songwriting and recording process for the first time:
Alana, 10th Grade: “we just like, got to know each other and then we started talking about like stuff…real personal like, stuff that bothered us and stuff that happened in our lifetimes. And he’s like ‘well you seem like you have a lot of stuff to say about what happened,’ so he’s like ‘we could write about that.’ And then we started…he told me to think about how I felt and then we started writing the lyrics about how I felt and then it just came together.”
Taylor, 10th Grade: “…I wasn’t really confident about my talent and she made me view that in a different way. Like she…I don’t know how to explain it. She made me think different. She made me think that I am better than what I used to think.”
Both songwriting and mentoring are powerful processes that can support young people in a variety of ways. But when the two are combined as they are here, there are truly special things that can happen. Stay tuned next week for an update on our recording sessions and the release of our first album!
