Back to the Salt Mine

 

My colleague Sofia needed to extend her winter break, so for the next three days, I’ll be teaching her classes back at the old school. Dusting off my repertoire of New Year’s songs, games, poems and activities with kids from 4-years old to 4^th grade. In a couple of hours, I’ll be back in the car driving the route that I could almost do blindfold and stepping back into that (slightly re-arranged) sacred space that is the music room. In my 4^th year away from the school, the younger kids will all be kids I haven’t taught. But some of them the kids of teachers I taught with and some of them the grandkids of teachers I taught with. How it goes on. 

 

So back to the ritual with bells and gongs and the song-sheet hanger structure that becomes a doorway for kids to walk through into the New Year. After first ringing the large gong of the old year and sending behind them any mistakes or transgressions they wish not to repeat and then the small gong of the New Year to privately think of what new possibility they would like to bring into 2024. A bit of a tall order for a first grader, but why not start them young? Help them understand that rather than wish for what the year brings to them, they need to actively resolve what they can bring to it. 

 

Then comes my go-to “Everyone Born in January” game/song/dance. I have my particular way of doing it, but when subbing at another school in December, I tried a completely new way and loved it. Yet another affirmation that I still can teach an old Do(u)g new tricks and it’s another clear sign that this is the work I was meant to do and I’m not done with it yet. That this particular salt mine still holds great riches.

 

Speaking of which. One of the stories I told my grandson when hiking last week was an old Russian folk tale named “Salt.” It begins with a ne’er-do-well third son getting stranded on an island when sailing off to find his fortune. There he discovers a large mountain of salt and has the wits to bag it up and take it back on board when the storm subsides. He then brings it to a King and Queen who scoff at this useless white dust, having never seen salt before. They dismiss him, he goes down to the kitchen and notices that not a single dish is salted. So he secretly goes around and salts them and when the King and Queen praise the cook for a dinner that tastes better than anything they had ever eaten, he expresses great confusion. They then figure out what happened and suitably reward the young man. It goes on from there…

 

I still enjoy having my days wholly to my own whims and fancies. As I always reply when someone asks me how I like retirement: “I like my schedule and I like my boss.” But keeping teaching kids in that schedule as the invitations arise is salt to my day, bringing out the flavors that marry taste and nutrition. So to the salt mine I will go, “whistling while I work…”