 Why do kids show up every day at school?
Kid show up at school for several reasons. Their parents make them. There are laws that require that they go to school. But I've always been of a belief that the real reason why kids go to school is that they want to be with their friends. They want to be away from their family for a while and get a breather. They want to be somewhere safe where there's food, and they can play outside. They want to do fun stuff. These are all valid motivators. Kids are not there to see the teachers, the secretary, the custodians, or the principal. They are there to see their friends. There is the exception to the vast majority of kids, though. Sometimes an adult is the reason a child wants to be in school. They want to be in the presence of someone who isn’t obsessed with curriculum or progress charts. Those children are looking for adults who aren’t swimming in a sea of confusion, who see them as they are, where they are, strengths and weaknesses, assets and liabilities, gifts and foibles. They want to be around a dependable authority figure. These special kids want to go to school for respite. To get away from something. Those are the kids with haunted eyes who never seem to light. They perch, as if flight is eminent and necessary. For these children, that is how they see the world. These children aren’t looking for “fun” but will gladly embrace it should it be available at school. They are in search of a breather. We can’t do enough for these kids. Unfortunately, some teachers teach and approach kids as more friends than the juvenile charges they are. That often creates an dysfunctional dynamic in their relationships that the child carries more than the adult. I was careful never to foster friendship with students. I always worked to be the adult, the teacher, the mentor. If kids come to school to have fun, what are they doing in music class? I hope they're having a lot of fun. I hope they're playing instruments, and not just shakers, rattles, rhythm sticks, or tambourines but polyphonic instruments like pianos and guitars that require fine motor acquisition. I hope that when someone speaks in the elementary music room that the majority of the time it's a kid and not the teacher because no matter how good the teacher thinks they are, when the teacher speaks the majority of kids hear Charlie Brown's trombone-sounding teacher. Thankfully, playing music together fosters social growth. Kids need to learn how to get along with one another, how to socialize, and how to work with one another – and the music room is just the right place to do it. The earlier that kids learn how to collaborate, the better off they will be as young adults as well as old adults. One of the best opportunities for kids to work with one another in the music room is “pilot and co-pilots”. if there was anything of my work that I wanted my students to emulate, it was my ability to spontaneously make music on pianos and guitars as well as everything else it could make a sound. I didn’t want to cultivate potential music educators. I wanted to encourage once and future musicians. I engineered opportunities for kids to find, develop, and value a culture of leadership. That's why having a chorus structured around leadership and job attainment is a plus that will add value to their lives. Give kids the opportunity to have fun making music with one another. Find the leader that's within each of them, and literally help the get a job in chorus. Take it from somebody who's been there and back: you won't be their friend in the moment. You'll be their mentor. But I can promise you twenty years down the road, you will be a friend to them. And they will be a friend to you.  I believe that at least 80% of a child's time in elementary music class needs to be them making music in one way or another, singing, playing, composing, or experimenting. I did most of my talking during the Golden Hour. That said, the days when I broke that rule were the days when I told a story. Kids love and remember stories, especially if they're robust tales with equal parts entertainment, life lessons, humor, and a morale. What stories do you know? I’m talking about stories that have absolutely nothing to do with the discipline of music per se but have everything to do with the challenges of being a kid in today's world. How could stories impact your teaching? I would often use a story to give the kids a breather when they were literally out of breath from playing so much or so fast, especially when they were running from xylophones to pianos. Chorus rehearsal after sings a lot of measures was another time when I wanted to give them a breather but didn’t want to give them "go" time or have them engage in talking. It was a time where I just wanted to give them a break and re-set their heads. As my old principal, Jack Jadach used to say, “They’ve been working hard. Time to call off the dogs and give them a break.” The majority of talking I did in the school year was during the Golden Hour at the beginning of the school year. After that, I tried to guide it so that I did less talking and the kids did more, and that, more than anything, we were engaged in making music. Tape your class. It’s the only way you’ll know for sure. Study the tape. Add up how many minutes to the kids are actually making music and how many minutes you're talking. Is it hitting an eighty-twenty split? I hope so. Tell a good, memorable story every now and then. And, by the way, if I haven’t mentioned it lately . . . Thank you for making music in the company of children.  This simple truth will never go away.
The value of what you provide has to be greater than the perceived cost of acquiring it or the potential downfall of not pursuing it. Either you understand, live, breathe, and deliver this or you don’t. If you don’t, I would suggest you start.  Good morning and welcome to my presentation for the DMEA virtual conference day of 2021, “Over Twenty Reasons Why You Should Learn This Song And Share It With Your Students.” Before we get started, thank you for visiting my blog. Please stop back and peruse my past posts as well as newer items as I post them here. Just a few ground rules and a request. Have some paper and pencil handy for a participation segment that will be coming up in a few minutes. Also, this is copyrighted material and can't be reproduced or copied in any fashion for any media. This is a story about songs, tricks, and the way simple concepts can empower a child and add value to their life. The song I'm using for the first part of my presentation today is entitled “Going on a Picnic”. Raffi popularized it in the 1980s. A number of other performers have included it on their CDs. Rafi is often attributed as the composer of this song while some people list it as ‘traditional’.
The actual composer is Lynn Freeman Olson. Olson was an American songwriter and composer who worked on kids’ TV in the 50s and 60s. He was a staff composer on CBS's Captain Kangaroo show and has over 200 titles to his name. As usual, with a lot of songs that I imported into my classes, I adapted and edited the lyrics and forms of this song. The melody is a pretty straight ahead diatonic line with the only harmonic devices being a secondary dominant and a short ending in the relative minor. Easy peasy. As far as presenting the song to the kids, I would often say something like “We're going to sing a song about a picnic! Let me spread out of picnic blanket and put my picnic basket on it.” I would have the kids sit around the blanket or sheet. The basket would contain egg shakers that I would hand out to the kids who were sitting the smartest and who were the most attentive. I would literally say something like “Oh, aren't you sitting like a smart person, that must mean you would like to have something from Mr. Holmes' picnic basket. Let me get you an egg shaker.” Or “Your eyes are watching my lips and we know that's the best way to learn the song so maybe I can give you something for my picnic basket since you're watching my lips so well.” The part about the worms at the end gives the kids an opportunity to act like a grown-up and shake their finger while they yelling “No!" I discovered the power of kids yelling ‘no’ years ago. Back in my first year of teaching, I was working with a pre-K class and we were singing “She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain”. I basically was trying to nail down the first verse with them and then improvise verses after that, like ‘she'll fly like a birdie when she comes’, ‘she’ll be hammering like a carpenter when she comes’, or ‘she'll swim like a guppy when she comes’. The kids acted like each character as each verse changed. In one class, just for fun, I improvised the prompt ‘she'll act like a teacher when she comes’. The kids were a little startled by that variation. They stopped, looked at each other, and then started stomping around the room with the meanest face they could make, shaking their fingers at each other. They were having a blast being the teacher. I thought “Oh no, I'm in real trouble now”. The next verse was ‘And she'll be like Mr. Holmes when she comes’. Thankfully, they all started to dance around playing air guitars and imaginary pianos with big smiles on their faces. So the bit about the worms is to give them a little bit of empowerment. License to yell “NO!” in the direction of a teacher is a gift most kids love. And I demanded that they put some anger in their delivery. I would admonish them to really lean in when they yelled ‘no’ and shake their finger at me for suggesting that they bring worms. Back to the song. I started by slowly singing the song the first time. After the final ‘no’, I would go into the vamp to start the song over and we would sing the A section again to end the song. After the first run through, I would make sure that the kids knew what some of the obscure food references were. With ‘radicchio”, I told them that when they were in their grocery store, they should go to the produce aisle and ask the produce manager “Where do you keep your radicchio?” and he’ll show them where it is and what it looks like. After singing it a second time just a little bit faster with them, I started up the song third run through. Right before the line ‘Did you bring the apples?’ call and answer, I would abruptly cut the guitar part and ask the class ‘What was the first thing I brought to the picnic?’ Many kids would remember it was apples so we would then sing the apple answer to my call. Then I would ask what was next. Many of them might remember ‘bananas’ while some might say ‘carrots’ and others ‘hot dogs’. I reminded them that it was bananas and we'd sing the banana call and respond. After bananas, I would ask what what's next. At this point, there were lots of different answers. I would chide them with ‘But this is an easy song, you’re smart kids, you're telling me you can't remember what was next?’ There would be some complaining and a few pouty faces until I whispered ‘There's a secret to remembering the order of all the things in our picnic basket. First is . . . and they would say apples. Next is bananas, next is carrots, Devil Dogs . . . I would accentuate the starting letter sound of each food item. Eventually, someone yelled ‘It's the alphabet!’ That would be followed by a lot of a ha moments and as well as the glow of mental light bulbs. So I would start again I would say A and everyone yelled apples. B? Bananas! C? Carrots!! And when we got to W everybody yelled worms. I told them that “This time when we sing it, lip sync my part on the question and if you can remember what the next item is, you just might be picked to be my helper.” Now everyone was sitting at attention and staring at my lips, just the way I like it. The third time we sang it, we were cruising in fifth gear –really moving! After singing the song for the third time, we would go to ‘go’ time, take a little break, blow off pent-up energy, and move around. When we came back on ‘stop’ time, I would say something on the order of “The alphabet can be a big helper in organizing what we know. Like names. Who can yell out a boy's name that starts with A? Adam! Alfonso! Anthony! Then I'd interrupt and say “How about B?” Brian! Bobby! Brahim! And we would go through the alphabet just like that. If they got stuck on some of the harder letters, I wouldn't dwell on it but rather move ahead to the next letter. After we finished on X with the boys names, I'd say “Wow, you got 24 out of 26 letters! That's expert territory! Let's do girls names!” We were off and running. A, B, C, all the way to the end of the alphabet. “Let's do colors!” A, B, C, all the way to the end. “How about musical instruments!” And suddenly things ground to a halt. I would pantomime someone playing an accordion and a child would figure it out. “B?” Someone would tentatively say ‘Brass?’ and I would go out of my mind with happiness. “You remembered brass!! From when we talked about the four different families of instruments? Brass, woodwind, strings, and percussion?? That's fantastic! Of course, we'll take brass as a good answer! But there is another B instrument, one that might be up on our wall.” I would surreptitiously glance at a small bulletin board of instruments from the orchestra on our wall and the kids immediately started eyeballing it. Bassoon, they would ask. “You are correct!! Baboon! I mean bassoon!” which always drew some laughs. “I mean a bassoon; yes that long, wooden double reed instrument that plays low sounds in the orchestra.” How about if it this point, you take your pencil and down the left side of your paper, write the alphabet, and next to every letter, write the name of a musical instrument. How did you do? Back to our class. After musical instruments, we would use the alphabet to find words that described how music made us feel. Next, I would prompt them to find affirmations from the alphabet. They knew I abhorred the over-used phrase ‘good job’. “Let's find one that’s better than ‘good job’ and starts with the letter A. What's something nice we can say about someone's playing it starts with A?” Awesome! “How about B?” Beautiful! “C?” They grew silent as the wheels were turning in their heads. I would whisper ‘You know, it doesn't just have to be one word, it could be a phrase or a whole sentence, like ‘Can't believe how well your fingers went up and down on your recorder’”. The last category I suggested was the culminating category. “Let’s go A through Z and find a word that describes the way you want people to think about you. This was the pay off. The kids were taking a deep dive into their self-image, revealing how they wanted the world to see them, and saying it loud and proud to their classmates. Sometimes, we would do the alphabet game and the categories would be very different. Superheroes, TV shows, books titles, names of teachers, cities around the world. Here’s a special bonus for all you earnest professional music educators, your school’s resident music expert: a couple of extra categories just for you. Remember, A through Z.
And if your boss isn't that hot, there's got to be somebody in admin that you can share a kind word with an encouraging short note. My students will take this alphabet technique with them every time they codify or do a large-scale mental inventory till the day they die. They will see things and categorize ideas sometimes by the simple use of the alphabet. My guess is that you will, too. There are other codifying tools, too. On another day, I explained to my classes that thousands of years ago, the first wheel it was actually a square block of stone that wouldn't roll and that it was only through persistent chipping away the rough spots that allowed it to roll. “We are all like that square block and the best way to become well-rounded is to go to the library and read something in all the ‘numbers’”. By “numbers”, I meant the numbers of the Dewey Decimal System. Something from the 100s, from the 200s, from the 300s, etc. For those of you who've forgotten the Dewey Decimal System classification, here it is: 000 Generalities 100 Philosophy & psychology 200 Religion 300 Social sciences 400 Language 500 Natural sciences & mathematics 600 Technology (Applied sciences) 700 The arts 800 Literature & rhetoric 900 Geography & history I would tell the kids to go to a library and simply investigate different numbers, find a book that looked interesting, read it, and know that every time they read something from a new number, they were becoming smarter and more well-rounded. A few months later, I would ask my classes which number was their favorite. “7!! Especially 780!” I smiled. “Ahhh, all the paintings and pictures and music, right? Yes! Just remember, you have to keep up with ALL the numbers, just not your favorites. Otherwise, you won’t be well-rounded and Life will be a bumpy ride for you.” The Important Part If my classes didn’t include elements that were life-changing, I edited my lessons so some of that magic was always included. If what I presented wasn’t something that they could mentally carry with them away from school to their home life and enable their interactions with their world to be more prosperous and positive, I felt I was wasting their – and my – time. This next part is what I consider the important part. That’s why I’m giving you fair warning up front. It is so important that I am alerting you one more time. Important stuff up ahead. Here it comes. Ready? The value of what you provide has to be greater than the perceived cost of acquiring it or the potential downfall of not pursuing it. It bears repeating. The value of what you provide has to be greater than the perceived cost of acquiring it or the potential downfall of not pursuing it. That goes for your students. And your supervisors. This alphabet trick allows us to not only know what we know, but also illuminates to us what we don’t know. Have fun with these tricks. Enjoy the song. The numbers trick will open you and your student’s minds to paths of knowledge that we might never have pursued. Modify and edit them to your own liking. Add tangible value to your students’ lives. Let me know how it works. And please come back and visit me here at my blog. |
AuthorBoyd Holmes, the Writer Archives
February 2025
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