For her project, senior Stephanie Kennedy chose to create a tutoring program for students learning how to play musical instruments at Tilden Middle School. The program, Music Mentors, aims to provide personal assistance through the help of WJ students, who obtain student service learning hours for participating.


A challenge that many aspiring musicians face is a lack of personal, accurately tuned instruction that often only comes in the form of expensive private lessons. Kennedy created the project with the goal of combating this challenge through cheap instruction from active WJ students.
Kennedy, who has been playing music for around 10 years, believes that other interested students should have the help necessary to continue in the music program as long as they like.
“I want other kids to stay involved as long as I have,” said Kennedy, who works with two viola students in addition to running the program.
The program pairs middle school students with volunteer students from WJ (called teachers) that play the same instrument once a week on either a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Kennedy’s hopes are high and with more students joining the program this semester, she believes expansion is on the horizon.
With the growing popularity of the program in the Tilden-WJ community, Kennedy hopes to pass off the program to a current junior with the eventual goal being transformation of the program to a county wide chapter system. Regardless of the program’s future, its current growth and success shine as positive results possible from the unique capabilities of the senior project program.