Leaving the front office with permission to visit the music teacher, I walked down the halls of the 65 year old school building, with its green tiles and shiny floors and photos of engaged children on the walls. As I stopped to walk into the restroom, a little boy looked up at me and asked, “are you here to see Mrs. K.?”  Well, yes I am.  Are you in her class?  “Yes!”  Well I will see you in a minute!  We both entered our respective restrooms and exited at the same time.  “I can show you where the room is!”, as he excitedly walked down the hall to the door and held it open for me with a flourish.  

My visits to music classes, being held in every place except the music room, in other teacher’s classrooms, outside in front of the school and under awnings, have given me a new perspective of music education in my district.  I watch professionals, educators with multiple degrees, push every imaginable type of cart down hallways, zooming in with students on their laptops as they push.  Instruments and signs hang on these carts, every square inch used so creatively to get as much on them as possible, including a tub with sanitizers and paper towels. There is no time to use the bathroom or get a drink between classes, basic human needs, and yet these teachers take a deep breath, smile and make it work.  When I asked one of our teachers how things were going, she sighed, smiled and said, well it’s hard, but I’m making it work”.  I watched her work with students in her class – she was doing more than making it work.

Another teacher I visited today was meeting outside, her cart full and organized, her laptop on a little stool so that she had to stoop to zoom in with her zoomers, her headset and portable speaker on as her students learned all things music.  It was a thing of beauty because this teacher laughed with joy with her students as they took on challenge after challenge and asked for more.  Learning was happening in a most unlikely place and I couldn’t believe how fast the class moved.  

As I was sitting with this class, right after one of those challenges, one of the students looked at me with that “what did you think?” look on her face.  I smiled (through the mask) and gave her a big thumbs up.  These students want to work hard, they want to succeed and want to be acknowledged.  These are great kids, who I believe will grow up to be great adults.  We just have to believe in them.

One of the teachers I visited today teaches both music and computer.  After a seamless transition from one to the other, with 2^nd graders, the lesson turned into teaching the students how to make a slide with a picture of themselves and their name.  There were a few steps involved with one teacher and 20+ seven year olds raising their hands for help.  So, seeing how she was literally running from one student to another, especially when one little set of eyes looked at me as and asked if I could help them, I stepped in.  It felt good to walk around and help children.  

I read a post the other day, one of many I’ve read recently, that said all the problems we’re having with kids/society/you name it, was all the fault of public schools and teachers.  Teachers.  The same professionals I described above, the people that students couldn’t wait to get back to school for.  The people who insist on kindness and civility in their classrooms, who challenge their students to think for themselves and achieve.  While there can always be the one bad apple, teachers on the whole, and especially the teachers I have the opportunity to work with, are heroes.  If you’re looking for the source of issues in our world, it’s not because of teachers.  We don’t have time.  

At the end of the class, one of the kids looked up at me and asked, “did you used to be a music teacher?”.  As I answered in the affirmative, the question made me just a little sad.  Yes, I used to teach the subject of music, but in my heart, I’ll always be a teacher of children.