Stanford Live's K-12 Programs Fund 2024–25 Report

In our 2024–25 season, the generosity of our K-12 Programs Fund donors provided essential support for performances, teacher trainings, and in-school programs for students. Stanford Live’s K-12 programs served over 30 local schools through a dynamic variety of approaches, both in schools and on the Stanford campus.

Our student matinee series offered students access to art forms and cultural resources from around the globe, with world-renowned artists performing for nearly 3,000 students and teachers from Silicon Valley and beyond.

Our opening performance, Fiesta Sonora, was a spectacular celebration of mariachi and the culturally rich region of Oaxaca. The program featured three Los Angeles-based ensembles: Mariachi Arcoiris de Los Angeles, the world’s first LGBTQ+ mariachi ensemble; Ballet Folklórico Nueva Antequera, who perform traditional music and dance of Oaxaca; and Maqueos Music, who bring the sounds of Oaxacan wind and brass bands to U.S. stages. The concert was a magical introduction to the colors and sounds of Oaxaca’s annual Guelaguetza festival of Indigenous cultures, and brought the three ensembles together for their first-ever collaboration. Many attending teachers praised the performance for being so relevant to their students.

In November, we welcomed the Zimbabwean women’s vocal quartet Nobuntu to our series. The artists gave an energetic and highly interactive introduction to the music, dance, and languages of Zimbabwe, inviting students to sing and dance along as they learned about the country’s unique mix of cultures and multilingual society.

We continued the season with a sold-out performance by innovative Colombian-American jazz harpist Edmar Castañeda and his quartet. Edmar shared his own story of immigrating to the U.S. and developing his unique mix of jazz and Colombian jaropo rhythms. He also gave an introduction to the harp and its presence in cultures around the world before sweeping the audience away with the virtuosity and sheer joy of his playing. One of our partner schools in East Palo Alto’s Ravenswood district, Belle Haven Elementary, brought their entire student body of nearly 400 to the performance.

The performances enjoyed strong attendance, reaching 88% of capacity for the season, with two of our five performances at full capacity. Our longstanding policy of donating student matinee tickets and covering bus costs for Title 1 schools and others expressing financial need was even more valuable for attendees this year. For the first time, we donated over 50% of matinee tickets to schools with financial need. One quarter of participating schools were brand new to the programs, attesting to growing awareness of our work in the educational community.

Our teacher workshop series emphasized arts participation as a pathway toward cultural understanding. In September we launched our season with Oaxacan Arts and Culture led by Isai Pazos, Director of Santa Cruz Oaxacan arts ensemble Senderos. A native of Oaxaca with a deep background in its cultures, Isai offered teachers a mini-immersion in the region, introducing visual arts, music and dance activities they could share with their classrooms. Teachers learned how to make alebrijes, Oaxaca’s miniature sculptures of fantastical animals, with everyday materials, and a traditional dance from the Guelaguetza festival.

Similarly, Exploring African Cultures Through Music, Dance, and Stories, led by Chike Nwoffiah of the Silicon Valley African Film Festival and Ghanaian drummer Pope Flyne, was a wonderful survey of drumming, dance, and songs to share with students. Chike discussed his own roots in Nigeria, the role of the arts in African cultures, and life on the continent today. We had overwhelmingly positive responses from participants, as one teacher commented in her survey, “Excellent and provocative introduction about perceptions of Africa. The hands-on drumming was fantastic. Thank you very much for offering such a high-quality workshop!”

Mime and theater artist Todd Farley closed the series with Music, Movement, and Expression: A Masterclass for Teachers. A former student of the great Marcel Marceau, Farley led a detailed exploration of how shared movement can build a classroom community. His introduction to the language of mime demonstrated ways for kinesthetic learners, who may not respond to traditional teaching approaches, can fully participate and succeed when given avenues to suit their learning styles.

The centerpiece of our programs on campus was a teaching and performance residency by AXIS Dance Company. AXIS, who are pioneers of integrating dancers with and without disabilities, offered a series of workshops and performances that strengthened our longstanding commitment to inclusion and access. 

Their Fundamentals of Inclusive Teaching workshop offered multiple approaches for educators to develop inclusive language, concepts, and activities to ensure students with disabilities are full participants in classrooms. The company shared their guiding principles and offered hands-on approaches to address considerations such as the physical environment of a classroom. They closed with a participatory section on “translation” of dance movement for all bodies as a specific exercise and as a model for making curriculum accessible for all students.

The company’s Teacher Training in Accessible Dance weekend intensive extended and deepened the previous workshop’s approaches. Educators from as far as Carmel joined us for a two-day immersion that went from introducing the company’s principles to having teachers create original curriculum applying AXIS’s concepts to participants’ real-world classrooms. The workshop drew a mix of dance teachers, other arts specialists, generalist teachers and disability advocates who all benefited from the depth of the company’s knowledge and their commitment to accessible learning. As one participant commented in our post-workshop surveys, “This workshop was so informative, so eye-opening, so rich! AXIS information around accessibility is so necessary!”

The company returned several weeks later for two educational performances. Their sold-out matinee for grades K-5 included excerpts from company repertory, humorous interactive skits, and playful but informative demonstrations of accessibility in action. We responded to requests from middle and high school teachers by adding the company’s program for grades 6-12 to our matinee schedule, and AXIS’s performance encompassed full length works from their innovative repertory, a more sophisticated introduction to accessibility, and a discussion of inclusive dance practices with students who were invited to join the company on stage.

The programs clearly had a powerful effect on our school audiences. A middle school teacher reached out to share her students’ remarkably thoughtful reflections on the arts and disability following the performance. One 7th grader wrote,

"It showed me the creativity of people who face physical challenges. The dancers' ability to tell stories through movement, despite their disabilities, was inspiring and moving. It made me appreciate the power of determination and the importance of being included. I felt more aware of the barriers that people with disabilities overcome and the need to support their talents. It showed how everyone, regardless of their abilities, has a life to live, and that they can do anything."

We continued our longtime collaboration with Quinteto Latino, who serve as resident teaching artists in our programs in the Ravenswood City School District. The ensemble’s next generation group, The QL Fellows, returned for a second year, contributing teaching and performances at all four district schools. They received ongoing mentorship from the quintet’s founder and Artistic Director, Armando Castellano, who also taught in the programs. Jointly designed with district music teachers, the residency included co-teaching classes, developing creative music projects with students, and performing concerts in classes and assemblies. The Fellows have developed their own version of Quinteto Latino’s interactive assembly program, Raices de Nuestra Música/Our Musical Roots, and continued to delight Ravenswood students with their performances. 

An exciting element of the programs was a newly created work commissioned from Colombian-American composer Juan Sebastián Cardona-Ospina for students at Los Robles-Ronald McNair Academy to perform alongside members of Quinteto Latino. The piece, ¿Viene la Lluvia?, playfully evokes the coming and going of rain through repeated patterns, and was created with direct input from students. This was the fourth iteration of our unique commissioning program mixing student and professional parts, which gives students a feeling of being heard and valued and a sense of ownership over their learning. 

Ravenswood schools also participated enthusiastically in our teacher workshops and student matinees, making up 33% of total matinee attendance. With Ravenswood being an all-Title 1 district, we continued to cover both tickets and bus costs.

After a brief pilot last season, we also expanded the Quinteto Latino residency programs at Hoover and Garfield elementary schools in the Redwood City School District. At both of these schools, students are over 95% socioeconomically disadvantaged and over two-thirds are English learners.

From performances to workshops to our teaching artist residencies, all of our programs reflected our commitment to increasing access to arts learning and brought noteworthy results. One fourth grade teacher from San Jose who had requested a ticket and bus scholarship and brought his students for the first time wrote, 

"My gratitude for your generosity is truly appreciated. The whole experience of seeing Axis Dance Company perform at the Bing Concert Hall was amazing. All of my students were surprised by how nice the building was, and many of them had never seen anything like it before. 

I also appreciate the extra time that you took to find someone who could give my class a tour of the campus. Many of them were encouraged by all of this and hope to go to Stanford in the future. So be on the lookout for their applications in 7 years! Once again, thank you for such a wonderful field trip from the whole 4th grade class."

Our program metrics demonstrated many positive results, including our baseline measures below:

• Total students served: 4,713
• Total events/activities: 44
• Total program hours: 66 
• Net promoter score: When participants were asked “With 10 being ‘extremely likely’ and 1 being ‘not at all likely,’ how likely are you to recommend Stanford Live’s K-12 programs to fellow educators?” the average response was 9.9 for teacher workshops, 9.5 for student matinees. 
• Average score on “How likely are you to use this training in your teaching” from teacher workshop surveys: 89% were very likely (highest rating). 
• 96.5% of teachers participating in workshops rated their overall experience as excellent. 

Stanford Live’s K-12 programs are generously supported by The Koret Foundation, California Arts Council, Shawn and Brook Byers, Mark and Gretchen Schar, donors to the Stanford Live K-12 Programs Fund.