Thanks

One of the great pleasures in this life is thanking people who made an impact on you. Teachers, relations, friends, strangers, whoever. Sometimes it’s a small action or just the right word at the right moment, sometimes an ongoing blessing. But none of us could step forward on our path without the aid of these seen—and also unseen— helpers. Sometimes the help is unintended, just a pebble thrown into a pond that creates unexpected ripples. How good it feels to let someone know, even 40 years later, that they changed your life.

I’m sad to say I just missed such a moment. I’ve long thought about trying to find the couple who first donated the Orff instruments to The San Francisco School back in 1974, a pebble in a pond that rippled into my first—and only— job as a music teacher in a school. An old school colleague just notified me that he saw an obituary for Thaddeus Kusmierski and wondered if this was indeed the same person and having just read it, it indeed is. He just passed away at 81 years old. And his wife Carol is referred to in the obituary as his first wife and my hopes are that she is still with us and I can find her (I’ve set that process in motion). They were both on my mind recently as I acknowledged and thanked them in a small talk I gave on the occasion of beginning my 40^th year at school. Below is a photo of me teaching that first year (1975) with Thaddeus sitting on the side and watching. (And yes, that is a hole in my T-shirt!)

It reminded me of other missed opportunities. My sister just told me that my cousin Susan passed away yesterday. I found out a month ago that she was ill with cancer and always intended to call and to my shame and regret, didn’t. So all I can do now is thank her for her lively spirit, her handwritten Christmas cards all the way up to last year and the affection we both seemed to feel for each other even though she was some ten years older. I’m sorry, Susan and I hope you can hear this message now.

Who else do I have to thank? Well, the list is long and I hope I have properly thanked most of them. But still, I would like to meet Jim and Karen Bold in Nether Poppleton outside of York and thank them for picking Karen and I up hitchhiking and bringing us to their home for three days back in 1978. I’d like to thank the man in Bali who drove Karen back to our homestay on his motorcycle when the buses stopped running and then came back and got me. I’d like to thank the woman in Japan who saw us eating lunch and came across the street with two milk bottles filled with green tea and gestured for us to enjoy. (From that same trip in 1979). You get the idea.

Friends, don’t put off thanks. I regret it every time I do.

Kids

Yesterday’s 4^th grade play rehearsal of Alice in Wonderland reminded my why I’m a teacher. The kids were just so damn funny! They really cracked me up—Tweedledum and Tweedledee coming up with one thing after another, the characters in the Tea Party scene as genuinely crazy as they’re supposed to be (and so much funnier than the tragic farce of that other Tea Party), the Cheshire Cat’s grin more riotous than any special effect, the Cards doing active Math under the Queen’s direction. Well, impossible to capture in print— you just had to be there (and are welcome to come on December 18^th!).

I had my doubts about doing Alice in Wonderland. Read it again. It’s no surprise that Grace Slick sang about it in her White Rabbit song back in the drug-crazed ’60’s, because the whole thing is reminiscent of an LSD trip. (Not that I would know personally, because I never inhaled. J ) Crazy in a dream-like, nutty kind of way, with memorable bizarre characters, strange settings, eccentric associations. The scenes tend to run like the little metal ball careening down a pinball machine and lighting up areas of the brain usually comfortably unused.

Turns out that this kind of humor appeals to 4^th graders and they’ve leaped beyond the bar to really have fun with it. And this is where the essence of their kid-dom comes shining through. Yesterday we rehearsed a group recitation of that insane poem Jabberwocky and they did it with such dramatic expression and expressive bodies and faces that the hairs on my arm started to rise. Truly a whispered aesthetic moment worthy of the name “art.” And then as the last whisper faded out, two of the boys whipped out some jingle bells they had grabbed from the shelf and started singing—well, you guessed it— Jingle Bells, with everyone boisterously joining in. Utter madness!

Now if I had been one of those sad kind of teachers that only cared about behavior management and class control and obedience and teaching youth to be solid, stalwart upright citizens, I would have yelled at them or punished them, shamed the delightful children they were and made them feel that they failed me by not being the miniature adults I expect them to me. Instead, I just cracked up. And so did the observing Interns. And that gave permission to the kids to BE kids. And in so doing, they were more motivated than ever to work hard and take the play rehearsal seriously and understand in some corner of their psyche that to be a contributing citizen begins with being exactly who you are in each stage of development.

I love kids. I really do. I find them more interesting, more compassionate, more funny, more vibrant, more alive than almost any adults I know. And yes, they’re also more annoying, more cruel, more whiny, more maddeningly impulsive and need some stretching to adulthood. But I’m in no hurry to adultify them. Having witnessed year after year of three-year olds evolving into 8^th graders, I’m not worried that they’re not responsible every step of the way. They get there and they get there best if their childlike selves are honored and praised and enjoyed by adults every step of the way.

If I had to pick one rallying cry of effective education, it would simply be this:

 “Let them be kids!” 

Sick

Like any mortal being, I’ve had my share of bodily breakdowns, marauding viruses, invasive bacteria and the like. But I must say that (knocking on all available woods), I’ve mostly been blessed with good health. So when I get a cold, the self-pity thermometer hits fever pitch. I was waltzing through my week happily when out of nowhere (don’t all such things come out of nowhere? why are we always so surprised by this?) the chest starts filling up with unattractive fluids, there’s pressure in my head and suddenly, I’m less than my usual charming and happy self. And just a tad bit grouchy that I had seven classes of kids ahead of me! (Though truth be told, at the end of the day, they made me feel happier!).

I think of the composer Chopin, who was sickly much of his life and yet managed to write heart-breaking music that survived far beyond his mortality. Likewise another hyper-sensitive soul, the poet Rilke, whose poems still stun with their intensity and insight. How did they do that while sick? When I feel the slightest bit under the weather, all I feel like doing is lying down on the couch and watching re-runs of The Streets of San Francisco. The thought of composing something coherent, never mind breathtaking, or writing a poem that transcends complaint (“blowing out the mucous of life…”) is the last thing on my mind.

Oh well. Nothing to do but let it run its predictable cycle and be grateful that the stakes are so low. Meanwhile, back to Mike Stone… (see above show).

Bread

A music teacher recently posted on the American Orff Association’s Facebook page a question from his third grade student:

“Why do we have to learn music if we’re not going to become professional musicians?”

Bam!! Apparently it went straight to the nerve of fellow Orff teachers, as some 50 people immediately responded with their own answers. You could feel both the bristle of having to defend their life’s choice and their thoughtful ruminations on how to convince an 8-year old of music’s wonders. Such reflection is always a good idea, a way to affirm and describe and identify and bring into language what you intuitively know and feel. I wrote a response myself, turning the question back to the questioner: “Why study language if you’re not going to be a poet? Math if you’re not going to be an engineer? Basketball if you’re not going to make it to the NBA? Etc.” And like my colleagues, could have answered it twenty-five or twenty-five-thousand different ways. But then the following occurred to me.

With a question like that, Louis Armstrong’s answer is a good starting point: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.” If an adult asked that question, you’d have to wonder, like Louis, “What happened to you that you would ask a question like that? Or rather, what didn’t happen to you that you missed out on this most essential of human pleasures?”

But if it’s a child, especially a child in our music class, our response is “Yikes! We better get to work here!” Two possibilities:

      1.  It’s new for the child and they haven’t yet been initiated into experiencing down to their toes 

           the nutritious bread of music that builds our bodies, the sweet ripe apple of music that tickles  
           our tongue, the refreshing sparkling water of music that slakes our thirst. And so we might 

           answer, “What a treat you’re in for! Spend the year with me and then let’s talk again at the 

           end.”

2.   We’re faced with the difficult possibility that our teaching is less than musical and

       short of effective, that we’ve continued the cycle of music as a dreadful chore of

       practice and a mere technical matter of pushing down keys at the right time, to be

       reprimanded when we miss or squawk. We’ve failed to unleash the vibrant, joyful,

       musical soul each child carries into the world and reduced the whole affair just

       another boring subject in the school day.

Hard to face that, but if we do squarely, there’s hope we can turn it around. Goodness knows there are enough models, particularly (though not limited to) in the dynamic practice of Orff Schulwerk, a veritable playground of possibilities for children to romp freely around in. But the Orff training is just the structures and intent— without a childlike musical teacher to accompany the children, one who understands when and how long to let them play around freely, when to give some loving guidance as to how to traverse the monkey bars and swing to a groove, it means nothing.

In short, it’s less important to answer that child with words and more with inspired teaching that cancels out the question. Most human beings in the midst of ecstatic experience don’t stop to question whether what they're doing is important. Of course, these days, you might turn to that child after a stirring dance, exquisite song, expressive improvisation and say, “Now do you see why music is as essential as bread?”

And the child’s response: “But I’m gluten-free!”

Rain

I awoke in the night to the sound of rain outside the window. Such sweet music! So welcomed, so needed, made sweeter yet by the drought— all is magnified by want tumbling into fulfillment. And yet so much more than the purely practical. Its pitter-patter dripped into my dreams and all the ancient associations kicked in. The grand mythological sweep of rain, from its excessive fury in Noah’s flood to the quiet drizzle of “rain on the green grass, rain on the trees…” Rain is everywhere in film, from the joyous “Singin’ in the Rain” to the relentless downpour in The End of the Affair  to its dark constant presence in film noir. Chopin evokes it in the Raindrop Prelude, Harold Arlen talks about “Stormy Weather (keeps rainin’ all the time…) and the Carter Family sings,

“The rain is gently pouring, and I hear I am recalling,

Those brighter days when you were by my side.

But now that we are parted, I’m blue and broken-hearted,

Come back to me and maybe I won’t cry.

I hear those raindrops, purty little raindrops,

Makes me think of all those tears I’ve shed.

Falling down my windowpane, I know I’ll never be the same,

Without you, I wish that I was dead.”

Rain as tears, rain as melancholy, rain as comfort, rain as benediction, rain as gratitude for shelter and an inward-turning coziness. Rain as a playground for children with faces turned to the sky with mouth open and tongue out, rain as puddle-splashing delight, with or without boots. Blessing to the plants, curse of the homeless, threat to picnics and outdoor weddings, nervous reminders to houses built precariously on cliffs, cruel challenge to teachers stuck with kids five days without recess. (Shall we play eraser tag again or thumbs-up? How about four hours of silent sustained reading?)

Here in San Francisco, crossed over into the closing month of the year and the coming of the rainy season, the rain tells us that all is right with the world and all is proceeding according to nature’s grand plan. If our good luck persists, the snow in the Sierras will pack high, the reservoirs fill, the hills turn from their half-year of brown to a glistening green. It’s time. May the rains continue!