Tag: learning

Following the Heart and Signs of Beauty

Over the summer I spent a large amount of time sifting through the high school music library.  I was on a hunt for the “good curriculum.”  Those pieces that make students’ ear perk up.  The pieces that make them wonder what else they haven’t discovered yet.  Curious music was my mission.

I inhaled a lot of dust in my searching, threw out hundreds of disintegrating copies of Mr. Sandman, and welcomed the sight of Britten, Vaughn Williams, and F.Melius Christiansen.  The pride of my pick became the center piece for this winter’s concert.  Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols.”  It also gave me some concern.  The piece is typically high end in my mind.  It’s for choirs that are established; they’ve been around the block.

My choir is young and varied in experience.  We are split into thirds of proficiency.  Highly, mid, and low.  With this in mind, for the first three weeks of school, I have focused on tone, flexibility, and diction-oriented warm ups.  We’ve been rounding and lifting the tone all day, every day it seems.  We also leveled out our counting issues, team-composed rhythm and solfege exercises, and hammered out the school song every day.

It all seemed very basic; I was concerned for their general boredom until today.  First I made an announcement, then I handed them the Britten.

Last Friday, the top choir debuted the year through enormous nerves.  Homecoming coronation required them to sing the school song in the dark for the entire high school.  I don’t think they realized just how special they were as a choir until they got my report back to them today.  “You have been noted as the best choir in the past 13 years at this school by an administrator.”  Blown away, confidence through the roof.  Drive out the wazoo.  And that was the tipping point they needed.

With eagerness they grasped at the Britten today and came out with a gorgeous tone.  It was light and flute-like and, best of all, hopeful.  I think they even surprised themselves.  Furthermore, the old English text spurred a vocabulary discussion.  Real interest and intrigue burst out of these lovely high school students!  Curiosity!

Every day now I feel like I owe them something.  I owe it to them to teach well, to be happy, to push them, to find good music, to talk about meaning.  I owe them a real class with real content.  I owe them an environment that fosters learning.  And with that I hope they will learn to follow their hearts and leave signs of beauty behind.

I can’t wait to meet with the newly elected choir cabinet to see where they are really at, what they are really thinking.  Especially since the girls elected President and Vice-President were screaming in their joy all they way down the hall (at the very spectacular choir bulletin board).

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Looking Up and Looking Down

While I was looking at this, everyone else was looking at the variety of plants on the trail. “Oh feel this one! It’s so soft! I was not expecting that one!” Etc.

My mind, my eyes, was just not on the details. It’s the big picture for me. The general goodness or the general badness. Others help me remember that little things make up the big things. And sometimes those little things need appreciation, too.

So yeah, I stopped rolling my eyes, walked back 50 paces and felt the surprising and unique little Coloradoan plants.

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Out of the Library #3

Today was library day!  I love library day.  It’s as great as, well there’s nothing like library day.

Or maybe I could say it’s as great as when Big told Carrie she was probably the last person in New York who still checked out library books.  Certainly, I don’t go to the library to try to be Carrie Bradshaw’s precocious little sister, but it’s not such a terrible association on the surface-y, girlie, city and technology lover part of me.

I go to the library because it has been the most consistent institution of my life.  The library has no pretense (never has) and it has no marketing strategy and I love that.  It’s just a library.  It’s a big building.  And it holds books, which hold knowledge.  And it’s free for anyone who’s willing to traverse it’s paths.  It’s the epitome of “be yourself” advice, which was the best advice I ever received from a friend. When I grow up, I want to be a library.  *wink*

Here’s what I checked out today/recently (I did have to renew a couple of these from last month, so they’re making the list again):

  • Talk Now! Somali (DVD)
  • A Grammar of the Somali Language by J.W.C. Kirk
  • Essential English/Somali Dictionary by Aasaasi
  • A History of Small Life on A Windy Planet by Martha Collins (poetry)
  • The Weather of Six Mornings by Jane Cooper (poetry)
  • Stories about Aunties edited by Ingrid Sturgis

I am on the waiting list for:

  • Bossypants by Tina Fey

I am ready to laugh at myself learning a new language, be inspired by crafted words and natural imagery, and be challenged to be more of an aunt than I am.  And then I’m more than certain I’ll be ready to laugh at someone else, namely Ms. Fey–I’m sure she doesn’t mind.

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Diffusing Strength

I work with high school students and I learn something new every day.  Sometimes they teach me lingo, sometimes they teach me hand shakes, but most often they teach me about being a person.

The other day I learned that groups with pull are really threads that have braided themselves together.  This makes the group strong and influential and sometimes very scary.  The thing is that each part of the braid joins the group for its own reasons.  In fact, people group together for reasons they may never share with one another.

  • I’m lonely.
  • I’ve had a bad day.
  • I want to be in control.
  • I want to laugh with you.
  • I want in (on the joke, on the cool, on the love…)
  • and any other reason you can come up with.

When people act together, they become something other than themselves.  They become a unit that sometimes can be seen as only a one-purpose unit.  This makes it really hard to reach individuals and have personal impact.  The solution, of course, is to engage each part of the group as individuals from time to time.  Not only does this strengthen the individual, but it also strengthens the whole.

When personal needs are met (you have a leader, you have a place, you are the joy, you are the cool), the group purpose becomes less about meeting personal goals and more about meeting group goals.  I want my choir, as a whole, to perform excellently.  In order to do that, each member must be recognized and addressed individually.

I learned all of this while having one-on-one conversations with some really talented and unique individuals.  Each one shared a surprising and different reason for being a part of their own influential group.  Each reason was deeply personal regardless of the commonalities in their group.  I never would have guessed that diffusing the strength of their group would make such a huge impact on the morale and strength of the greater team.

There is, indeed, strength in numbers, but it must include a healthy dose of personal resolve.

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This is not a time to fidget…

This is not a time to fidget.
Legs crossed, arms on chair arms,
Back rested heavily on wing-backed
Plush velvet-rosed chair.
Sunset light, twilight mint green,
Two-story ceiling high windows curve
Into the river outside.
Clittering clatterful children run with
Giggles in their pockets and anticipation in their eyes,
“What story will we hear tonight?”
Beep, beep and humming computers
Free the mind for learning, exploring, navigating, other world-ing.
Free me to sit still
Reading my book in the library.

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