I know summer break is a point of contention for a lot of people who don’t seem to understand the absolute NEED for such a break for our teachers.  And, let’s be honest, most teachers spend their time doing things FOR school during their summers; taking classes, professional development, working a second job (because they can’t afford to live on what they make teaching), etc.  However, this past summer, after a ridiculously busy summer the year before moving to a brand new building, I made the conscious decision to not plan anything.  Now, this is difficult for someone who is used to being aware of the clock every minute of the day, and I have found this difficult in the past in terms of making myself slow down.  But after the day of professional development I needed to do right after school was out, I set out to not plan anything for the summer.  Not even my vacation.

First of all, I decided to grow flowers and feed birds.  I only have a couple of window boxes and a butterfly bush, but everyday I got up, watered and checked the plants and put out seed for the birds.  This made for hours of watching and getting to know these sweet little birds.  The one with the grandpa eyebrows makes me laugh.  I’m not kidding – he really has bushy eyebrows!  I tried to learn a little bit about them, but mostly time was just spent sitting quietly and enjoying.  The flowers are all pink and purple, my favorite colors and it made me smile when I got up in the morning.

Speaking of getting up in the morning, unless I had a hair appointment or something (ok, I did have to plan a few things), I did not set an alarm.  I slept until I wanted.  I napped when I wanted.  I went to bed when I wanted.  I was so relaxed.  Summer schedule also meant going out to get half-priced milkshakes after 8:00 p.m.  In the convertible.  With the top down and the music playing.  Not going to talk about the calories.  They don’t count during the summer.

Blogging became a daily habit.  I have talked about writing a book for YEARS, but somehow I just couldn’t find the time.  This summer, I MADE the time to write and it has become a habit.  It’s not a book yet but I’m hoping this discipline will help me to do it in the future.  And I had some cherished quiet time.  One of the things I was told in terms of Strengths Finder, was that because I tend to live in my head, I need quiet time to think by myself.  Unfortunately, I also tend to get lonely, but this year, I embraced the fact that Doug had a lot of drill writing to do.  I watched less TV, read more and just thought.

So now, school starts. I sleep until the bitter end so I have to dash like crazy to get out to school on time, usually grabbing a couple of donuts from the guy I know so well that we’re on a first name basis.  The work starts the minute I walk in the door, and as all teachers know, you’re “ON”  the entire time you’re there. No time for relaxing, taking a breath or going to the bathroom when you need to.  Then you either hang out for an hour or two after your official hours are over or take stuff home with you.  I’m lucky that I’m an empty nester at this point in my life, but the dishes still have to be done, the clothes washed, the bathrooms cleaned.  In the summer I can do a little every day with a bigger cleaning once a week and the place stays nice.  During the school year it depends on our schedule.  Doug helps a BUNCH when he’s able to be around, but if we’re both crazy busy, the place looks it.  I’m exhausted by the end of the day, stressed by just the daily stuff and more so by the extra little things asked of us year around from various sources.

Retirement would be wonderful, but I’m not quite old enough.  YET.  (no comments please).  So in the meantime, how do I and other teachers keep our sanity during the school year?  I’m thinking for me I’m going to begin keeping a little bit of that summer in my day.  Driving to and/or from school with the top down on the car.  Stopping for that shake on the way home.  I plan to keep feeding the birds throughout the school year to see how things change.  Planning that little sit down with Doug for a glass of wine and just talking for a half hour or so.  And maybe not worrying so much about the place.  I’ll do it as I have time and as long as it’s not stinky, I think we’re ok, right? : )  I may try to do more things that are fun after school.  Not things that go late, but maybe meeting a friend for a drink (diet coke : ), or an early dinner.  Something to wind down after a long day that’s something different from going back and forth from home to school and school to home.

The stress and exhaustion from teaching is not going to change, and people’s perceptions of our “easy gig” probably aren’t going to change either.  What I CAN change is what I do for myself, how I prioritize things in my life and giving myself permission to let a few things go so that I can do things I enjoy to wind down.  And maybe encouraging my colleagues to do the same.  Here’s to keeping a summer spirit all year long!

 

This could be really interesting to read in a couple of days when the fever has disappeared, but I wanted to talk about the feelings and questions I have in the midst of this, so hear goes.  I am a teacher.  I stayed at school the entire day Friday, feeling achy and cold, but took some Tylenol a couple of times and it was manageable.  It was a particularly busy day which started with choir before school and then 5 classes in a row, interrupted only by lunch duty and a quickly thrown down lunch (not thrown UP, thank goodness),  much of which didn’t taste good.  I left right at the end of the day, went home and slept until dinner, then back to sleep until 9:00 this morning.  And the only thought I have?  I have to get better by Monday.

See, the silly thing in teaching is that you’re given a generous number of sick days for the year, but I’ll be honest, and I’m sure my fellow teachers will agree, it’s more trouble to have to do lesson plans for a sub than it is to come in sick.  Do other professions do this?  Are other professionals expected to prepare their days work for someone else to do in their place while they’re gone?  Or do they just take a day off and do it when they get back?  Right there is the difference between business and education.  This is not college where the prof cancels the class and the students go party.  While I CAN hand off 125 kids per day to another person, I can’t just do it and hope for the best.  There are details.  Where do I keep this and that?  There are those kids to keep an eye on.  How do kids walk in my room? How do they get to their personal space?  So, not only do I have to write lesson plans, but all of the procedures that go with said lesson plans.

You know, I would love to say my kids behave beautifully when I’m gone, but let’s be real.  Did you behave for a sub?  I did, but I was a nerd.  I know my kids will take advantage of any weak minded soul who steps in my room.  At least they stand a chance if I have procedures in place, in writing that they can refer to that my kids are familiar with.  And then there’s the day after.  I always check out what the substitute writes to me and also ask the kids what they thought.  Invariably it’s a young teacher and they say something like, “Great lesson plans.  I had a great day!  Thanks for asking for me!”  Then my kids tell me, “They let so-and-so get away with this.  We were awful.  Everybody talked while he/she was teaching.  So-and-so was crawling around the room and they didn’t do anything about it, they had no control”.  They know.  So why doesn’t the adult know?

Back to those sick days.  I do use them when I absolutely have no choice, like when I’ve taken up residence in the bathroom or I’m so feverish I can’t remember what I did an hour ago.  That kind of sick makes it even more fun to get plans together.  I have actually gone to school to gather materials, I have labeled instruments in case my sub isn’t a music person and put pictures in my plans.  In the old days, I just pulled out a bunch of music DVD’s that were grade level appropriate and relaxed.  I can’t do that nowadays.  First, there is no such thing as a DVD player in my room, everything is connected by computer to a short throw projector. I would have to leave them my CD/DVD player that attaches to my computer and find a computer somewhere for them to use because they can’t use mine.  Then I would have to give them instructions as to how to turn everything on to connect them.  Not worth it. And then we wonder why teachers all get sick right after school is out.  Hmmmm….

Some believe that teachers eventually build up an immunity to all of the germs in their classroom. I’m starting not to believe that.  I think the additional stress and workload that most teachers have is sabotaging this so-called immunity and not all the vitamin C and echinacea in the world can override that.  I’ve seen many veteran teachers taken down by a lot of stuff in the last few years, and we’re not talking about the common cold.  Shoot, a cold is sometimes the norm.  If I took a day off every time I had a cold….

So, at this moment, I have built up @44 sick days.  In teacher speak, that’s about two months.  And while someone in another profession wouldn’t think twice about taking one on Monday, so far, my plan is to sleep as much as I can this weekend and load up on Tylenol on Monday as I need to.  If it gets really bad, I’ll zip into an Urgent Care, even though it’s more expensive only because my doctor’s business hours are the same as mine. And while they may be able to hand off patients to someone else or change an appointment if they’re sick, I can’t do that.  And I don’t want to do lesson plans.  So, pray for healing by Monday because I’m goin’ in!

The problem with children is, they’re never satisfied with the status quo.  An item is never supposed to be used as expected, especially in the eyes of a creative child.  My fear has always been, what if all the structure I’m supposed to provide squashes their creativity?  Well, if today was any indication (and this could be ANY day, by the way), I don’t think I have anything to worry about.  I think I’ve found a happy medium, where I can show my appreciation for the type of creativity I’m seeing and perhaps teach appropriate vs inappropriate times, places, words, etc., in the process.  Multi-tasking!

The morning began with boomwhackers.  The name in itself is unfortunate, and by all appearances they are merely plastic tubes cut to different lengths to play different pitches.  The goal this morning was to create and play chords to go along with “This Land is Your Land”.  It began with the usual, this is how you hold the boomwhacker, please don’t play when it’s not your turn, etc.  And these were fifth graders, so I didn’t give my USUAL speech, and apparently I should have.  Because even at 9:30 in the morning, these kids were thinking creatively.  Why just have just a boomwhacker when you could make it a telescope, or a lightsaber, or a sword or a wind instrument, or a baseball bat?  I love catching them in mid-creation, just as you make eye contact, without words, asking “what do you think you’re doing” and their ever so innocent eyes answering back “I wasn’t doing anything!”.

Creative definitions are also fun.  Teaching the tune to the National Anthem is one thing, but teaching the word meanings so that they understand what they’re singing is another.  Words like “ramparts”, “perilous” and “gallantly”.  They looked at context to try to figure out what the words meant but came up with so many different definitions I can’t remember any specifically.  I mean, who uses these words in everyday conversation other than in the Star Spangled Banner, which is another word you have to define, because the kids call it a “flag”, not a banner.  It make you wonder why it wasn’t called the Star Spangled Flag in the first place, doesn’t it?  And don’t get me started on “Spangled”.

Lunch brings out all kinds of creativity of course.  Like watching a kid eat pizza by picking everything off the top first, licking off any sauce and then digging into what is left of the crust with his thumb.  Pretty labor intensive but it seemed to work for him.  Then there was the girl with the catapult.  She took the handle of her lunch bag which could be detached, twisted it around to make it tight, re-attached it, set an orange peel on top of it and squeezed the latch to let it spring forward.  After I admired the work, I told her that was probably the last time she should do it at lunch, but thanked her for sharing.

Duck, Duck, Goose is a pretty straight ahead kind of game, unless it’s the class clown going around the circle.  In this case, there was a title added to each “duck” as in “Mr. Duck, Mr. Duck, Mrs. Duck, Chicken, GOOSE”!  (Notice he didn’t want any fowl left out of the game). All of the kids were rolling on the floor because this kid was obviously the Jeff Foxworthy of the Kindergarten set.  When I asked him if he was always this funny, he very nonchalantly said, “yeah, I used to be the clown at my other school”, which I assume to be preschool.  Pretty sure this was my husband as a young child.

The day ended with 4th grade singing a round called “I Love the Mountains”.  For those of you older than dirt, like me, you might remember that the last part of the round is Boom-de-ha-da four times.  Again, pretty straight ahead, unless left in the hands of a 10 year old.  How about Booty-ha-da while wiggling your behind?  Or better yet, Poop-de-ah-da, complete with sound effects?  And this musical version where we put a sforzando on the “Boom” while dabbing.  (Can’t wait until that fad disappears!).

So, maybe my fears about creativity disappearing are unfounded.  I find evidence of creativity every day in places that never occurred to me obviously or I would have intercepted it.  And perhaps not the kind that future employers are looking for, but creativity nonetheless.  So, here’s to all the class clowns out there and their teachers.  May we all keep a sense of humor!

The crying in the hallway caught my attention after school.  As a mom, and I know all of  you moms out there understand, I listened for a moment to decide what kind of cry it was.  Most of the time after school, it tends to be a frustrated, tired, angry cry of a child whose life has ended because they didn’t get the purple crayon to color with or something major like that.  However, this was a hurt cry, and while I knew there were YMCA counselors with the kids, they tend to be college students and I just popped my head out to see if I could do anything.  The poor little guy has done something to bite a chunk out of his bottom lip and you would have thought he was dying.  The girl with him was trying to calm him down but he was convinced that he was badly hurt, so I invited him into my room to use my phone to see himself.  It actually took him a minute to find it and he started to calm down.  As the girl started to take him out, a second little guy came in and very timidly said “Mrs. Bush?  There’s a clogged toilet in the boys bathroom”.  I assured him I would let someone know, and as he walked out with the little guy with the hurt lip, he looked at the YMCA counselor and candidly told her, “I hadn’t done that in like two months!”.

There are things that happen while I’m at school that methods class just did not prepare me for.  For instance, the other day I was giving the beginning of school, different kinds of drills speech, and we talked about code red drills.  These tend to worry kids, so I try to make it a little humorous to help them relax.  When one of the kids asked what I would do if a bad guy came in our room, I very calmly told them that my room was full of “weapons” (instruments) and I would go all ninja on the guy.  To which, a young man, perhaps 8 years old said, “yeah, she would kick him in the ……!”  I’ll let you fill in the blank.  Needless to say, the little girls in the room gasped, the boys grinned and I had to sit him somewhere else in the room for using an inappropriate word.

Before school is also interesting.  This morning a couple of fifth grade girls stopped me in the hall because a little guy was playing hide and seek in the bathroom, peeking his head around the corner and then darting back in the bathroom.  So I walked over and called him by name.  A little voice answered from the stall.  I asked, “Do you know what the bathroom is for?”  “Yes”.  “Then use it and get out here”.  “Ok”.  So I waited.  A couple of minutes later, he peeks his head around the corner to see if I’m still there, gives me a little sheepish grin and goes to wash his hands.

My day is full of tying shoes and tying sashes, untying knots, putting hairbows back in  hair, fixing zippers and occasionally snapping up jeans that are too hard for little fingers  to snap.  I hug away tears from little people who miss mom and dad and older kids who have had a bad day, listen to stories, notice haircuts and new glasses.  Lunch duty consists of telling kids to sit on their pockets, not eat with their fingers, wipe their faces and not yell across the room to their little brother or sister.  I remind them to stay in a line, not touch the walls with their dirty fingers and pick up their trash. In other words, I play mom to 400+ children every day.

Oh, and by the way, I teach.  In the first week and a half of school, I’ve worked with 2nd through 5th graders on audiating, I’ve had kindergartners play steady beats on rhythm sticks and begin singing together, 1st graders have been using iconic notation to play simple rhythms on percussion instruments, 2nd graders are learning about the characteristics of the percussion family and creating their own rhythm patterns to play, 3rd graders are learning the story of the National Anthem and how to sing it, 4th graders are creating harmony with partner songs and rounds, using movement to show how rounds work and 5th graders are learning countermelodies to create a different kind of harmony.  All while working to maintain appropriate behavior in class, being kind to others, and learning listening skills.

Some people wonder why teachers are so tired and why a break is so needed.  I and my fellow teachers begin our day running and for the next 7 1/2 hours, we put in thousands of steps, tweak and troubleshoot with children from a myriad of experiences and backgrounds using materials and lessons plans that have taken hours to plan outside of our work day.  I’m pretty sure I’ve taken a nap every other day since school began.  This is why for most of us this is a calling.  Nobody in their right mind would do this on purpose otherwise.  And, quite frankly, you never know what’s going to happen next.  Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a little guy will walk in and tell you the boy’s toilet is clogged.

 

I want to start with a disclaimer to let you know that I am not normally pro canned meat.  Okay, maybe tuna or salmon, but there’s just something wrong with something like a whole chicken stuffed in a can.  I don’t even want to know how they do that.  But there is one canned meat that is my guilty pleasure, the one I would eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and that would be canned corned beef hash.  And not served where you ruin it by plopping an egg on top.  Just plain old salty, bad for you, corned beef hash.

I grew up loving this stuff well, because my dad loved it.  Not sure if he grew up on it or if it was a holdover from his military days. He also liked chipped beef on toast – the kind you cooked in a packet in a pot of boiling water and poured over white bread toast – yummy!  But that’s another story for another day.  Hash at my house was served with boxed macaroni and cheese and peas, and, as was dad’s custom, he layered it; hash on the bottom, mac and cheese in the middle and peas spooned over the top.  He did that with a lot of stuff.  Mashed potatoes with veggies on top and then the gravy.  I’m thinking this excuses what and how I like to eat things.  It’s obviously my dad’s fault.

So, in the great Frohlich tradition, I introduced this canned delicacy to my boys.  Two of them still like it and the healthy one reminds me every time I eat it that I shouldn’t.  Doesn’t see to stop him from eating the leftovers later, but whatever.  Doug very kindly would eat it every once in a while, but it certainly wasn’t his favorite.  However, since he tends to have rehearsals on Tuesday evenings and sometimes Thursdays as well, I can dine on this delight once in a while on my own, reminding myself however, that it probably isn’t very good for me.  But neither is the boxed mac and cheese.  Maybe the peas cancel out the unhealthy stuff in other two?

Hash even made it into my youngest son’s wedding.  During the ceremony, when he and his wife-to-be were sharing things they had learned about each other, Lauren shared that Tyler loved hash.  I know, very strange, but somehow, very touching to me as you might imagine.

So, how, you ask, can I write an entire blog entry about hash?  Well, seems that same youngest son, has discovered in the first few days of meeting him, that his foster son also likes it.  In fact, he sent me a picture with the child holding two cans of it at the store yesterday!  They were only going to buy one can, but he said they should get two.

This may all seem very silly to some of you, but the truth is some of my best memories of my childhood occurred over dinner.  My dad was home from work and so for a while we were safe.  Dad would remind me to put down whatever the latest book was before coming to the table, my brother would make me laugh about something goofy, and we would tell stories about what happened that day at school.  And dad would do crazy things with his food. Maybe I wanted him to notice that I was just like him, or maybe I was just a tad crazy too when it came to food.  I know that today, I still stack or mix my food up because I like it.

There are a lot of traditions you can pass down to your children and grandchildren and maybe hash won’t or perhaps, shouldn’t be one of them!  Family celebrations and holidays are full of those great traditions and memories, both great and small, for us and the kids. Those things that my boys now share with their spouses because they hold such a wonderful place in their hearts and memories. But for me, the memories attached to eating with and like my dad are priceless.  Here’s hoping my kids create great memories with their kids over simple things. Like corned beef hash.

For many years I’ve joked about the fact that parenting should come with a manual.  I’ve also apologized to my oldest son many times for experimenting on him so that we might get it right (or at least closer to right) with his younger brothers.  But after having raised them and having worked with elementary students for many years, I finally think I have a clue as to how to take care of them and then, oh well,  I’m done.

By the age of 43, I had made my mother a grandmother.  I am now quite a bit older than that and have yet to be a grandmother, but quite frankly I have never been in a hurry to be one.  Besides, it’s not my decision anyway.  But now that one of my sons and his wife are fostering to adopt, there stands a chance that I could become a grandparent in the near future.  Instant grandparent.  And again, there is no manual.

In terms of having kids myself, none of my sons’ births matched the beautiful, bonding, TV commercial I always hoped they would be.  My first was an emergency C-section and being as it was the dark ages, they knocked me out.  I left the hospital a week later.  The other two were premature and spent 6 and 7 weeks in the hospital so I didn’t get to have those “in the hospital room” pics with the family or take them home with me when I was discharged.  I suppose a lot of people don’t have the fairy tale birth experience, but as I see it now, I think it was preparing me to be an adoptive grandmother.  There will be no going to the hospital to meet the new grandchild after waiting for nine months.  This will be a unique experience for our family, just as the births of my sons were.

The weirdest part of this is that we get to meet the prospective grandchild and get to know him/her beforehand.  So much of the decision as to where the child will go is in the hands of the courts and the biological parents.  So while everyone waits, we can all get attached to this child who might possibly become part of the family.  I can’t even imagine how my kids are handling this.  It’s one thing to plan a pregnancy and then have time to get used to the idea, but it’s another to look at the child day in and day out and then have to decide if the best place for this child is in your family or not have a say and the child  is given back to their biological parent(s).

I’ve decided I’m going to be an awful grandparent by the way.  Chances are any adopted child is going to have a rough background.  I already want to give this child everything they’ve never had before.  I want to show them experiences they’ve never had.  I want to hug on this child until he/she feels more love than they’ve ever felt.  I’ll be totally obnoxious!   Don’t get me wrong, I loved my boys, but lack of finances and/or time sometimes kept me from doing some of these things for my boys.  And honestly, I think I sometimes I forgot to just relax and enjoy them.  The other concern for me is that I don’t want to step on toes.  Mom and Dad are and should be the the ultimate authority.  I remember my parents overstepping quite a bit and I want to make sure I don’t do that.  Again, no manual.

But now, the most serious discussion of all (tongue-in-cheek) – what does this child call us?  Do we choose, or, since the child will actually be able to verbalize what he/she calls us, do we just leave it up to them?  I am definitely not a “granny” and I’m not so sure about “Grandma”.  I have a friend whose grandchildren call him the name of a Norse god.  I wonder if I could get mine to call me Aphrodite or something?  Ok, maybe not. So, I went on line to see what my options were and I was overwhelmed by the number of names grandparents can go by.  It might just be easier let the kid decide.

Assuming that I can have some say in what this child calls me, I have decided on a couple of names, but Doug is not too crazy about them – yet.  I think we should be Lolly and Pop.  Easy for the child to remember, fun and different.  Not sure I’m going to be able to talk him into it, but I still think it’s better than gramps.  In the meantime, we wait, and however and whenever God leads my kids is when we’ll meet our first grandchild.

 

 

You know, most people hate the fact that they’re getting older.  I, on the other hand, love it because it gives me experiences I can share with my kids at school.  It also means that I have lived through some amazing times and some not so amazing times. I think I get this from my dad who loved telling stories about things that had happened during his lifetime; the depression, swing music, gangsters in Chicago, the price of a movie when he was a kid (5 cents).  And because he had lived through these times, he was able to talk about them from a very personal point of view, not through the eyes of a history book.

And so, as I watch what is unfolding in this country today in terms of race, I am reliving my history in a way.  I was reading an email I received from one of our state representatives this morning and as he is my age, he was sharing a story that happened on his 8th birthday that had to do with a friend who happened to be African American.  It got me thinking of how my life was shaped by my experiences as a young person in regards to people of other races and cultures.

My first hint is in the form of a picture my parents took when my dad was stationed in Hawaii of me and a couple of my little friends.  I would have been between three and four.  One of these friends was of Polynesian descent and the other was Japanese.  These were the kids in my neighborhood and in the picture, we all have our arms around each other.  Zip ahead about three years and now we’re living in Biloxi, Mississippi and the year is 1965.  I’m sure you can see where I’m going here.  It didn’t occur to me that I attended an all while school as I was only 6 years old.  It wasn’t until I was talking to my kids one day about Martin Luther King and singing songs that it occurred to me that I did not go to school with anyone of color.  I teared up as I looked around at the diversity in my classroom that day. For me, however, this “lack of color” continued throughout my years when we moved to Colorado later.  A new suburban white school, and I don’t remember anyone of color. My parents didn’t talk about it and again, it didn’t occur to me that something or someone was missing.

It wasn’t until we moved to Kentucky that I began to regularly go to school with some  people of color, more as I went through Jr. High and High School.  I spent a lot of time in band and there just wasn’t a lot of diversity there.  However in high school, there was this one girl who played with me in the clarinet section and we became friends.  We had a couple of classes together and we would just get together and talk.  She eventually invited me to come to her house sometime.  So I checked with my parents.  And this is the first time in my life that I remember hearing that some people were DIFFERENT.  When I asked my mom, who then asked if my friend was black (I think her name gave mom a hint), she tried very rationally to explain to me that that would very awkward.  You see, what if in hanging out with her, I would meet some black boys?  And what if one of those black boys should ask me out?  I would have to say no, of course and that could just be a very awkward situation, so it was just best that I decline the invitation.

It’s hard to explain my reaction, even to this day.  Sure, I had read about the civil rights movement in history books and had seen parts of it on TV as a little kid.  But I couldn’t for the life of me understand why someone would feel this way.  I was angry. This girl was my friend.  We laughed together, rode on the band bus to contests together, saw each other in class.  But I declined her invitation and we eventually drifted apart and I have no idea what happened to her.  As I paid more attention, the older I got, the more I saw how my parents stereotyped people of other cultures and backgrounds.  Some comments were uttered in whispers as if they knew it was wrong but had to say something anyway.  There was some fear there obviously as I don’t think my parents ever hung out with anyone different from them and so they really had no point of reference.  Even when my mom visited us here in Lincoln about fifteen years ago, one of here first questions was, “where is the black neighborhood?” as though they had been condemned to live in their own section of town.

I tell you this because before that experience, I don’t think I paid attention at all.  People were people.  But once the difference was brought to my attention that’s all I could think about.  People were different colors.  And that makes me sad because I can’t change that now.  So as I watch my kids at school where again, very few are children of color, I’m very aware of their presence and I want so badly to make sure that they feel loved, included and know that my high expectations for my students means ALL students.  I just wish that my experience didn’t make me so aware of the obvious outside differences,  so I’m working hard to get to know these kids from the inside out instead.  And maybe one day, they will learn to do the same.

 

I was sitting at my desk in my room after school the other day and from my desk I could hear the YMCA kids in the hallway and gym to my right and through the moveable wall to the multipurpose room to my left.  I’ve learned how to filter out most of the noise and it’s not too bad if I close the doors.  But the other day, something distracted me.  Kids in the multipurpose room were singing.  I wasn’t sure at first with all of the other chatter and laughter, but yes, there it was.  Kids singing “Let It Go” at the top of their lungs.  So of course, I had to get up and investigate.  There at one of the tables, coloring, were two Kindergartners, sitting on their knees on the bench seats, crayons in hand, arms outstretched and belting as strongly as any Broadway singer I’ve ever heard, with the biggest smiles you’ve ever seen on their faces.  “Let it Go!  Let it Go!  Can’t hold me back anymore!” The entire chorus to the song, over and over and over again.  Two little girls, one white, one African American singing together.  So, I walked over and told them how I had heard them and just had to see who it was, and one of the girls responded with, “yeah!  We’re good!”.  Such joy and confidence in these two girls.

Today I received a note on my “parking lot”.  The parking lot is a place where kids can write notes to me on sticky notes and leave them for me to read later.  These might be questions they have, things they want to do, issues with other students, etc.  One of the notes today from a 2nd grader, in tiny letters, written on the back of the sticky note so no one else could read it asked “can you help me to sound good please?”  You bet kiddo.

I believe my teaching should should not only help kids learn about and appreciate music, but, should teach them skills as well.  Most people, when they talking about singing or just matching pitch refer to it as a “talent”.  And while yes, you may be blessed with a good ear and have parents who played a lot of music in your home, singing is a learned SKILL.  Students can be taught to sing on pitch, work on musicality, breathing for phrasing, and improving tone quality, etc.  It’s much like teaching a skill in PE.  There are things you can do with your body to improve how to hit, throw or catch.  Singing is an aerobic exercise and like an activity in PE, it has a skill set.

There is nothing that frustrates me more than an adult saying that they can’t sing or telling a child they can’t sing.  For the adult, someone probably told them they couldn’t and they believe it’s something you either have or you don’t.  Again, it’s that talent thing.  In my experience in working with kids, yes, it’s easier to match pitch if the child has listened to a lot of music before entering school. However, I have taken kids who couldn’t match a pitch in Kindergarten and by 5th grade they can sing anything on pitch.  I can have 97-98% of my kids matching pitches by 2nd grade and everyone on pitch by 3rd-5th.  I have some boys occasionally who sing an octave below, but it’s still matching pitch.

So why is this important?  Not everyone I work with is going to end up in music obviously, either as teachers or performers.  But if you haven’t noticed, music is everywhere.  You may want to sing the national anthem at a sporting event or hymns during worship at church.  You may want to sing along at a concert of your favorite entertainer or sing happy birthday or lullabies to your child.  Because the truth is, people listen and we know it.  Wouldn’t it be fun to have enough of a skill set that you could just enjoy yourself and sing along with everyone else?  It’s a way of expressing ourselves in one of the most personal ways ever.  No one has a voice just like you.

This past week, I also happened to come across a video of a former student on Facebook.  No, she wasn’t singing in some Broadway show or opera, she was singing in front of co-workers at the business where she works with a friend, just for fun.  I’m not sure what the occasion was, but she sounded great, with a wonderful tone quality and beautiful phrasing.  She knew how to hold a microphone correctly and was making eye contact with her audience.  And in response, the audience was smiling and applauding, because music just does that to people.  I was so proud that the little girl I had taught in elementary and middle school had grown to be such a confident woman and through her singing had learned to “Let it Go!”.

This blogging experience to this point has been a very positive one.  It has been fun sharing stories or things I think about, and the encouragement I’ve received from friends has been very kind. But yesterday was a different story.  I usually stay clear of anything even vaguely political because people tend to get so angry, and quite frankly, there’s enough anger in the world right now and I’m not very good at handling it, especially if it’s directed at me.  But I do have some thoughts about current events and so I thought I would step into a scary world for me and actually share those thoughts.  And what happened was a very respectful but very disconcerting conversation with a great friend.  As with many of the things I share in the blog, some are just questions I have about life – things maybe for us to think about, and not espousing one side or the other.  But apparently I touched a hot button yesterday and the response has set me back a bit.

I have many old tapes in my head that I’ve been trying to erase for a long time and the good thing is that it does seem that the period of time between “episodes” gets longer and longer.  But what happened last night triggered something again.  A frustration that I wasn’t being heard, that my words were being misconstrued, that I was being judged just for asking questions.  Then the tapes started – I shouldn’t have written what I was thinking, I’m stupid, no one really likes you anyway, you’re obviously not a good writer at all.  This is not a pity party, or fishing for compliments, I’m just trying to describe what is a physical/emotional reaction that comes up from way deep inside, from a little kid who was afraid to say things she really thought out of fear of being yelled at, being called stupid or a failure, having things thrown at her and worse.  I want so badly to not be afraid of saying what I think, but sometimes it’s still out of my control.

I need my friend to know that I’m not blaming him and it’s something I’m working on.  And I’m SO fortunate that I have met people in my life who have helped me work through some of this, so grateful to have married into the family I did who helped me learn how to be a better person.  But imagine someone brought up in this same type of atmosphere (or much worse) who maybe wasn’t so lucky.  Someone who had to look outside of biological family to find “family”.  For instance, how many times have we read about young people turning to gangs to feel like they are part of a family?  People yearn to be a part of something that gives them meaning and if they don’t have a solid foundation at home to lean on, and no guidance as to what is right or wrong, they stand the chance of joining something that can spew hatred or violence.

I see this in children and it breaks my heart.  I think I naturally tend to love on those most difficult kids because I see a kindred spirit.  I remember having some marvelous teachers who made me feel special, like I could do great things.  The ones who made me believe in myself.  I really think one of the reasons I stay in education despite some of the craziness that’s happening, is because there are kids who need someone who “gets it”.  The teacher who hugs them when they feel like they’ve messed up yet again and nobody loves them anymore, not even themselves.  The kid who lashes out and doesn’t understand why, and yet somebody is willing to listen to them and hear their story.  I’m not perfect by any means, and sometimes the behavior from these kids is frustrating, but what price will we pay if we allow these kids to continue to feel like nobody cares?  The need to belong is so strong, and people will turn to anything that makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves.  My job then is to show them the positive rather than the negative way to feel that way.

For instance, I have this little guy who walked into my room for the first time yesterday.  His head was down and he kind of mumbled to himself as he walked in.  What I heard broke my heart again – “I won’t be good at music.  I can’t sing”.  Now, who tells a five year old they can’t sing?  Who beats down a five year old to point where they enter a room with their eyes to the floor because they already know they’re not good enough?  It’s not that the child wasn’t dressed well and wasn’t well fed, but you could already tell that tapes were being created.  So as I see it, it’s my job to help erase or get rid of those tapes for these kids.

I know there are those of you reading this who have a hard time understanding it  because you were fortunate to have been brought up in a wonderful, tight-knit loving home.  Count your blessings. I know some of you may believe that the past is in the past and people should just get over it. I know my husband had a hard time understanding this for many years.  I’m here to tell you it’s not that easy. But I also know that there are a lot of you whose tapes still pop up once in a while and try to beat you up again.  And I’m here to say I’m available for a shoulder, a hug and a listening ear and we’ll see if we can’t help erase those tapes together.