Watch Out for Yourself

Last post, in my imaginary workshop with skeptical teachers unconvinced that children might play their way to understanding, I tried to hit the nerve of their unspoken oath to help make children happy. But truth be told, many teachers never got that memo and that very idea is new to them. 

 

So Plan B is to have them reflect on how they feel after a day of teaching where the kids were unengaged, distracted, bored or just plain miserable. When kids are unhappy, they’re usually pretty comfortable letting you know it, one way or another. So if the altruistic notion of serving the future of humanity feels too lofty for you and beyond your skill set, consider this:

 

Misery begets misery. Happiness begets happiness. When you teach children like they are children, believe in their intelligence and intrinsic motivation to figure things out and understand their deep need to play around with things, be they be objects or ideas, you might notice that their awakened curiosity and joyful energy starts to come back to you. Suddenly, you’re a little less exhausted than you usually are and in some cases, mysteriously energized and maybe even—gasp!— downright happy after a long day of teaching! So it’s 100% in your interest to consider doing things differently than you have been taught— unless you’ve been taught by inspired, loving teachers. In which case, notice why you felt good in their presence when you were their student and strive to emulate it.

 

Make sense? Now who’s going to hire me for this workshop?

Watch the Children

I talked with a frustrated teacher the other day and felt my heart sink. She described trying to advocate for more play for the young children in her school and was told the school would form a “play committee” and she should bring in the “latest research” for the committee to consider. Even worse, the other teachers on the committee were resistant, asking the wrong questions like “How can we teach them to play?” How far we have fallen.

 

I suggested to the teacher that they invite me up to talk to those teachers and the admin about the importance of play. I always offer things like this, like giving a workshop to Board of Education people about grades or arts education or the mandatory sharing of the classes objectives at the beginning of each, what have you. I imagine giving a workshop where I can drive my points home forcibly enough through a hands-on experience that it might break through the armor of pedagogical dogma. That’s my fantasy,

 

But no one has ever, ever taken me up on it. So I keep preaching to the choir of people who sign up for my classes because they’re already pre-disposed to certain ideas of education. But I wonder what it would actually be like to try to work with those teachers who don’t understand the value, the need, the pleasure of play and whether I could actually open their minds to another point of view.

 

It’s clear that scientific research and quotes from any number of authors in all sorts of fields would have no effect whatsoever. I think my approach would be to bring the children into the conversation, as follows:

1) When you teach in the way you do, are the children happy?

 

2) Do you notice if they are or not?

 

3) Do you care?

 

4) Is it effective? Ie, do you get the results you hope for?

 

5) Are they motivated, engaged, curious?

 

If the answers to the above or no, I’d follow with “Well, there you go. Whatever you think is the right way to teach or have learned or accepted from someone else, it doesn’t count for a hill of beans if it doesn’t reach the children. 

 

Perhaps then I’d teach one class with them observing and ask them to honestly critique the results. Then we’d be ready for the needed conversation.

 

Any takers?

 

The Acceleration Effect

Sunday. Not exactly a day of rest. Finished correcting some homework, played some Bach recorder/piano sonatas with our virtuoso recorder teacher, had brunch at Jeffrey’s, our ritual restaurant. From there, rented electric bikes in Carmel with my good friend Estevao and we whisked around the 17-mile Drive and back, enjoying the brisk fog-tinged air, the characteristic Monterey cyprus and pine trees, the fresh feel of the ocean. Returned late afternoon for a short swim and cornhole with one of my students, who claimed he had never played— and beat me 21 to 1 the first game! Just for the record, I beat him 21 to 3 the second game, we were tied at 17-17 the third game and then I won. But hey, I’m not competitive!:-)

 

A hearty lasagna dinner with six Spanish-speaking men and a pleasure to exercise both my Spanish and social muscles. Love these guys! And then showed a movie in the theater here, Bela Fleck’s Throw Down Your Heart. Interesting that after reflecting on the pacing, editing, range of emotion, variety in my own Secret Song film that I felt critical of this film’s editing. But still a good story with fabulous music.

 

Back to my room to gather the notes from the first week to load into Google Classroom for the students and prepare tomorrow’s classes. Before dinner, we had a faculty dinner going through the details we need to attend to in each of the remaining five days and it struck me as it always does how fast this second week will go. Some law of time that the first three days or so of a course or a vacation in a new place feel like a lifetime and then everything accelerates and before you know it, boom! it’s over. Has any scientist studied this phenomena?

 

Not a happy truth as often look back at something that happened that felt it was recent and was actually 12 years ago. Then I add 12 to 72 and think that these years will go yet faster and it’s not a happy math equation. I wonder if as Ram Dass aged whether he was able to stick with the practice of “Be Here Now.” I am fully here now and love both the here and the now, but am less thrilled with how quickly those nows will keep rolling into each other.

 

But nothing new here. The same astonishment all aging people feel— where did all those years go? Meanwhile, tomorrow’s another day. 

Testimonies

It’s no secret that I like to talk. Yesterday, I met many students at the laundromat and while the clothes were romping around in the dryer, someone asked me a question and off I went. It was as if they put a quarter in my mouth and round I went for 15 minutes. I then warned them that if they put in another quarter, they’d have to listen until the cycle stopped. An apt image.

 

But here’s a surprise confession. I also like to listen. Ask someone a question that requires them to dig into their own stories and authentic truths. And then sit back and feel their words express so eloquently both the things I already value and some I hadn’t considered yet. 

 

So though it might seem like a chore to read the Level III assignment asking their response to reading a chapter from my book (me talking again, but a springboard to their own eloquence), I was so moved by both their perceptions and poetic expression of them. So here, I’ll close my mouth and let their voices fill the space. They’ve come here to consider how to get closer to inspired, effective and dynamic teaching that gives children precisely what they need and want. To discard the ineffectual ways in which they were trained or schooled and do the hard work of “teaching as they have not been taught.” And as the examples below testify, they get it. And are determined to be the teacher their children deserve. Some examples:

 

“The most beautiful scene in my mind is the happy face on each of the students when they are hungry to show others what they have learned in music class. I can feel how much they enjoy the class and feel like my efforts are worthy.”

 

“In one class I taught, I led a lesson in which no part of the activity felt like learning: it was 100% play. Yet, the lesson was packed with educational nutrients— like hiding spinach in a delicious fruit smoothie.”

 

“When I was a Boy Scout, we usually cooked our own food and at the beginning it was awful. Burnt or not cooked enough, with too much or too little salt. We gradually got tips from more experienced cooks, asked our parents for help at home, kept trying out dishes and gradually the taste got better and better. Later I came to understand that it was precisely the mistakes we made that eventually helped us become good cooks.”

 

“We are not children anymore, but every summer in this course we have the chance to remember what it feels like to be surprised, hypnotized and excited by music. It’s like a summer romance, a summer love who you only can meet once a year, but with whom you spend a magic time together. It’s also interesting to notice how important prescision is to keep that romance deep and alive.”

 

“ Today’s teachers are often mandated to write the daily agenda on the board, followed by giving a scripted verbal summary of the day’s activities. All this before the first note is played, sung or felt. The way we do something first here and discuss it later (instead of the other way around) answers my frustrations being a teacher forced to operate in a system of onerous compliance, with little or no consideration for the children who are forced to endure it.”

 

“One of the goals I now have is to make a concerted effort to harness the unexpected.”

 

“ When I began teaching via the Orff approach, I discovered that I love to play. And that the kids love to play. We all love to play together! Music class is super fun and I love teaching. Yes!

 

But I also understand that play can blossom into precision and precision can serve the kids with its own form of power. Shift the attitude towards ‘Look at the wonderful things we can do!” to “See how much more we understand!” Before this course, I felt Precision and Romance as oppositional forces and now I am beginning to understand them as complementary. When Precision enters, Romance doesn’t leave—it gets a cool new dance partner!”

 

“Today in class, time stopped and I suddenly understood that I must walk this path with compassion at my side, accompany my students in their pain and joy, hope and solitude. …I need to make each class a happy place, an imaginative place built meticulously through the details of inspired teaching. I realized that no matter how good the music is, it will only be an ornament if I don’t hold the students in my heart, don’t observe them, listen to them, accompany them, rescue them if necessary. I need to live in polyharmony, where all tension and dissonance can resolve into a powerful major chord. “

 

To all the above, I add only one word. 

 

Amen. 

Five Word Mantra

And so my 72^nd birthday came and went. I spent most of it teaching these 27 beautiful souls and running out of adjectives to properly describe the splendor of it all. Without any paperwork or immigration officers, we traveled to Bulgaria, Hungary, Azerbhaijan, Renaissance Europe, China, Lithuania and unlocked yet further faculties of our soul through the beneficent genius of musical cultures present in us all. Each gifted freely to us without any fuss about cultural appropriation, because they all are co-present in each and every one of us and properly approached, remind us that we are all vehicles of a shared consciousness. 

 

At lunch that day, we took our annual group photo that usually grouped us by country with each holding up paper versions of flags, but decided that such flags represented a divisive message— things like the tension between Catalonia and Spain, California and Florida, Turkey and Armenia. So instead opted for a big sheet of paper with the word “Welcome” in all the different languages represented in our gathering. That felt better.

 

Off with the faculty that night for our annual dinner out and movie. I was hoping for “Barbie” but both the movie times and the group energy leaned more towards “Indiana Jones.” It was pretty much what we expected, somewhat “fun,” but the 25 minutes of coming attractions of horrendous bam/bam/ explode/ monster/ panic/fear crap was truly dispiriting and hard to sit through. I had some naïve notion that Hollywood would stop making these after the pandemic, understanding we needed a break from feeding our brain stems and profiting by targeting our fears. What was I thinking? The sheer volume of human resources, both our work, our thinking, our imagination, our money to pump out this garbage, is mind-boggling. Aaaarggh!!!

 

Meanwhile, I felt the likes and loves from the usual assortment of folks in my life— people from high school, college, my old school community, a few performing musicians, neighbors, family, of course and large group of Orff colleagues and students I’ve trained around the country and around the world. Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, phone texts, e-mails, a few actual phone calls and the live greetings of the 100 or so teachers gathered here. The sense of being appreciated for having been born was present and welcomed.

 

And by me as well! For the moment, I’m blessed with good health, an alert and still ever-probing mind, a feeling heart, a sense of passion and purpose, the surprising feeling of being at the top of my game in teaching, writing and piano playing with both the possibility of and determination to continue the upward ascent to a larger view. My hearing keeps diminishing (though the hearing aids I’m resisting will certainly help with that) and there are some disturbing features in the mirror, but hey, I’m not on the market for attracting romance with my good looks, so why care? At the end of the day (which was actually 2am when I finally got home), my feelings about the whole thing can be succinctly summed up in the title of an interested airplane movie I once saw, a useful 5-word mantra.

 

Happy. Thank you. More please.

 

Culture of Connection

 I gave my talk last night with this title, some with the help of slides and videos to drive points home. Here are some of the opening thoughts, with more to follow (or not).

Since this talk is based on what it takes to rear children who feel connection in their lives, it’s a good idea to define our terms. The root of “con-nect” is “con”— with— and necto—to bind. To connect is to bind together things that create suffering when apart and separate. Note that “bind” is closely related to “bond,” that essential non-negotiable experience all mammals require. A child who is properly bonded with the mother and nurtured by related adults in the family is a child ready to take on the adventure of life, the peaks and pitfalls alike. It’s safe to say that bonding is the foundation of all mental, emotional and physical health to come.

 

Here I hope to talk about the things that are in our power to control, particularly the work of schools. As much as we’d like to, it’s not up to us to guarantee that every child who eventually crosses into school is properly bonded. But if we understand the kind of connections all children (and adults) need and organize our thinking, our practice, our schedule, our decisions, around them, then we have the possibility of making a significant impact. 

 

Since my audience is you lovely and courageous and dedicated music teachers, I’ll mostly speak about how music and dance, properly taught (ie, with fun, love and imagination) can be one of the deepest and significant paths to a connected life. Having defined connection as the binding together of things that should not be separated, let’s look specifically at the various aspects of connection we might aspire to, both for our children and ourselves. Note that it might be difficult or even impossible to feel connected equally in all eight ways, but even one authentic point of connection can be enough to save a life from all the maladies that are running rampant in our culture— loneliness, isolation, powerlessness, marginalization— and the yet more extreme epidemics of depression, alcohol abuse, drug addiction, opoid dependence, violence, abuse, suicide and yet more. Here is a beginning list to consider:

 

 

 

Connecting… 

1) With one’s own physical body. In your body. Work, sports, exercise, with dance at the height of kinesthetic intelligence. 

 

2) With one’s own emotions. Capacity to feel nuanced feelings and to name feelings. Music is the language of emotion, able to affirm and express and celebrate what we feel.

 

3) With one’s own potential to shape one’s destiny, to engage in a discipline that requires consistent effort and reaps results. Again sports, but also music and dance.

 

4) With the full range of one’s multiple intelligences: Kinesthetic, musical, visual-spatial, mathematical, linguistic, intrapersonal, interpersonal

 

5) With people. Play, play and again play. Music and dance two of the strongest connecting points, as sounds and bodies blend to create something beautiful, powerful, harmonious and larger than our small selves. 

 

6) With ancestors. Singing the songs, playing the pieces, dancing the dances and feeling the presence of those who came before. 

 

7) With descendants,sustaining what is essential in culture and nature and creating something new for the future to enjoy.

 

8) With the unseen world, with magic, with mystery, with wonder. Religion without dogma. Indeed, root of religion comes from ligare, to bind and re-, to connect again having lost touch with our original Buddha Nature or been expelled from the Garden of Eden.

 

Here where I’m witnessing so much delight in the way we have come together to play, sing and dance, I imagine you all benefitting from at least some of these multiple connections coming alive for you, having lost so many in the workaday world we all have to face. And by so doing, renew your determination to help the children you teach feel welcomed, valued, seen, connected. 

Farewell to 71

Tonight I gave my lecture titled “The Culture of Connection.” I spoke about my experience in Ghana and the multiple lessons it had to teach about kids, culture, community and what’s really important in this life. Knowing what health looks and feels like in actual human beings and gatherings of human beings, the gap between our possibility and our day-to-day experience in an increasingly toxic-to-the-human-spirit culture, I naturally had to compare and contrast. If we don’t have a name for our disease and/or recognize its symptoms, we have no hope of an accurate diagnosis and possible healing. Not the happiest of topics, but balanced by the opening videos of happy kids in Ghana and some closing words about the happiness we’re all experiencing together in this Orff retreat. 

 

It was yet another glorious day, where every minute of my five hours teaching was glowing with exuberance, laughter, joy and powerful music and dance. Tomorrow I’ll spend most of my birthday doing exactly what I was born to do with people I’m happy to be doing it with. And then look forward to a night out on the town, dinner and a movie with our fab faculty.

Meanwhile, some birthday wishes on Facebook are trickling in and I was moved by one from a woman in Iran. Lovely words and sentiments to close out my 71^st year. 

 

Doug to me symbolizes a teacher whose first word is love, a love that makes commitment and a commitment that is human-made. I learned from Doug, besides the technical issues, that love for work, commitment and teamwork is enough to nurture humans and everything else will go ahead. Happy birthday to my dear Doug 

 

More than I deserve, but hey, who am I to say? Alongside a quote from one of my current Level III students that I used to end my talk, encouraging words to help me begin my first step of the next circle around the sun.

 

Sometimes, during the classes, an atmosphere is created that takes us to a common place where everyone can participate and be happy, and that's the ideal world where I want to live.

 

Me, too, my friend. And against all odds, it’s the world I am living in. Onward!