Beat the Odds integrates activities from contemporary drum circles and group counseling to teach skills
in focusing and listening, team building, positive risk taking, self-esteem, awareness of others, leadership, expressing feelings, managing anger/stress, empathy and gratitude. The program serves a whole classroom at a time and is designed for delivery by persons with no musical experience. It is inclusive, culturally relevant, and does not bear the stigma of therapy.
UCLA researchers have shown that Beat the Odds can significantly improve total behavior problems, as well as problems such as inattention, withdrawn/depression, posttraumatic stress, anxiety, attention deficit/hyperactivity, oppositional defiance, and sluggish cognitive tempo.
Beat the Odds emphasizes process and not performance. It includes a therapeutic dimension involving guided interaction, self-disclosure, and reflection. and is delivered weekly for 40 - 45 minutes at a time over eight weeks. In addition, there is a booster session that can also serve as a demonstration session as needed.
Third through fifth grade students are ideally suited for this program because their peer centric developmental stage lends itself well to group-oriented activities, reflection upon behavior, and motor mastery; however, Beat the Odds can be easily adapted to any population, including teens, families, and older adults. A manual for Adolescents and Adults is currently being developed.
Beat the Odds was
developed with the combined expertise of a licensed clinical social
worker, a drum circle facilitator, and a public health
educator (bios below). Therefore, the ultimate product is clinically sound,
rhythmically engaging, and sustainable.
Many mental health professionals and teachers in the
Los Angeles Unified School District have received professional
development training in Beat the Odds. Those that have implemented the program have reported that the
program is useful and that the curriculum materials
are user-friendly.
Click on the following link to view a brief summary of Beat the Odds for administrators and interested persons: Beat the Odds - An Evidence-Based Program.pdf
Click on
the following link to view an excerpt from a documentary film about the Beat the Odds project in the context of the lives of underserved children in the Los Angeles Unified School District:
American Rhythms: Beating the Odds documentary - 11 minute film trailer
Click on
the following link to view a video clip of the Rock the Rhythm:
Beat the Odds project in collaboration with Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons. This project will deliver a Beat the Odds experience to every 6th and 7th grader in Santa Clarita Valley and culminate in a May 18, 2012 event with these 7,180 youth and world-renowned musicians to break the Guinness World Book of Records for the largest youth drum circle ever assembled. This event will celebrate a year-long innovative partnership to sustain the arts for a broader purpose ‒ to connect youth to each other, school, and the community.
Rock the Rhythm: Beat the Odds project - 6 minute film clip
Click
on the following link to listen to a half hour radio interview on Beat the
Odds, featuring program development team member, Ping Ho, on April 16,
2010:
All
Talk Radio's Music 4 Life™ show with Judith Pinkerton, MT-BC
Beat the Odds Training Programs
For information regarding training programs, email info@uclartsandhealing.net or go to the upper right corner of this web page to join the email list for notification of UCLArts and Healing programs that will include information about upcoming training programs in Beat the Odds.
Descriptions of the training programs can be found in this website by selecting "Events" or by viewing past events within the Events section.
See the FAQs section for answers to commonly asked questions about Beat the Odds and the training program.
Testimonials
Unsolicited Testimonial from a Psychiatric Social Worker in the Los Angeles Unified School District on June 26, 2009
Ms. Ping Ho,
My name is Carmen Lima, I am a Social Worker with LAUSD. Back in January you contacted me regarding the drumming to offer assistance, I was so nervous at the time!
I just wanted you to know that the classroom that I selected was an all boys class, several of them with serious behavior issues, a couple of the kids are on medications. However, once we started with the drumming, you would have never thought these children were nothing but well behaved young kids.
Dr. Gillenwaters, the boy's teacher was so taken by the drumming that she asked me to prepare the class for a presentation during "Dia De La Cultura Festival" (Culture Day Festival"), we ended having two presentations on each of the two days the festival lasted.
Mr. Hooker, the school principal who stated "Whatever works" when I asked him if he would mind if I did drumming with this classroom, he had the widest, happiest smile on his face during the festival. Other teachers asked Dr. Gillenwaters, if these were the same boys she started her class with! The parents attending the festival were hollering at the end of each presentations, they were so proud of their children.
Best of all, was the camaraderie that developed amongst the class members. They will not miss school on Wednesday so as not to miss the class. A parent came early to pick up a student on the day we had the last class, this student refused to go and the parent had to come back an hour later when the class was over.
Now my principal wants more drumming classes next year!!!!!
Thank you very much for encouraging me to do the class, also for the easy to follow directions of the curriculum.
I am looking forward to next school year, to more drumming and more happy discoveries!
Respectfully,
Carmen Lima, PSW/PIC*
*Psychiatric Social Worker/Primary Intervention Counselor for Manchester Ave. Elementary School, a socioeconomically disadvantaged school in the Los Angeles Unified School District
Unsolicited statement by Karen Timko, Coordinator of Primary Intervention and Elementary Counseling Services for the Los Angeles Unified School District ‒ who arranged for all her counselors to be trained in Beat the Odds
As a supervisor of a counseling program in the LAUSD, I am always looking for ways to motivate, support, and rejuvenate my staff who are deployed in the schools hardest hit by the influences of poverty, gangs, drugs, and violence. They have responded with amazing enthusiasm to drumming and recreational music making. I am thrilled that several of our schools have purchased the drums and see the health benefits for themselves as healers and as a tool for facilitating healing and hope in our students.
As far as drumming and recreational music making, I know of no other intervention that has sparked the interest, enthusiasm, and hope in the counselors I supervise. The process seems to motivate the counselors to use the method with their students while bestowing measurable health benefits in the counselor delivering the intervention. It is a win-win for all involved.
The value of the arts in healing, whether through writing, dancing, drumming, painting, or any method of self-expression is experienced immediately by the client and virtually no "side effects". The arts have a way of touching the place within where the soul, the mind, the heart, and the soul converge, awakening the body's ability to heal itself and to come to terms emotionally with the meaning of the client's unique experience.
Graduation Speech by a 5th Grade Participant Reflecting Themes Addressed in the Program
The following speech was delivered by a fifth grade girl during the culmination ceremony at Napa Street Elementary School on May 30, 2008. The girl's class had just completed participation in Beat the Odds, the thematic content of which is evident throughout her speech (boldfaced). Two other speeches were also delivered on that day by students who did not receive the intervention; neither of those speeches included any thematic content related to Beat the Odds.
Welcome Napa staff, students, and parents. My dream for the future is to be an artist because I like to paint fairy tales. I hope my classmates have that desire and that wanting in life to pursue their careers they want, as they grow up. I will remember my classmates because we are a team, we all have had good and bad times here at Napa, sticking together we can accomplish even more in our upcoming challenges that middle and high school will give us. Napa is the best pace for people to learn, starting as early as kindergarten. One of the things I've learned is that you have to care about each other. I personally learned how to be responsible and to be mature and also to own up to my actions taking responsibility for what I did wrong, an example would be helping my classmates when they need help. We are a community together. I thank my family for teaching me something new everyday, especially my mom and dad, they have always been there for me, supporting me with my goals and dreams, and never giving up on me. I also want to thank my prior teachers and the Napa staff for teaching me their beautiful writing styles and principles of becoming a better person. In particular I want to thank two wonderful people, Mr. B and Mrs. Gilmore for giving me that extra push when I was down and motivating me to keep on going.
Beat the Odds Program Development Team
Ping Ho, MA, MPH is Founding Director of UCLArts and Healing, which facilitates the use of arts-based tools for mind-body healing in the community as a vehicle for empowerment and transformation (uclartsandhealing.net). UCLArts and Healing is an organizational member of the UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine, of which Ping is a Steering Committee Member and was the founding administrator. She was also the founding administrator for the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), which led to the privilege of writing for Norman Cousins and co-writing the professional autobiography of George F. Solomon, MD, founder of the field of PNI. In addition, Ping has an extensive background as a health educator and performing artist. She has a BA in psychology with honors from Stanford University ‒ where she was appointed to spearhead the still-thriving Health Improvement Program for faculty and staff, an MA in counseling psychology with specialization in exercise physiology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MPH in Community Health Sciences from UCLA School of Public Health. Ping was recently appointed to the Council of Advisers for the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care, a national network of educational organizations and agencies in complementary and alternative medicine.
Giselle Friedman, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker who is bicultural and bilingual in Spanish and in English. Giselle received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her master’s degree from USC School of Social Work. As a psychotherapist, she has worked in school settings, agencies, hospitals and private practice, with a focus on children and families. Giselle spent four years as a treating and on-call therapist for Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center’s Rape Treatment Center, Stuart House, and SM-UCLA Psychotherapy Group. She has been working as a full time psychiatric social worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) since 2000. In this capacity, Giselle provides individual and group therapy to students and their families at several elementary schools. She also leads parenting classes and educates teachers and staff on topics such as children’s responses to trauma, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, childhood depression and anxiety, classroom behavior management, and addressing bullying behavior. Giselle is a member of the school Student Success Teams, and she participates in her local district's LAUSD Resource Coordinating Council and neighborhood community meetings.
Mike DeMenno is Manager of Remo Recreational Music Center. Mike grew up in Los Angeles, California, in the center of the music business and has been drumming on pillow, pots and pans since the age of five. While always a dedicated student to the drums, he began facilitating drum circles for youth at risk, which led him to become Manager of the first recreational music center in the world - created by Remo Belli, founder and owner of Remo, Inc. Mike has helped to make Remo Recreational Music Center the most popular drum circle center in California. With drum workshops and drum circles almost every day of the week, including programs to reduce stress through drumming and a popular Saturday morning drum circle for kids, Remo Recreational Music Center is helping people have a happier and healthier life through drumming. Under the mentorship of professional rhythm facilitators, Mike has become a prominent local and international drum circle facilitator. Mike feels it is rewarding and humbling to touch so many people from kids to adults with music and drumming.