It was a good week of teaching.
The week started with similar anxiety as I had in previous weeks. Even since the insurrection, I’ve unsure of what the world was going to throw at me next and how I would have to, as a teacher, help my students process and understand things that I barely understand myself.
I didn’t let myself get too excited about the inauguration because it felt like something that was not yet real. With all that has happened in the past year, I couldn’t imagine feeling disappointed and sad about something I’ve yearned for. As I started my work students on Monday, I started feeling more positive about what was coming.
I had decided after winter break that I would do a unit on the anthem. NPR has this wonderful series on American anthems that inspired me.
I knew that my students would watch the inauguration, so I wanted to do some work to prepare for the musical content. At the beginning of the week, it wasn’t clear what would be performed except for "The Star-Spangled Banner.”
In all my classes 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th grade, we learned about this song. The vast majority of students didn’t know the origins of this song, that the first verse ends in a question, and that there are things about it that are racist.
I presented this information differently depending on the grade. It was enjoyable and interesting to present this information and help my students wrestle and process these new revelations about a song they have heard their entire life but never thought about.
Like America itself, the dominant narrative about the anthem leaves a lot out. If you love this song as you love America, it’s important that you know the problematic lyrics and that Francis Scott Key was a slave owner.
After the inauguration, I formed a lesson around President Biden’s quoting of the song “American Anthem” in his inaugural speech. I asked my students to think about why he quoted this anthem and not the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I gave them some background on Norah Jones, who originally recorded this song. We watched some footage of her father, Ravi Shankar, performing and connected that she, like Vice President Harris, is an American who has a parent from India.
Then we listened to “American Anthem.”
It’s rare to sit and listen to a song and not do anything else, and it’s even rarer to do this with a group of people. Most of the time, when we listen to music in my classes, we are doing something else at the same time, like moving or watching a performance. For this experience, I chose to have them listen and do nothing else.
This made me a little nervous. It’s not a short song, and it’s slow. Even though I love this song, I was worried it wouldn’t connect to the students, and they would get bored without another way to engage as we listened.
Every single class sat all the way silently through the song. After the song was over, students in each class shared how much they liked the song. As the song concluded, one class of 6th graders applauded. That moment felt magical. Sharing this song was one of those rare instances when a song that I love intersects with a meaningful, timely event and curricular unit.
It really worked.
I wasn’t able to share watching the inauguration with my students. My school chose to have the middle school students watch it live and have the younger students watch it later that day and the next day. I was teaching my younger students when the inauguration happened. I didn’t have a moment to feel this important event with them. However, I had something important and unforgettable this week.
I helped my students see more in “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and we experience the song “American Anthem” together as a classroom community. This is what I’m going to remember about this week, what it felt like to feel connected to my students as Americans through music.
I have missed teaching band and teaching singing, but I didn’t miss it this week.
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