It started in 2009, when I watched my students struggle to write a thank-you note.

I want to close this stretch of posts with where the program started, because the why has never changed.

In 2009 I was leading a Grand Rapids music education nonprofit, watching students who’d had years of musical instruction still struggle with basic literacy. I had a PhD in music education and three decades in early childhood, and the question wouldn’t leave me alone: if music builds the brain the way the research says, why were these children still struggling to read?

The answer was that enjoying music and being built by it are different things. So I designed a curriculum that used music, rhythm, and movement deliberately — to construct the cognitive foundations of reading and math, drawing on the Kodály method and Dalcroze eurhythmics, two approaches the neuroscience has since validated as builders of the neural pathways literacy depends on.

What followed is the part I’m proudest of and humbled by. A federal grant. A four-year WestEd evaluation. A 12.1-point literacy gain, a 17.5-point math gain, a 69% reduction in the achievement gap, and more than 15,000 students reached. Then, in 2017, a serious accident forced the program to close. For years the work sat still. In 2026 I rebuilt it as a digital platform, so that what happened in 2017 can never again decide whether a classroom has access to it.

The mission is the same one I started with: reach the children conventional instruction is failing, at the developmental window when their brains are most ready, with something a teacher can actually deliver. The Spanish Language component is built in for the multilingual learners I designed it for from the beginning. The whole thing now fits in ten minutes a teacher leads by pressing play.

For the Kindergarten teachers reading this: I’d like you to see it for yourself. There’s a free set of eight Mind Meets Music lessons for Kindergarten teachers — no cost, no obligation. Lead them with your own students and watch what happens.

Fifteen years ago, this was one teacher’s question about why music wasn’t enough. The answer turned into a federally evaluated program and, now, a platform any teacher can run. If it reaches your classroom, the children you’re thinking about right now are the reason it exists.