What, Who and How

 

I have just seen The Secret Song,the film about my last year at school, for the fourth time at a screening in Austin, Texas for the South X Southwest Education Conference. Without overinflating its artistry (courtesy of the filmmakers), it feels like listening to a Bach Fugue or a Keith Jarrett solo— so many layers that there’s always something new revealed. 

 

Because this was shown to teachers—not SF School families or Orff teachers or musicians— I noted how much opportunity the film provides for deeper discussion about education— what it is, what it has been, what it could be, what it should be.  Yet the beauty of the film is that it does not proselytize, overload the viewer with dogma, insist on the right way kids should be taught or the most effective method to be adopted. Instead, it simply shows— and in small amounts, tells— what a joyful experience school might be if we only thought a bit more clearly about it. At the end, it is Sofia Lopez-Ibor, James Harding and myself simply sharing the fruits of our life’s work. In effect, it gently says:

 

• This is what we’ve done— and still are doing.

 

 • This is who we are and this is who we might yet become.

 

• This is what we love, who we love and how we love.

 

• If you like it, take what you can. If not, leave it be.”

 

After the screening, we had three too-short talks with teachers who were struck by one thing or another in the film. One asked what philosophies lay behind our work, another how we prepared for our own disappearance and some sense of legacy and a third, so sweetly saying, “I’m a first-year music teacher and this is who I want to become.” 

 

But I wondered about the other 65 people in the screening room. Hopefully, I may bump into some in the hall and further conversations might commence. But knowing what I know about people and how we’ve been trained to think and respond, I wouldn’t be shocked if I overheard some comments like:

 

• Well, that’s all well and good, but they could only do that because they worked in a privileged private school.

 

• Wow! They’re amazing! I could never do that!

 

• Hmm. Three white teachers— no thanks.

 

• They were so lucky to get to do all of that!

 

• Yeah, but did those kids get into good high schools and colleges?

 

• Okay, but that would never work in my situation.

 

All of which is worthy of further discussion, all of which is short of the mark. The point is not to compare and despair, or compare and dismiss, or second guess why “that would never work for me,” but to use it all as a jumping off point for deeper reflection. About the educational principles they observed at work, the affirmation’s of kid’s innate musicality and innate humanity, the way kids are encouraged to question and think, the way kids are affirmed and welcomed and appreciated and enjoyed for who they are, the way a school can leave space for serious fun and rigorous frivolity and a thousand other details of the great craft of joyful education that are always worthy of reflection. And the film indeed reflects the reality of that joy simply in the faces and bodies of the children so happily engaged. The best and ultimately only reason to reflect more profoundly on how and what and why one teaches.

 

I hope some day the film can be screened in an educational conference and coupled with a workshop, a post-film reflection in which people consider:

 

“In my teaching, what do I love? Who do I love? How do I love? And what Secret Song is awaiting me to be revealed?”