The Gift That Kept on Giving

Of all of life’s mysteries, the passing of time is near the front of the line. Who could have imagined 51 years ago that I’d be back in the sacred space of the SF School music room still so joyfully teaching children? And not just any children, but some of the children of the children I once taught, the grandchildren of the teachers with whom I once taught side-by-side. And now passing in the hall some 12 other current teachers who had once been my students in those same halls. 

 

And equally notable, that some kids would still be playing one of the exact same six Orff instruments that a parent bought for the school in 1975, a generous gift that ended up creating my job. An instrument now a half-century old still helping fire the neurons, coordinate the hands, uplift the heart and connect with other players. 

 

Those six Orff instruments grew to some 50 plus barred instruments that includes professional marimbas and vibraphones, a stand-up bass, the whole family of recorders from bass to garklein, a hundred-plus percussion instruments from all corners of the world and yet more. Each having passed through the hands and hearts of students for decades, playing glorious music so expertly. With that powerful ancestry at their side, the 8^th grade kids I taught yesterday learned Sonny Rollins’ blues Sonnymoon for Two in about five minutes and took blues solos with impressive swing and musical coherence. The 6^thgraders learned a haunting Chinese folk song (Kan Ding Song) in one class, with a soothing, calming and tender accompaniment on the Orff instruments and one student playing the melody on violin. The 5-year-olds worked hard on joining their kinesthetic, visual spatial, musical and social intelligences with a pitch-perfect play-party, Bow Belinda, for their developmental stage. The 5^th graders delighted in a poetry alliteration 2-class unit that had them playing complex body percussion and speaking in canon Whether the Weather and Peter Piper, ending with an impressive Betty Botter (a 6-stanza tongue-twister epic they memorized in two classes!) orchestrated in Ionian mode for the Orff instruments. That gift of six Orff instruments by Carol Kusmierski so many years ago nurtured so many intelligences of so many students for so many years. Who could have imagined? It proved to be the gift that kept on giving and most wonderful of all, keeps on giving!

 

Music teachers, take note. When your request to buy some Orff instruments is denied by the school, ask them how much they spent on computers and how long each lasted? And if they need further convincing, have them listen to my X Is for Xylophone episode on my ABC’s podcast to understand that a xylophone is every bit as an effective tool for genuine education than a computer— if not more so! Meanwhile, off I go for my last of four glorious days subbing in this extraordinary place.