Ping-Pong, The Game Is On

 

… was the title of my children’s demonstration class at the recent Orff Conference in Lexington. Amongst the ten to twenty (or more) times I wish that I could just wrap up a class with a ribbon and say, “This. This is everything I have to offer, ” this particular class, with some 200 Orff teachers nationwide witnessing, may have been in the top five.

 

The point of this children’s demonstration with twenty fifth graders I had never met was not to share the what of material, but the how. Not only modeling the principles of my practice of “teaching like its music”— uninterrupted flow, clear shape and design, enticing beginning, connected middle, satisfying end— but modeling a relationship with the kids that allows them to relax, be their free expressive self— quirky, a bit wild, funny, to feel immediately that the teacher understands them and likes them and is happy to play with them. Without that, the most perfectly planned lesson means nothing to the children. 

 

Lessons like these need to be meticulously planned combined with the willingness to follow spontaneous impulses that arise in the moment from the children or from the teacher’s imagination. You practice ping-pong like a rigorous discipline, but when the game starts, you rely wholly on the give and take with your playing partner. You never know how a lesson will unfold until you hit the first ball and the kids hit it back. Or miss, or don’t get it over the net or slam it past you. Then the game is on!

 

As I once wrote, “All things are created thrice. Once in the dreaming before the creation, twice in the dreaming during the creation and thrice in the creation after the creation. The first is the felt intuition of something asking to be brought into form— an initial image or phrase or musical phrase or idea for a class that is dreamt and then plucked from the air and brought down to earth. The second is the buzz and chatter during the act of creation, following this path, refusing that one, letting a voice beyond willful intention have its say. The third is after the creation— the one that edits, revises, plans a second class knowing what could have gone better in the first.

 

In this particular workshop, I had a general sense of the territory splashed out months earlier, then began thinking about it in more detail the day before the workshop. I went to sleep that night with one plan as to how to begin and develop the class and woke up with a different one. Walking to the workshop, a few new ideas and details came up. 

 

Once the workshop started, things proceeded pretty much as I planned, but once everyone was singing their parts, it occurred to me that the kids needed to get up and dance. And then while dancing, it seemed right that they should invite an adult in to dance with them. 

 

Neither had been in my plan. Nor had the idea of each kid going to one of the adults watching and invite them to copy their dance move, then switch. Brilliant! Then have other adults coach the kids on the xylophone parts and when all was swinging, all remaining adults up and dancing with the kids as the live band. Yeah!! 

 

I also followed my own advice of creating the next step in the moment simply by watching the children, responding to what they’re doing, praising them when you notice something inspiring, humorously insulting them when it’s less than it could or should be. “Wow! I’ve seen a lot of kids making shapes before and I can tell you in all honesty that these… are the worst!!! Look at them! Too boring! What would make them more exciting, dynamic, expressive? Go!" 

 

Then comes the dreaming after. What did I miss? What would I adjust if the next class came in? In this particular class, it would have been good to include some xylophone improvisation alongside the patterns they already mastered. This is how good teaching grows, inch by inch, day by day, year by year, but only if it’s a fluid verb, a ping-pong game, an ongoing conversation between the kids and the teacher, the kids and the kids, the kids and the instruments and so on. Not the wooden duplicating of written notes with fear of right or wrong execution and angry or disappointed teachers. 

 

I could have lectured to the Orff teachers at the Conference (as I am here), but though possible valuable, this was the real deal. They could not only witness first-hand the swirling energy of happy children happily engaged every second of the 75 minutes, but then jump into it all themselves and erase the fiction of 10-year-olds being different from 40-year-olds. Music artfully taught embraces us all equally and there’s few finer feelings in this world.