Ping and Pong

I got a note from a school parent telling me how much her 5-year old enjoyed an online sing I had just done. As something that just got added to the kids’ schedule, there were only three kids there, so she was thanking me for taking the time. I wrote back:

There's an old Zen saying: "Sweep the garden. Any size."

Did an online workshop with 350 people in Canada last week and that was fun, but no more fun than singing with 3 kids! Loving how engaged and enthusiastic your son  is! The maddening part of online teaching is missing the give and take, the call and response, the ping and the pong with the kids and really, if anyone wonders how I've retained my energy and enthusiasm after 45 years of it, that's the answer. Like being plugged into a constantly renewing energy source. 

But what's even more remarkable is how a simple smile or motion or answer to a question from an image in a small gridded screen somehow comes through and gives that same kind of satisfaction! Online ping-pong is certainly not as fun, but we’re still in the game! 

And it’s true. 

Christmas in May

'Twas the month before summer (not the night before Yule),

Not a creature was stirring in the office or school.

The children were nestled at home in their beds,

While the next online lesson danced in their heads. 

Mama at her laptop, Papa with his mask,

“What do we need from the store?” he did ask.

“I’ll be waiting in line for at least one whole hour,

I hope that they’ll have some TP and some flour!”

Around the whole world, in far distant lands,

The people, like us, were all washing their hands.

They sang out their windows, stayed distant, six feet,

Grew some more vegetables and ate less meat.

For the first time ever the whole human race,

Was staying at home, all sheltered in place. 

The numbers were staggering, the news, oh so sad,

While certain blind leaders said, “It’s not so bad.

We’ve got to keep buying, keep shopping for stuff,

Get things we don’t need, it’s never enough. 

Health is okay, but money counts more.

Don’t listen to experts, let’s open the stores.”

While doctors worked hard to enlighten and teach,

This big buffoon said, “Let them drink bleach!”

His supporters they rallied, cried out “It’s not fair, but

Nothing can stop us from getting a haircut!!”

Now back at my home, while planning my class,

I heard someone walking outside on the grass.

Then up on the roof, there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my screen to see what was the matter. 

Down the chimney he came, a right jolly old elf,

And began taking things that were up on the shelf. 

The one who used to leave gifts ‘neath the tree,

Was now taking my things away, one, two and three. 

He gathered the clothes that I really didn’t need

And the wasted distractions I'd bought in my greed.

And then did the same with the neighbor next door,

And next door to that and then more and more.

He filled up his bag, he spun and he twirled

As he began to take things we don’t need in this world.

Away with the logging that’s killing the trees!

Away with the plastic that’s choking the seas!

Away with the malls that rob land from the bees!

Away with the loans and exorbitant fees!

Away with all gas-guzzling SUV’s!

Away with the smoke that is choking the air!

Away with the folks hoarding more than their share!

Away with injustice, away with the lies!

Away with the fast food in its super-size!

And so it began, and it spread through the nation.

The gradual dawn of a great revelation. 

We cannot be waiting for any one leader,

Messiah or ruler or income tax cheater.

We cannot depend on a jolly old elf,

To make the new world, we must do it ourself!

No more excuses, no duties to shirk,

The children are waiting, let’s all get to work!

What I Have Learned

I was invited to write something about having to figure out online learning for my school newsletter and so I did. And here it is.

And so in my last two months of 45 years of sitting on the floor in the music room with kids of all ages, playing clapping games together, dancing, putting our hands on skins and strings and mallets striking wood and metal, singing with our own human breath with all the vibrations mixing so powerfully in the air, throwing out the ping of a musical call and receiving the pong of the kids’ musical response, something snatched away the music room rug from under my feet and I was left hanging in the ether of electrons flying between machines. Just when I thought I could sneak out the door without having to master the kind of mediated learning that I have felt is often an obstacle to the real deal, an unnecessary distance created in the direct transmission of music, ideas, human connection, it suddenly became the only show in town. No choice but to turn on the screens and figure out what’s possible.

I quickly discovered that there are two sides to online learning. One is simply learning the mechanics of it and while it can be maddening and at times overwhelming, it’s always good for the human brain to keep well-oiled and awake by having to make new neural connections—ie, learn new things. Because school is using so many pre-fab electronic systems and they differ according to the divisions of preschool/ elementary/ middle and because as a music teacher, I teach kids in all divisions, the steep hill of the learning curve was of Lombard Street proportions. It was like suddenly deciding to take up the ukulele, clarinet, djembe and  steel drum all at once. Each has its own technique, its own way of arranging the scale, its own specialized vocabulary. Not easy.

But like all human learning, the key is repeated practice, doing something often enough that it becomes myelinated in the brain, familiar and eventually routine. And the more you do it, the more you get a feel for how all of these work and begin to intuit things you don’t know—“Aha, let’s see what the two-finger click offers. Hmm, maybe it’s inside those three dots. Aargh, it’s not working! Think I’ll restart the computer.”

So that’s challenge enough and if anyone’s impressed that an old Doug can learn new tricks, I’m happy to receive the praise. However the real—and most exciting and worthy challenge—is to figure out how to communicate the essence of what you want kids to know given the limitations of the technology. Sometimes it’s a bit like playing piano with thick gloves on—or worse yet, manipulating some mechanical hand to play the piano. But some things work as well and a few even better—the way Schoology gathers the student work in a file without you having to dig in your disorganized backpack to find which folder had this class’s papers. The way student work can be publicly displayed on Flipgrid or Seesaw and shared with other kids. The way you can teach a jazz history class in a live “online” format without the kids talking to their neighbor (hint: turn off chat!) and share your screen to show relevant videos and play recorded pieces. I’d already praised the ease and accessibility of Youtube and Apple TV compared to the old days of cuing up obscure videos on the VCR and rewinding for the next class. “The right tool for the right job for the right reason at the right time for the right amount of time” has always been my technological motto and never so much as today. And in my other life as an Orff Schulwerk teacher giving workshops to people around the world, I’m now experiencing this stunning new  possibility of inviting all those people I’ve met into my home for an online workshop with 350 people from every continent. What it lacks in depth it gains in breadth and sharing pedagogical ideas and demonstrating musical understandings is just fine online, with a little bit of ping-pong in the chat comments and some hilarious participation with everyone dancing and singing in their homes viewable on little gridded squares. 

In short, learning what to click is a good intellectual exercise, but learning how to transmit the essence of what you want to share given the limitations of any media is an aerobic workout of the imagination, a Zoom-ba class of creative problem-solving. That has been one beneficent take-aways of this challenging time.

But I think that the most important lesson is to return to real, live teaching with a renewed sense of the precious gift of turning off the screens and coming back to the world of touch and movement and singing together and hugs and the ping-pong of things thrown back and forth, whether they be balls, musical ideas, dance steps, thoughts, emotions. The direct, physical, sensual, connected co-experience of this glorious life gifted to us without the glare of screens, the clumsy technologies, the distractions and the sensations, the obstacles placed between us when direct experience is mediated. I hope we’ll emerge understanding precisely what the gifts of these technologies are and also much more aware of their limitations, much wiser as to when to turn them on and when to shut them off and at what age and for how long and for what reason. We can be grateful for what they’ve offered us during this sheltered time and grateful for the irreplaceable joy of direct human contact and experience that awaits us. May it come soon!

The Quarantine Songbook—J to Z

Did you do your homework yesterday? I ended up giving this songbook assignment to 8^thgrade, telling them to choose one title that expresses their feelings and elaborate a little bit. I gave them an example of my own little poem:

“Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,  but maybe that’s okay with me.

Some wars have stopped, less cars are driving,

The flowers in my garden thriving.

I miss my friends, I need a hug,

But now I’ll do some work for Doug!”

Here’s the next list for tomorrow’s assignment.

• Just in Time

• Last Time I Saw Paris, The

• Learnin’ the Blues

• Let’s Face the Music and Dance

• Look for the Silver Lining 

• More Than You Know

• Nobody Else But Me

• Nows’ the Time

• Out of Nowhere

• Party’s Over, The

• Pick Yourself Up

• Say It Isn’t So

• Small World

• Solitude

• Spring will Be a Little Late This Year

• That’s Life

• There’ll Be Some Changes Made

• Things Ain’t What They Used to Be

• Too Close for Comfort

• We’ll Be Together Again

• What’ll I Do?

• You’re Drivin’ Me Crazy

The Quarantine Songbook—A to I

The Quarantine Songbook—A to I

Three preludes to today’s post:

1)   A while back, I wrote a poem called “A Poem that Shakespeare Couldn’t Have Written,” struck by the fact that since nothing like this has ever happened in the history of human beings, we can’t look back for solace, comfort or understanding. 

But of course, I was wrong. The details of the plot are unique to this moment, but the emotions unleashed and the wisdom we crave are timeless and universal. There’s plenty of places to look to to understand that we have company besides the people in the Zoom meetings and plenty of help to think about how to respond to the uncertainties before us.

2)   One of my quarantine projects has been to revive an old project of memorizing on piano some 300 jazz tunes. As I looked at the titles, I was struck by how many were relevant to this moment. (see above)

3)   And so here is the beginning of the Quarantine Songbook. I’m beginning with songs from The Great American Songbook, those priceless pieces for posterity known as jazz standards. Some titles you may recognize and others not and that could be your first project—listen to them all! But your second homework assignment is to choose one that, as the Quakers say, “speaks to your condition” and write a little poem/ reflection/ short story/ Great American Novel with that song’s title as your title. So as not to overwhelm you, today’s choices are from A to I of songs found in the The Real Vocal Book: Volumes 1 and 2. Enjoy!

• Are You Having any Fun?

• Best Is Yet to Come, The

• By Myself

• Call Me

• Cast Your Fate to the Wind

• Day By Day

• Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me

• Don’t Blame Me

• Fly Me to the Moon

• Get Out of Town (not!) 

• Goin’ Out of My Head

• Here’s That Rainy Day

• How Are Things in Glocca Morra?

• I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But the Blues

• I Don’t Want to Walk Without You

• I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good

• I Will Wait For You

• I’ll Get By

• I’m Beginning to See the Light

• I’m Putting all My Eggs in One Basket

• It Could Happen to You

• It Will have to Do Until the Real Thing Comes Along

• It’s a Most Unusual Day

• It’s Been a Long, Long Time

• It’s So Peaceful in the Country

A Story for Our Time

As mentioned in the last post, no-one is more astounded than I am that i'm teaching Orff Schulwerk online. And while I hold to the view that this is not the real deal and that the live, in-the-flesh workshop is irreplaceable and wholly necessary, still I am astounded by how much can get through electrons flying through the ether on pixilated screens. The human need for communion, for intellectual engagement and imaginative connection is so strong that like a plant growing in the crack of a concrete, it can come through in even the most limited and adverse circumstances. It reminded me of a story about stories that I had stored away in my storehouse of someday-I'll-need-this information and lo and behold, I found it in one of the books on my shelves. And then wrote my own version. As follows:

Whenever misfortune threatened the Jews, Rabbi Israel Ball Sehm Tov would retreat to the forest, light the fire, say the prayer and the misfortune would be avoided. In the passing of time this task fell to a second rabbi who knew both the place in the forest and the prayer but not how to light the fire. Nevertheless the misfortune was avoided. A third rabbi knew only the play; the prayer and the fire had been forgotten. But this too was enough and the misfortune was avoided. Finally the task fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn who knew neither the place nor the fire nor the prayer. All he could do was tell the story. 

And it was sufficient. *

MUSIC VERSION BY DOUG GOODKIN

In the ancient times, the people would gather around the campfire and all would drum and sing and dance and feast and tell the old stories of men, women, beasts and plants. Thus, they participated in the turn of the seasons and harvested the joys and sorrows of each day and exulted in the beauty of life and the wonder of it all in company with each other. After some time, the campfire was abandoned and people gathered inside their houses to dance, drum, sing and feast. Sometime later, people went into school classrooms, the feast was abandoned and only some people drummed, only some danced, only some sang. Still later, yet fewer played each part and they went into a studio and people listened on listening devices. Yet later, a machine made drumbeats and a singer sang and the music played in the background while people chatted in a café.  And so it diminished until one day, there was nothing left but a little song sung by a child to a gridded screen of tiny faces. 

And it was enough.

PS (For now)

* From the Introduction to Jane Yolen’s Favorite Folktales of the World

“Why am I Here?” The 5 Pillars of Orff Training

And so the calendar turns to May, another month of sheltering awaits and I have begun my new life teaching Orff workshops online. Yesterday I spent three glorious hours with 65 people from all six continents and then another hour and a half with 300 plus teachers from Canada. And I loved every minute. Surprisingly, I feel at home talking into my screen and joking and reacting to people and singing/ clapping/ gesturing/ playing music with mics turned off and sharing stories and sometimes pausing to let some tears subside. 

In my next post, I’ll share why I think this is. But meanwhile, I began just spontaneously listing five things that I think people look for in workshops with the idea that I’ve planned the time to try to deliver all five as best I can. At the end, people wrote their “takeaways” in a chat and several commented that they liked thinking about those five things. So naturally, I wrote a little article. And here it is:

When my colleague James Harding was a new teacher at my school, he meticulously observed the ways in which I organized my classes to direct the flow of the children’s energy. He led the three-year-olds down the hall in a line singing a song, entered the music room and danced them into a circle, sat down showing different sitting postures until they all were seated cross-legged and ready to begin. So far so good.

But for a three-year old in his first music class, new to the school and getting used to the routines, that trip down the hall was like a trek to Siberia. He was sitting next to James and looked up at him with a pained face and exclaimed “Why are we here?!!!!”

Ah, the wisdom of children. Wouldn’t we all do well to ask that question often in our lives? At the boring staff meeting or in a noisy bar or waking up next to someone? 

And so, as we venture into this new world of the online Orff Workshop, I think it’s a good time to ask the same question. And that starts with reflecting on why we come to Orff workshops at all? I suspect that most of us are looking for five things. See if you agree.

1)   Material:We’re all looking for great songs, dances, games, Orff arrangements. The Orff teacher is a lifelong collector of repertoire and workshops are the place to shop. When participants leave with material they can’t wait to try out on Monday, they feel that their time was well spent.

2)   Process: Orff offers more than just the song, piece or game—it shows models of both the many different ways one can teach it in a way that is engaging, surprising and effective and the many ways one can extend it and have the students create something new—improvise new melodies, compose new accompaniments, choreograph a dance, act it out in drama, the whole limitless possibilities of “What can we do next?”

3)   Understanding:Music holds a vast storehouse of specific knowledge—techniques, theory, stylistic considerations, histories. If a workshop offers new insight as to how music works, both specifically and generally, it enlarges out capacity as teachers of music. 

4)   Inspiration:The beckoning finger of someone further ahead on the path is often the impetus we need to keep walking. The details that they reveal that we might miss walking on our own, the secret beauties they show us, the testimonies and living examples of how this path has sustained them, blow new breath into us (the etymology of in-spire) and help us feel more alive and determined to keep moving forward.

5)    Connection: The act of singing, dancing and/or playing music together with fellow human beings is one of the simplest and most powerful means of connection, that deep longing that we all equally share to feel that we belong, that we are a needed, valued, welcomed member of a community. And yet music teaching in schools can be a lonely profession as we walk into the staff room with no other music teachers to share our day’s stories with. One of the central delights of Orff workshops, conferences, courses, is simply to be in company with people who share similar experiences, passions and ways of being in the world. And sharing ideas and material and understandings as well. While much of the learning is transmitted vertically from the expert teacher to the workshop participants, as much (and sometimes more!) is passed on horizontally between the teachers. 

Notice that “credit” is not on the list of essential things that teachers are seeking when they give up a Saturday to come to a workshop. So many courses in Universities or other trainings so often feel like hurdles to jump over without taking any pleasure in the jumping beyond checking it off the list for the ultimate goal of a certification or a degree. Your passion is to become a chiropractor but you can’t arrive without going through the land-mined territory of organic chemistry. That’s not our wayWhile it’s true that not everyone will equally love learning recorder or movement or orchestrating arrangements in their Basic Orff class, there mostly is joy and pleasure in each step of the way. And if there’s not, it’s time for the teacher to reflect on their own process of teaching and/or the student to reconsider “Why am I here?” In short, 9 time out of 10 that answer is, “I went to a workshop and a world opened up that I didn’t even know could exist—and yet I imagined it possible my whole life and now have found it.

Two more things a worthy Orff course often offers:

1)   Affirmation“Yes! I do that!  I had doubts as to whether I was on the right track and here is this famous teacher doing the same thing!” And so some sense of encouragement that your intuitive way of working is grounded in deep pedagogical principles and is worthy of continuing  and developing.

2)   Challenge:“Hmm. I never thought about that.” Or “A ha! That’s the detail I was missing.” If a workshop is only affirmation and one challenge, one gets complacent. If only challenge and not affirmation, one gets discouraged. Some balance, some sense of “I can do that!” mixed with “Back to the drawing board. I better get to work!” makes the whole effort to attend a workshop a worthwhile endeavor.

When the five hungers of a workshop participant are all at least partially fed, with that needed balance of affirmation and challenge, the workshop teacher benefits, the workshop participant benefits and most importantly, the children awaiting the next music class benefit. The Saturday when one could have slept late, the expense of registration, plane flights, meals, hotels to attend the Conference, the two weeks in the summer when you could have been tanning on the beach, all pay back mightily from that investment of time and energy. Perhaps the metaphor of an economic transaction is to too coarse, too narrow, a way to talk about it. More poetically, being held in the circle of singing fellow music teachers is that tropical paradise you’ve always dreamed of, that little glockenspiel solo as refreshing as a gin and tonic, that simple folk dance a moonlit stroll on a beach. The motivation soars like a graceful gull over the mundane world of credit, professional development, graded homework assignments, to its true nesting place— love, pure and simple. 

That is why we are here.