Public school is a great teacher. I think grownups forget just how microcosmic it is: a tiny, identical reproduction of real life.
The quote I admire so much from Francis Shaffer about how “Christians should always actively seek the lower room”—I am quite literally in the basement of our school, boarded in by windowless walls. I couldn’t get any lower. I’ve gone and done it, made a fool of myself—making a fool of myself every single day. Like every job I’ve ever had before, I’m making it up as I go.
What does it take to become an expert on something, anyway? More schooling? Life? I’ve always wondered, never quite reaching the expert level at anything.
I have a parks and rec degree—this is the truth. It’s what I told the visiting cooperative learning coach when he popped in my room earlier in the week.
“I didn’t know you could play guitar,” he commended me warmly.
I don’t, not really, I’d thought. I know five or six chords. I just happen to be in the basement with children who also don’t know any better.
I don’t know how to explain music theory, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The last teacher made the rookie mistake of asking the kids what they liked and didn’t like about the previous music teacher. It rapidly turned into a free-for-all, as things do when you let the kids boss you instead of the other way around. So I’m working my way out of a situation where kids have not had to sing or even study music theory for the past couple years.
I’m more of a music room archeologist, digging through decades of leftover materials and broken instruments to scrape up something useful. There are millions of worksheets and outdated transparencies and vinyl records.
My best resource is YouTube, where creative music teachers with boundless energy have posted ideas and original songs with which I can teach.
I use a Sharpie to write up an original worksheet and copy them to pass out to students. The quarter note is a pear, the half note is apple, watermelon for the four-count whole note, and cherry for a pair of eighth notes. I draw pictures of smiling cartoon fruit on the whiteboard for the kids to copy onto their paper.
My own children have benefited not from fancy worksheets but from intentional, experiential learning. This means we read a lot and do millions of projects. It’s messy and loud-ish and caters to a smaller class size. So how do I translate real learning into real life public school?
Fortunately I discovered a stash of 20 ukuleles in the cabinets.
I listened to a podcast, a conversation between two music teachers who marveled at how engaging kids actually called for less passive screen-staring activities. They settled on ukuleles as the perfect non-Orff instrument for engaging screen-weary kids.
But making music—which should never be less than joyous—is the least of my worries. I’ve got students who handle an instrument with the same care they handle a Snickers bar.
We spend the first ten minutes of class talking about showing respect, having a good attitude, following directions. By the time we finished tuning and got to fretting chords, most were already checked out.
I’ve worked on building blocks of learning—stamina, for one: learning how to sit still and listen. My kindergarten students can now listen to (almost) a whole book without interrupting me (once or twice). I’ve got them to where they’ll sing a call-and-response song—my crowning achievement so far.
There are so, SO many behavior situations that ruin every third direction I give. The fatigue that comes with classroom management and handling whiners, gripers, meanies, and needies of every shape and size—it really is a wonder we cannot send these kids home to stop ruining the learning atmosphere. Positive reinforcement on the whole doesn’t do a lick of good unless the child is already behaving. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s an inch at a time and I might be one of the only responsible adults in their life.
If no one reads to them at home, if no one sings with them at home—why should they think it a natural thing when I do it in front of their eyes at school?
Basically I have no idea how this is going to fare long-term, but I never promised a long-term solution. All I knew is the situation could be better and it looked like if anyone cared at all, it must be me. The old camping motto, “pack in, pack out” and the general attitude from my mom, “leave things better than when you arrived” have both been fairly applicable, if not downright inspirational.
So this is the lower room. I actively sought it, I suppose. At thirty-eight years old, I haven’t even built up two days of sick leave in my short career. An expert would’ve stuck it out in this field for longer than me, would’ve racked up 17 years in this business by the time they got to my age. Maybe they would’ve earned their masters and be one of the school administrators by now.
There are no answers to the standard, pervasive issues, only the pledge to have a good attitude and take it day by day. It helps when I remember that they are all just kids. Kids who need directions, need someone to encourage them, need someone to give them hope.
And as Gretty reminds me, “you can always write a book about it someday.”
