Let me tell you the story of a class.
When I met them in September, I was perturbed. I was more than perturbed. I dreaded Thursday mornings, when I knew that they would tumble through my door with raucous disregard for my precious routines and expectations.
You see, I expect my classes to line up quietly outside my door and wait to be invited in. I expect them to walk quietly, single file, to the blue line on my floor, and wait quietly to be invited to sit on the carpet in alphabetical order. I expect them to sit quietly while I read over my class list, study their (very similar) faces, and practice their (very similar) names. I expect them to remain still and silent until I can say every name without looking at my list. This may not sound like a stupendous feat to you, but believe me, it is, when you are new to a foreign school and you have four hundred nearly identical students that you only see for 50 minutes a week.
But back to my story. In September, we had to practice lining up outside my door over and over every single time the students came to class. It took five or six tries to walk to the blue line and get settled at the carpet. And it took an agonizingly long time for me to practice their names, because I couldn’t concentrate with all the hooliganism going on before me. At one point one of the students blurted out insolently, “This isn’t music! This is just names!” And, wearily, I agreed. Perturbed, indeed.
Finally, sometime in October or November, we managed to get to the blue line and onto the carpet in record time (like, ten minutes instead of thirty), and just as I was about to plunge delightedly into an actual, nearly-full-length lesson, the loudspeaker shrieked that we were having a lockdown drill. No. It was more of a chaos drill. There was crawling around, pushing, shoving, talking, yelling, laughing… they were the ultimate target for even the most dim-witted of intruders. By the time they were settled again, music class was over. And guess what? A few weeks later it all happened again, when the powers that be decided it would be clever to pull another lockdown drill at exactly the same time. It would not be an overstatement to say that week after week, music class was ruined. Oh, but I hated Thursday mornings.
Eventually we managed to master the entry routine and begin learning music in a timely and orderly manner (I do like order — have you noticed?); but now it was time to put instruments in those hooligan-hands. Drums, to be precise. And later, xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels. These are loud instruments. They are the ultimate temptation. Even the most reserved adults have difficulty walking past them without giving them a tap. And placing them in the hands of children who took three months to learn to sit in a circle? Madness.
But I do not run a “sit and sing” program. I run a “touch and do and feel and play” program. Instruments are for everyone. Even this abominable class. I believed that fiercely. With a touch of madness.
The first week, all we learned was “start” and “stop.” This concept was divided into smaller, equally unmanageable tasks: You may take the cover off your instrument. You may look at your instrument. You may touch your instrument. You may pick up your mallets. You may play your instrument <insert cacophony>. You may stop playing your instrument. You may put your mallets down. You may cover your instrument. You may exit the room in an orderly, counter-clockwise, alphabetical fashion.
I made laminated signs for “start” and “stop.” It was necessary. Weeks later, when we finally mastered stopping (the starting was never so much of a problem), we learned “high” and “low.” This, too, took a very long time. Play your highest note. No, I didn’t to say play whatever random combination of notes you want, arms flailing and voices wailing. Time out. Let’s practice “start” and “stop.” Now point to your highest note. No, I said point. No, I said point to your highest note. No, not with your fist. Not with your elbow. With your finger. One finger. In the centre of the bar. Good. Now everyone is pointing to the highest note. Now, pick up your mallets and play that note. No, I didn’t say to play whatever random notes you want, arms flailing and voices wailing. Let’s go back to “start” and “stop.” Touch your highest note. Play your highest note. The one you were just touching. That’s it. Good. Now stop.
You might think that playing our lowest note would go a little more smoothly. It did not. One cannot rely on transference of skills in this setting. It was back to “start” and “stop.”
Every so often I’d look over the school’s curriculum expectations and grimace at the thought of all the things we were supposed to be doing (things like performing, sight reading, analyzing, comparing, contrasting, explaining, arranging, creating, harmonizing, evaluating) and the impossible ways in which we were supposed to be executing them (steadily, accurately, with appropriate rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, posture, and etiquette). Nowhere on that document did I see any accolades for mastering “start” and “stop.” I had to put that miserable file away, with all of its lofty prescriptions, and recall the wise advice I received early in my career from a teacher who’d worked with “start/stop” classes for decades. “How do you do it?” I’d asked. “You do the first thing,” she said. “And then you do the next thing.” What a very long list of firsts and nexts we had before us; but we began.
We eventually figured out our highs and lows. Much later, we learned the difference between “up” and “down”, and then (glory be), “step, skip, leap, repeat,” and (astoundingly) “Do, Re, Mi…” We learned to echo rhythms and create our own patterns of sound.
Things were beginning to happen. We were making audible progress. But please understand. Every single up, down, step, skip, leap, repeat, do, re and mi took forever to accomplish. Every single skill required a rigorous review of the “start/stop” lesson. Every. Single. Week.
But somewhere along the way, a shift began to occur. Somehow, one day, we managed to all make the same sound at the same time, and someone exclaimed, with absolute wonderment, that it sounded “good.” Suddenly, the children understood that they could like or dislike a sound, and that they could decide, collectively, what kind of sound they wanted to make. This was the start of the revolution.
Week after week, these students came and discovered new and wonderful ways to make pleasant sounds. They learned that steps and skips can turn into melodies, and melodies can turn into songs.
They learned that high and low sounds can be played at the same time. The first time they heard “Do” and “So” together, a ripple of excitement spread through the room. They were absolutely mesmerized by the concept of harmony. Yes, children. Sounds bring pleasure. But pleasure requires order. And you can do it.
It didn’t take long before the class began to talk about sounds in different ways. They discovered that they can represent high and low sounds using letters, numbers, and syllables; and later, they learned that circles and lines on a piece of paper could help them to “see” a melody. They learned that lines and spaces could show steps and skips, and that knowing just one line was the key to all the others. These children were learning to read and write sounds. Note by note, the language of organized sound was unfolding before them, and they were… what? They were performing, sight reading, analyzing, comparing, contrasting, explaining, arranging, creating, harmonizing, evaluating — all those verbs that I had despairingly shelved, back in the days of “start” and “stop.”
More importantly, though, the children were learning what it feels like to be part of a team. That same child who had so insolently berated me at the beginning of the year now begged to be allowed to stay in music class when he was called to read with another teacher. After 50 minutes of making particularly beautiful sounds, he would burst out of line and hug me with delight, and all the former hooligans would follow suit.
By May, this class no longer needed the multi-step entry routine. Of all twenty of my classes, these students are the only ones with permission to bypass the blue line and go straight to their instruments. And last week, they played the starring role in our school’s spring concert. They stood before that audience with absolute poise. Every single one of them. They did not need to hear me say “start” or “stop” or “1, 2, 3.” They didn’t need a laminated sign. They caught the slightest movement of my hands, the slightest raising of my eyebrows, and began playing in perfectly timed three-part harmony. Every single one of them stopped playing at exactly the same time, and started again on cue. They showed every child in the school, and every parent in the audience, what it meant to be a professional musician. They could be relied upon. And they were so very, very proud.
The next day, my cherished musicians came to me for their last music class of the year. They were happy to stay inside and play musical bingo instead of running around outside, and they did not expect a party-on-demand. Later, when we went outside to play, a group of them pleaded to bring the instruments outside, and they led each other in playing all the residual melodies and harmonies inside their swelling little hearts.
And that is the ten-month story of a class like none other. It would be dishonest of me to take the credit for their transformation; their homeroom teacher did the difficult, in-the-trenches work of teaching them self-control, one weary day after another, and she gave endlessly of her time to support the students she had grown to love. She attended music classes with them, allowed them extra rehearsal time, and learned every melody alongside them. This wave of cooperation extended to other teachers, administrators, and parents.
Together, we gave those kids a concert, and a concert is a very special kind of gift. We may start out as the givers, but the right kind of concert becomes a gift they give to us, their parents, and every person in their lives who helps them make it happen.
Children sense this gifting, even when the harried adults around them are thinking of nothing but getting through yet another school event. Raised by nannies, drivers and maids, our wealthier students have their every material wish handed to them; but when one sad, friendless little girl was asked what she planned to do for her birthday that night, she replied, beaming, “I’m going to have a concert!” She did not say, “Miss, are we obliged to come?” or “Miss, can we have a party?” She said, “I’m going to have a concert, and my mom is going to come and hear me play. That will be my birthday present.”
As educators we sometimes wonder if our incredible expenditures of energy are worth the effort. In elementary music, this is particularly true, because there is rarely any tangible, permanent evidence to show for our labours. “Start” and “stop,” while necessary life skills, are not on college admission tests or job applications. Rarely do people boast later in life that they were able to make a pleasant sound back in third grade. We don’t see the long-term fruits of a child’s early exercises in self-discipline and “Do, Re, Mi.”
But we have to believe that the fruits are there, beyond our classroom walls. We have to believe that the pride and inspiration of those first concerts will plant itself deep inside our students’ selfhood, and grow into gifts that they will give and receive throughout their lives. We have to believe that everyone in a child’s life has a role in making this happen, and we have to band together in our understanding that these ten months matter. This one concert matters. It can change a child’s life. And we have to envision that change, staunchly, fiercely, and a little madly, while we are still in the throes of month number one — knowing that, despite our perturbation, “start and stop” is only the beginning of the story.
Awesome story!