A local teacher is eager to show students how uplifting music can be.
Great Lakes Secondary School (GLSS) will host hundreds of young musicians and singers during a Music Monday event.
Chitra Dath-McLellan, who's head of the music department at GLSS, said the annual initiative is part of The Coalition for Music Education, empowering young musicians and supporting music education.
"We do these concerts on May 4 every year, where we get as many young people as possible together to perform at the same time," she said.
Dath-McLellan said 11 elementary schools have signed up to learn the chosen music.
"They're going to come in and sing the songs that we've chosen for them to sing. One is called Firework by Katy Perry and the other one is All Star by Smash Mouth," she said. "We're going to have 120 to 150 musicians on the stage playing that same music for them as they sing. There should be 700 to 800 people performing at the same time."
Dath-McLellan said music can have many benefits, such as boosting your mood and creating a sense of community. It also acts as a way to express oneself.
"Music is something that helps students with their cognitive abilities, with their special abilities, with their social abilities, with their ability to fail and get up and do it again," she said."[Having] that resilience that is required of us as human beings at this time."
She said the participating students will perform and have fun in an interactive concert for most of the morning before taking a lunch break.
