New Question

The 6^th grade teacher at our school has been doing a project called Proteus for over 30 years. Students pick a topic of interest, research it, decide how to present it and the whole thing culminates in a fair of sorts with booths.

But this year, she shifted the question from “What are you interested in?” to “What problem in the world would you like to help solve?” The results were impressive, as students delved into big topics like homelessness, racism, women’s rights and smaller ones like “how to make a quieter vacuum cleaner.”

Our school seems to be taking our social justice mission more seriously these days and this was another great step in this direction. The 5^th grade teacher (my daughter) did a year-long study of the various isms, tackled the refugee problem and had her kids research and present the various social reform movements of the 60’s and beyond. The art teacher (my wife) did a project around the Flint water crisis. One of the music teachers (me) had kids write reports about how jazz musicians contributed to social justice issues. And there were more examples from other teachers as well.

I’m wary of entirely foregoing one’s eccentric interests and always having to “save the world,” but when done well, one can take one’s inclinations and enlarge them to include your own style of contributing to a world that, let’s face it, is in dire need of healing. The human mind is so intelligent, the imagination so broad, the heart so capable of love, that indeed I believe many of our human-created catastrophes can be at least slowed down, minimized, contained, if not solved—if only we took our humanitarian promises seriously enough to get to work. So why not start young?

Changing the question from “What do you want to be when you grow up?” to “How will you contribute to making the world more beautiful, more fair, more livable?” is a good start. 

Critical Enthusiasm

The beauty of the Orff approach is its invitation to partake of music's gifts freely, without judgment, without fear, without worry about right and wrong notes. From the use of the blending tones of the pentatonic scale (all dissonant notes removed—almost!) to creating your own motion to a song or piece of music to working with a small group to create something, music is more a party than a rigorous discipline. For people used to music as the stern teacher ready to pounce when the finger is not curved or the wrong note is hit, it’s akin to a religious conversion to realize that music can be fun!

And likewise, teachers trained in courses that require memorization of the 26 steps of the latest and greatest pedagogy or wade through cumbersome assessment criteria or trudge through 30 pages of Scope and Sequence curriculums, it’s a joy to have a teacher invite you to figure out your own way to do it, to choose five or six simple but vital skills and find your own way to awaken them in your students—with a little help from your friends, ie, over a half a century of Orff Schulwerk practice to draw from.

But after the initial rush of freedom comes a sobering realization, the moment when “I can do anything I want!” becomes “Whoah! I can do anything I want. It’s up to ME.” Which translates as, “I have an incredible amount of work ahead of me.”

And you do. How indeed will you create a coherent sequential curriculum over a five to eleven year span? How will you decide which quality material to choose? How will you increase the diversity of musical styles represented when you yourself  are not thoroughly trained? How will you attend to all the different strands of an Orff program—body percussion, speech, song, movement, dance, recorder, Orff instrument ensemble, drama, literacy, improvisation—and then weave them together into one seamless cloth?

And that’s just the beginning. How will you deal with classes of 30 kids in inadequate spaces? Token schedules of just 30 minutes a week? Kids who need more attention than others? Kids who take attention from others? Kids who hide and don’t cause trouble, but actually need attention? How will you deal with their diverse issues, most of which now have names (Asberger’s, autism, dyslexia, ADD, etc.) and their own strands of strategies? How will you deal with demanding parents and administrators who don’t understand the arts and disinterested colleagues? How will you defend music amidst pressure to replace it with computers or testing?

Well, the initially enthusiastic teacher will find out soon enough and I don’t say this as a cynic waiting for them to lose their innocence. I say this to suggest that all will need one vital tool to help them navigate through the treacherous waters of inspired teaching. I’d call it Critical Enthusiasm.  (Or perhaps Enthusiastic Critique?) I am enthusiastic about my fellow Orff teacher’s enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm alone is not enough. We need some rigorous critique, some aesthetic judgements, some pedagogical perceptions about what inspired teaching actually is.

I think as American Orff teachers, we are a bit too quick to praise ourselves and talk about how awesome and amazing the Orff approach is. There’s a sense (as shown in a recent Facebook post) that all Orff courses are fantastic and that’s sweet as far as it goes, but perhaps a little naïve? I find that a new student will come away from a remarkable workshop with enthusiasm and also come away from a mediocre workshop with the same enthusiasm. Not their fault—they simply don’t have enough criteria to distinguish between good, bad and extraordinary. But the danger is when they don’t know that they don’t know and receive encouragement to treat all courses and workshops as fantastic.

As sophisticated musicians, we simply need to know the difference between Kenny G and Branford Marsalis, between George Winston and Keith Jarrett, between me playing a Beethoven Sonata and Richard Goode playing the same. The same standards apply to distinguishing excellent from good from mediocre teaching. It concerns me that such critical discernment in my Orff world is seen as some kind of intellectual elitism and why can’t I lighten up and accept that all courses and teachers are simply wonderful? But they’re not. They all have something valuable to offer, no question about that, but there are degrees of depth and breadth and 99% of it is related to the teacher’s willingness to keep questioning, keep working, keep developing him or herself, keep enlarging understanding, keep thinking, keep reading, keep writing, resisting the urge to think “they’ve got it” and nothing more to do than explain it to others.

By most standards, I’ve had a successful career as an Orff Schulwerk teacher— 41 years teaching kids from 3 years old to 8^th grade at one school, workshops and courses in most every U.S. State and 44 countries worldwide, eight books published, most in second and third printings and so on. What saves me from excessive pride or arrogance is the certainty that there’s so much more I could—and should— do better and the constant habit of noting what that is and striving to improve. So I’m not criticizing from a lofty perch here.  Or rather the height of that perch is directly proportionate to the habit of self-critique.

In short, both art and artistic teaching are a perpetual question that can never be wholly answered. The moment we think we know it, we are lost. 

Brazilian Blossom

Carl Orff liked to describe his approach of elemental music education as a wildflower that blooms naturally where conditions are ripe. Too much cultivation would spoil it and if the soil is not ready, nothing will blossom. It’s a beautiful image and a good reminder to us all to try to keep that wild quality in an indoor school system that runs on strict watering schedules and expects uniform flowers with predictable outcomes.

Yesterday, our fabulous 6^th grade of 32 students got an introduction to Brazilian samba dance from our dear friend Thais. She came here from Rio to lead adult groups in the San Francisco and Oakland Carnaval celebrations and was happy to come work with our kids. She began in a circle with a body percussion version of the bell pattern and then began demonstrating steps as myself and some colleagues started playing some of the music. The kids followed her steps and as she moved around the room, they did as well. A moment’s pause and we invited kids who wanted to play to join us and because some of them heard these rhythms from all the previous years of school samba contests, they jumped right into the patterns effortlessly. The other kids spread out around the room, reviewed some steps with Thais and spontaneously starting doing small choreographies with the kids next to them. Noticing this, I pointed to the groups and had them come to the front one at a time to demonstrate. When the last group had come forth, we changed into a circle and invited with a gesture individuals to come into the center and dance. All of this without a pause in the music or a single verbal instruction. The music also was changing tempo, stopping and starting with whistle signals. When the clock announced time was up, the band led the circle out the door and into the yard for a bit before officially disbanding so the kids could go to the next class. Heaven!

That was the wildflower at work. The conditions were ripe—kids primed for dance, eager to share, able to pick up steps and rhythmic patterns instantly, attuned to the flow of the group energy—and the wildflower bloomed colorfully in front of our eyes. It was not a music class, it was a musical happening, a community event, a spontaneous celebratory moment entirely in the spirit of the Brazilian culture that inspired it. Precisely the kind of musical culture myself and my colleagues hope to create in our school community. And it echoed onward today as the 1^st through 5^th graders practiced their small group choreographies for next week’s event, not only with good rhythmic style, but also with a clear sense of form and structure and choreography, working it all out without a single adult guiding them. It is a joy to behold.

Hey, if you’re not busy, come by next Wednesday and see and hear for yourself. 1:45 at The San Francisco School. O le le!

It’s the end of the year and we’re going out not with a whimper, but a bang. Yesterday was a preview of the 8^th grade Shakespeare performance, the 1^st through 3^rd grade Science Fair and the beginning of practice for the Samba Contest. Friday is the 6^th grade Proteus Project, a fair with the kids sharing their topic of interest. 3^rd grade is camping at Marin Headlands and a 4^th grader asked me yesterday, “When’s the Cookie Jar Contest?” With next week our last, this is utter insanity, but also great fun.

Oh, and did I mention that next week is the actual Samba Contest, the 8^th grade-faculty basketball game, the 8^th grade graduation sharing/performances with the rest of the kids, the end-of-year slide show, the Mud-pies dessert and complete control ritual (don’t ask), the Closing Ceremony, the hug-line? And then the next day, the 8^th grade graduation? Never a dull moment at The San Francisco School!

But let’s take a moment with the Science Fair. Many years ago, I walked into a class preparing for their Science Fair amidst groans and tears about all the things that were going wrong. I happened to have my guitar and spontaneously began singing about it and by the time I left the class 20 minutes later, The Science Fair Blues was born. I’m a two-hit wonder at my school—The Earth Day Rap and The Science Fair Blues my legacy, both now indelibly part of school tradition for over 25 years. It’s not Blowing in the Wind, Summertime, My Girl or Bach’s Mass in B Minor, but hey, I do what I can.

Soon after the song was composed, a school parent from the San Francisco Zen Center gave a lecture based on my line “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m gonna show it to you.” Some hidden truth there about how all of us are faking it on some level, but hey, here we are and we have to share it with others as if we know what we’re doing. It applies to parenting, teaching, some performing—and hopefully not flying airplanes.

Here’s the text, minus the cool music (which you can find in my book ALL BLUES). Enjoy!

THE SCIENCE FAIR BLUES

© 1988 Doug Goodkin

The Science Fair was coming, things weren’t looking too good,

Nothin’ was workin’ just exactly like it should.

Everything seemed to be goin’ wrong,

So I sat myself down and I wrote out this song.

(Chorus)

I got the Science Fair Blues,

I got the Science Fair Blues,

I don’t know what I’m doin’

But I’m gonna show it to you.

I started my train, it fell off the track.

Put my turtle through the maze, it just lay on its back.

The thing that turned white is not turnin’ black,

But it’s the best I can do, I’m just a Science Fair hack!

I showed them my bird, it flew out the door.

I took out my rabbit, it just pooped on the floor.

My dinosaur model, it crumbled and broke,

I said, “What’s goin’ on? Is it some kind of joke?”

I lit up my rocket and it wouldn’t catch.

I was lookin’ around for another match.

There was none around, so what I could do?

I just sat down and wept with the Science Fair blues.

I plugged in here, I plugged it in there.

I plugged it in the wrong place and it lit up my hair.

I showed them my experiment, but it didn’t work.

So I sat there embarrassed and I felt like a jerk.

(Chorus)

I got the Science Fair Blues,

I got the Science Fair Blues,

I don’t know what I’m doin’

But I’m gonna show it to you.

All of the Above

What do my colleagues and I strive for in the music classes we teach at The San Francisco School? For starters, a safe place to take risks, connections with their classmates, exposure to music they might not have discovered on their own, a relaxed and fun atmosphere, developing useful and key musical skills, feeling the joy and excitement of performing concerts in public and so on. I promised in yesterday’s blog to share some of the students’ responses and here they are. Did the kids get what we hoped they would? Which of the qualities above did they notice on their own?

Seems like the answer is “All of the above.”  Here are some of their responses to the question: WHAT WAS MEMORABLE AND VALUABLE ABOUT YOUR WHOLE EXPERIENCE IN THE MUSIC PROGRAM? (See yesterday’s blog for the other questions.)

• It was a relaxed and fun class. The atmosphere in the class and the class itself is something I won’t find anywhere else. I love this class. I’m not the best musician so I didn’t think I would enjoy music, but boy, was I wrong! Thank you for three amazing years.

• Learning all types of music from different cultures and learning from the Interns from all over the world—I loved it!

• The whole process: from body music and patterns to classical music and memorization to jazz and improvisation.

• I liked collaborating with all these memorable people.

• I feel that I have gotten an incredible music education during my three years here. I have gotten to try new things that I had never even heard of before. This class made me more adventurous and willing to try new things.

• I got over my stage fright by being on stage during the Spring Concert. And that was one of the most valuable things I have ever overcome

• I think that my musical experience at SFS has helped me gain appreciation for some things I might have never appreciated otherwise.

• It was very memorable in general because it was my first time learning music in-depth in a group. I will definitely remember the San Diego performance because it felt more high stakes and it was amazing to perform in front of a huge group of people for the first time. Thank you so much for a great year and teaching me an insane amount of musical skills in such a short time! (This was from a new 8^th grade student who was only with us one year.)

• I think it was really awesome that we got to explore all the odds and ends of different types of music, from world music to classical to jazz and all around. My 11 years at the school have been a roller coaster of good and bad times, but I know that I always had the music program to escape to.

• All of the concerts, especially the last piece this year because it was the last piece I’ll ever play here. It was special to play it with my whole class.

• Each year, I got to express myself in a safe space through music. I got to experiment in what music I liked. Going through each year at the concerts is very memorable because it symbolizes that I have improved from the year before. Thanks for sticking with us for all 11 years!

• Being able to play music in a safe place with my peers has been a truly amazing experience. The music program at SFS is one of the last parts of this school that stays true to the mission and is similar to how the school first was. I will miss being able to play xylophones at SFS.