Instead of lugging xylophones across the room, students at Burnett Creek Elementary are free to focus on what matters most—making music. A grant from the Public Schools Foundation is helping music teacher Beth Hassenplug turn that vision into reality.

Through her project, “Raising the Bars,” Hassenplug received nearly $1,100 to purchase special tables that hold Orff instruments such as xylophones, metallophones and glockenspiels. The students can easily roll the tables into place when they are ready to play. 

Hassenplug says the instruments can be heavy and bulky to move, but with the tables, even the youngest students can help: “They walk to the instrument area of our classroom and retrieve their instruments on the tables and move them to where they need to go. This normally would take me several minutes, but now it’s accomplished in a matter of seconds, which gives us more time to play and create music.”