I often remember the conducting class I took for a semester at UOP. I was in the class alongside my cohort of Music Education majors – our various instruments and abilities levelled as violinst, pianist, opera singer, brass, and woodwind players learned the art of conducting. And not only conducting, but teaching conducting. It’s a bright memory for me. One that, truly, for its brevity, should not arise so much as it does.
I stood in front of my fellow teachers in training; teachers doing their utmost to behave like the first graders they were meant to mimic. When I asked the class if they knew what a conductor was, one energetic friend raised his whole body and hand in truiumph and exclaimed “the driver of a train!”.
I didn’t skip a beat and had the class turn their music conductor fingeres into a pull chain to engage a “choo choo” and we chugged around the room. I praised my “student” for his knowledge while drawing the connection from driving a train to driving an orchestra.
I felt brilliant, and, for the first time, I knew I could do this – I would be a teacher.
Today, as I remember that moment, I know I can teach – I have years of experience, and I truly truly enjoy it – I enjoy connecting with students and families; I enjoy teaching reading and writing, but oddly enough, I’ve never taught a music class. Credentialled, practiced, love it, and whether it still feels like pretending, or I haven’t had the chance, it’s a subject I love and have not stood in front of actual students to teach. In the course of my role as school Director, I was introduced to a curriculum today that makes me want to jump back into my 18 year old bright eyed teacher of teacher’s self and teach music. Curriculum that came to me as a recommendation from a parent in our school, and was forwarded by a teacher, checking on whether the school would recognize the curriculum as an enrichment class. I bought my own copy out of curiousity and a want to do my due dilligence in giving a yes or no.
So far, today, I have printed unit 1, ready through the whole of the unit, listed to the accompanying song recommendations, looked up every recommended resource and text, sight read the songs, spoken the poems, and re-familiarized myself with the solfege – and it’s brilliant. Now, all I can think is there has got to be a way to incorporate this into a class I can run at our school.
See how that worked? Just like that: my creative brain restarts and not only am I trying to plan and enjoying music, I am writing something! I have not written something not required by some outside entity for most of this year.
But this is how it works:
Inspiration:
the inhale of something wonderful, and exhale of creative love and wonder.
Beauty wrapped up in a moment of a day that could just have well been another box checked:
Curriculum Approved (Check!) or Denied.
Here instead is a reminder to myself, and maybe you, too – Take the moments and wonder at all that is, was, and will be, and how we are all so beautifully made to be a part of it all. Remember to model for your students and for yourself.
Want to check out a cool music/arts curriculum? Here’s the muse of my day: https://www.magicalmusicmethod.com/
