New Year Resolution

Be it Chinese Lunar New Year, Persian No Ruz, Thai Songkran, Jewish Rosh Hashana, South African Inzalo, January 1^st or any other of the world’s New Year celebrations, they all share one thing in common— a look back at what has passed and a look forward to what still might be, usually with some kind of resolution to do better. 

 

For most of my life, the real New Year is the first day of school. So why not treat that the same way? If you believe, as I do, that passing on the lore of the culture to children and helping them discover their intellectual, imaginative, and humanitarian promise is a sacred trust, then it deserves the same kind of renewal of vows and resolution to improve that all traditions suggest.

 

In light of that, it has been so disappointing to hear of many fellow teachers describe their first day back with the staff, sitting watching Powerpoints about the next nonsense to come down the pike that is so dispiriting to a genuine teacher’s passion. And the reports get worst. 

 

Yesterday, someone posted this on the Orff Website: 

 

Talk to me about PowerSchool. My school is moving to it and from what’s been previewed, it looks great so far. 

 

How do you like it as a music teacher? We are a data heavy school and have a minimum of 3 or more assessments per quarter that are linked to standards.

 

Mainly, does PowerSchool populate state/ national standards? I had to keep a spreadsheet with our last platform and it was a horrible experience.

 

Sigh. I guess this is just another complicated way to enter grades for kids. Remember just writing on a paper report card with a pen? 

 

But more discouraging is all the time spent figuring out the program, the money spent on the program, the energy devoted to spreadsheets and data as if we’re accountants rather than teachers. So here was my response. 

 

Where are the children in this discussion? They care nothing about data and standards. They want teachers who see them and come to know them and play with them and praise them and all of this other crap is a distraction from the real deal. The real Power of School is to give children the power the express the full range of their intelligence, joy and sorrow with the time-honored traditions of reading great books, playing great music, creating their own art, investigating the world lit by their curiosity, all within a joyful, playful, exploratory community without Big Brother’s judgmental eye weighing down on their tender souls. Please change the conversation.

 

For all teachers, I ask: Is teaching children indeed a sacred trust that asks us to commit our highest intelligence, deepest caring, most fervent dedication and most expansive imagination? Or is it simply a bean-counting, data-driven, spreadsheet-accounting, standards motivated business? As you turn to the new school year, ask yourself whether you’d rather be crunching numbers on IT platforms or dancing joyfully with the kids trying not to spill your cup of water? Your choice. 

Exercise First

My routine in San Francisco is mostly to stay indoors all morning—writing, answering e-mails, playing piano and such. Then lunch and off somewhere in the afternoon to walk, bike or do errands. But sometimes I reverse it and get out in the early morning and often wonder if that’s not a better routine. Not only the fresher morning air but taking care of some daily exercise quotient first. 

 

That’s what I did this morning, a 25-mile bike-ride on my fat-tire 7-gear bike, huffing and puffing up some steep Northern Michigan back-country hills and arriving back at the house some four hours later. Lunch and then jump in the lake for a 500-stroke swim (did a thousand each of the last two days), the body feeling the sweet ache of pushing it to the edge of its strength. Which leave me with the feeling that now I can do anything without a trace of guilt! Nap! Eat ice cream! Play in my Solitaire tournament! Read for an hour or two! I’ve paid my dues. Exceeded my calorie expenditure and can relax into any small indulgence. It’s a good feeling.

 

Still not convinced to change the daily ritual, especially in San Francisco. But it’s working for me today. I’m off to the beach to lie down and be lazy. 

Pop Quiz

 To the person who put this sign up in their yard: 

 

Please explain your thinking in this pop quiz. 

 

My God is:

 

1)   A sadistic bastard who gets off on seeing humans suffer. 

2)   Loving and compassionate, but just really bad at his job.

3)   My lame excuse for not getting off my duff to do a damn thing to improve the human condition.

4)   All of the above. 

Butterflies in the Clover

Thanks to a thoughtful gift from a Level III student, I re-read the book Demian by Hermann Hesse. I read a lot of Hesse’s novels in college and was curious to see if he held up.  And the answer? Somewhat. The ideas that seemed so radically important to consider back then were now familiar lived territory and didn’t so much open new worlds as they once did but captured parts of them in print. The story seemed like an excuse to expound the philosophy, but still I found some resonance in the seeker who refused the herd mentality. There were many notable quotes worth marking, but I was particularly astonished to read the following near the end of the book that evoked the essence of our recent Orff Level training:

 

(I was) surrounded by nothing but beautiful, pleasant things and feelings. I  could tell that this was a foretaste of the new, higher community we were imagining. Occasionally I would be seized with mourning for this happiness, since I knew full well it could not last…I could feel that one day I would wake up out of this beautiful picture of love and happiness and stand alone once more, completely alone, in the cold world of other people, where my only choices were solitude or struggle—no peace, no shared life. 

 

…I clung to these beautiful days like a butterfly to the honey clover. This had been my time of happiness, the first time in my life I had found fulfillment and been welcomed into a group of like-minded individuals. (pp, 128-129)

 

Butterflies in the clover. A good image to give the feeling of like-minded music teachers gathered for 10 days of playing, singing and dancing. Perhaps ever more poignant as they returned to school where, as noted in yesterday’s post,  teachers and admin didn’t share their experience and they perhaps found themselves feeling yet more alone and isolated than ever. The price we pay for growing larger and deeper and closer to our true nature and immersed in “the higher community we were imagining” now given muscle and breath. 

 

Years back, I gave a talk near the end of the training warning people of their re-entry to what many called “The Real World” but reminding them that that world of “getting and spending and laying waste our powers” (Wordsworth) is actually the false world and what we have just experienced in our gathering here is the real Real World. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, we were a bit ragged and torn from the way our child-within played and roughhoused and hugged and loved us, but that’s what made us real. Certainly a hundred times more than the bright and shiny toys and devices we had been tricked into buying. (Decades after The Velveteen Rabbit, we now have Toy Story Five to remind us.)

 

So a word to all the summer Orff students far and wide—keep frolicking in the honey clover, only now with the children you teach.  

An Enticing Beginning

These days, the various groups I teach in Orff training invariably create a WhatsApp group to keep in touch during the course. But they tend to stay active for a few years more, as folks keep sharing their successes and challenges. At the start of the new school year, here are two that came from my Level III class of 2025:

“Today’s PD was one of the most painful and useless that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been re-reading Teach Like It’s Music and realizing just how much this applies to all classes. I wish all teachers could experience learning in this way!”

“Ours yesterday was also painful. An overview of the CA State Standards for all VAPA for TK-12. So boring! Where’s the joy? Where’s the excitement about getting back in the classroom with the kids?”

The premise of my Teach Like Its Music is to consider creating lessons like a musical composition. Invite students in with an enticing beginning, keep them engaged with a connected middle and lead them toward a satisfying ending, all of which, like music, give a feeling of refreshment and uplift. As with each class, so with the whole school year. How a school begins the year, including those teacher meetings on the first days back, makes a difference. As the two teachers above note, their re-gathering with their educational community was far from enticing. Like starting a composition with the instruments out of tune and hitting the wrong notes. How I wish I could help lead those opening teacher PD’s. As noted above, I would draw from my Teach Like Its Music  book to show what it means to step up to the sacred charge of educating children. With particular attention to the chapter Blend In, Stand Out: Class Agreements. An excerpt below: 

Everywhere I travel, I see posters on school walls reminding children to: 

• TAKE CARE OF MATERIALS 
• RESPECT THE TEACHER AND EACH OTHER 
• WORK QUIETLY 
• TRY YOUR BEST 
• BE SAFE 
• WORK TO SUCCEED 

 Lovely thoughts all. But are they working? Are our high school graduates uniformly respectful? Do they put their best foot forward in each and every endeavor? One would hope so. One would be wrong. 

Would that spoken words were enough to instill character. They’re a good start, but without a living culture to support and sustain them, they don’t sink into the marrow. “Do as I say, not as I do” was the motto the adults in my childhood preferred and it made no sense whatsoever. 

 Yet words are important. They can name our intention and start us moving to the things that matter. If we are to post the school’s core values on the walls, might we capture the children’s attention with a more intriguing list? Something like: 

      

• USE LOUD VOICES/ RUN INDOORS 
• TAKE RISKS/ BE SAFE
• BE SERIOUS/ HAVE FUN 
• LIE, CHEAT AND STEAL 
• DON’T WORRY/ BE HAPPY 
• BLEND IN /STAND OUT

 

Now the kids might be thinking, “Is the teacher really telling us we can lie, cheat and steal? Use loud voices and run indoors? And how can we stand out and blend in at the same time? Take risks and be safe? Be serious and have fun? Does he really care more us having fun than learning all the right answers for the test?” Now you have their attention. 

 

As all teachers know, a classroom is a miniature culture held together by rules and agreements as to proper conduct. It’s necessary to say them out loud and be clear about how they work. Yet as all teachers also know, simply posting them and agreeing to them doesn’t automatically bring them to life. Here I suggest treating them artistically, showing how the good and bad, proper and improper, can be held in an artful way. Society chooses this over that, but art shifts the question to “When this and when that and why and how and how much of each?” When approached artfully, the tone shifts and kids see good behavior as an artistic discipline and naughty behavior as something that can be expressed artistically.”

 

Intrigued? The children certainly are. Then you proceed to engage them in the activities that bring these all to life. Or better yet, start with the activities and then discuss these ideas that lie behind them. 

 

The first homework for my Level III Orff students due before they begin is to reflect on how Levels I and II changed their teaching. Then name the challenges that they hope the Level III training might address. No surprise that “class management” is high on the list. Especially in these days, when following the example of high government officials, simple courtesy, kindness, focus and effort to grow their intelligence has taken a severe downturn in today’s students. Yet all is not lost. Children are resilient and if you give them what they both need and deserve, my experience is that they step into their better selves. 

 

But the first step as a teacher is to refuse the term “class management,” which treats the students like corporate workers who need to be “managed” or worse yet, dogs who need to be trained to sit, heel, come, roll over, beg. I prefer to think of the teacher as a conductor releasing and shaping the flow of the beautiful music that each child is and group of children can be. (Hence, “teach like it’s music.”) When you re-frame management to guiding group energy, everything changes. Behavior is less of an issue when kids are wholly engaged doing worthy things that fit their way of doing and thinking. 

 

And when things go off the rails—they always will, of course— the musical metaphors can help. Talking about how things feel out of tune or not in the rhythmic groove or filled with discordant notes gives a different tone than “You are bad!” All of the above can be improved—re-tune the instrument (yourself), find the groove, avoid that dissonant note. 

 

Each of the list below deserves elaboration and I do so in the book. If you invite me to do a teacher PD, I would lead the activities that bring them to life. But meanwhile, here’s a short summary of each that are included at the end of the chapter.

 

USE LOUD VOICES/ RUN INDOORS: Project your lines in the play, but also whisper to draw the listener in. Run with vigor, then freeze on a dime. 

 

TAKE RISKS/ BE SAFE: Go beyond where you think you can, make it safe for others to do the same.

 

BE SERIOUS/ HAVE FUN: Have fun by doing things well, accomplished by your serious effort and enthusiastic enjoyment.

 

LIE, CHEAT AND STEAL: Lie like a good storyteller, cheat by leaning on your neighbor, steal like an artist. 

 

DON’T WORRY/ BE HAPPY: Relax about making mistakes, keep happiness—yours and the group’s—at the forefront. 

 

BLEND IN/ STAND OUT: Offer your small voice to the large voice to be a part of the greater music, offer your solo voice in the way only you can. Know when it’s time to blend in and when to stand out. 

 

 Welcome back to school!

First and Last

 

My childhood schooling was marked by two memorable ritual events. The first, and most joyous, was the last day of school. I watched that clock slowly (oh, so slowly) ticking toward three o’clock and then jumped up and ran out the door and leaped off the steps straight into the welcoming arms of summer. 

I shrieked with delight at the freedom of whole days to myself wandering through the park— climbing trees, skipping stones in the lake, playing tag or hide-and-seek or stickball with my friends. I eagerly anticipated hot, lazy days punctuated by the heavenly bells of the Good Humor ice-cream truck, lying in the hammock reading, hanging out on my front steps at night watching the fireflies, I did go back to school, but now it was all summer-camp games outdoors—tetherball, nock-hockey, ping-pong, an occasional pie-eating contest (which I won!), baseball in the field across the street. And then the Jersey shore with my parents— long days on the beach, riding the waves of the Atlantic, occasionally the boardwalk at night with its rides and ski-ball and general feeling of pure enchantment. 

 

And then came—after Labor Day, the way it still should be!— was the first day of school. Not the same kind of exuberant anticipation, but some pleasure in returning to the larger community of kids and the structure of schedule and the accidental pleasure of some occasional engaged learning—new books, new skills, new ideas. Getting that new lunchbox or school supplies or new shirt and a certain eagerness to show how the summer had transformed me— look at my new, enlarged self! There was the unknown of the new teacher (might this be one that actually will like me?), the power of ascending toward the top of the pecking order (hey, lowly 3^rd graders, I’m in 4^th grade now!), the anticipation of the classes I liked (gym and sometimes, writing time). Alongside all of that, the seasonal cycle of summer’s heat shifting to Autumn’s innumerable gifts— the cool, crisp air, the changing leaves, the slowly darkening days. 

 

Who could have predicted that I would spend my lifetime following the same cycle, only now as a teacher? The last day of school became a ritual with my teacher wife and I. Go out to dinner at Tadich Grill or Il Fornia or Fog City Diner, all near the Embarcadero’s water’s edge and feel that same kind of release of work finished (though there were three more days of teacher meetings wrap-up and sometimes report cards leaked over for another week or so), of looking ahead to whatever summer plans awaited. Often travel to new and exciting places on every continent and almost always, the annual retreat to the Lake Michigan paradise (where 50 years later, we still are as I write). 

 

And that same feeling returning to school that it’s time to dig in and begin the work we love, put our shoulder to the wheel to get things rolling and feel the rhythm emerge. The fun of meeting our staff colleagues and sharing our summer adventures and often beginning with some ritual fun activity that James, Sofia and I would lead. The hardest part was setting the school calendar, feeling exhausted as we had to project into each detail of the year ahead, as if we had already lived it. But then left alone in our rooms to straighten and clean and prepare the new ideas. And when the kids finally came, we were so happy to see them and we let them know with our elaborate opening ceremony involving Bulgarian bagpipes, Balinese flags and gongs, a tunnel of singing teachers, a water ritual and song after song. Such a joyous way to begin. 

 

Now six years retired from that cycle of “last day/ first day of school” but still thinking about it as my still-teaching colleagues and daughter and people I’ve just trained in my Orff courses re-enter the sacred ground of school. How I wish the same joyful re-entry! How terribly disappointed I am when I hear what their first day back is actually like! 

 

To be continued…

Born Again

No, I didn’t find Jesus or achieve Buddhist enlightenment. But after a week or so of feeling like my head was underwater and I could barely hear anything from my right ear, even with my hearing aids, I am a new man. It is remarkable what havoc accumulated ear wax can cause and what relief flushing it out can bring. 

 

I finally—and wisely— decided to go to the Emergency Room at the Paul Oliver Hospital in Frankfort. Not that it was really an emergency, but it’s the only way they would see me. An hour later of repeated procedures and I walked out like a blind man granted sight—or more accurately, a deaf man who could hear again. Not just being able to hear, but having my head liberated from that underwater feeling was glorious. I celebrated with a post-dinner swim in the calm, cool (but comfortably so) waters of Lake Michigan and Mom and Dad, I can report that I didn’t have to wait an hour after eating like you always told me. Then went next door where my wife’s friends live to play a fun dominoes game called Mexican Train and didn’t even need my hearing aids to join in on the conversation. 

 

Checking e-mail a bit later, I received a timely message from a new-found friend/ correspondent in Korea and she wrote about a Korean tradition called Myeongri, a kind of Eastern astrology that analyzes a person’s birth year, month, day, and hour to interpret personality, life cycles, and potential futures. Each year has certain general qualities and she wrote that “This year is Byeong-oh, a very fiery year in the traditional calendar.” My daughter took a photo from the plane of the fires in Oregon as she headed back to Portland, so there’s some unwelcome affirmation there. She went on to say that “because the light is very strong, hidden things — whether in society or in individual lives — would tend to be revealed.” Hoping that predicts that the buried kindness and intelligence of American voters will come forth in the upcoming Midterms.

 

But most interesting, her next sentence was, “They also say that if something in the body feels wrong this year, it is better not to delay going to the hospital. Since things are being “revealed,” one should take the sign seriously and take care of it.” Stunning! I read this after I decided to go to the hospital, but had I read it before, I think it would have sent me right out the door.

 

In any case, I ended the day grateful for doctors and interested in finding out more about Myeongri.