Lucas has been with us a full week. Here are some thoughts…
First off, it feels like Lucas has been with us for a lot longer than a week. Lucas has been in our lives for the better part of a year. No, I couldn’t touch him, and I couldn’t hold him, but I held him in my mind and in my heart for months. This past week doesn’t feel like there is a new life in our lives, but the next step in life like a child going off to college.
Buffy was very interested in Lucas when we first brought him home. As we put the car seat down on the floor, she came up and smelled his head. She moved to the side to greet Diana, and then went back to check in on Lucas. Buffy has been great with Ethan and Ollie as babies. She was never aggressive or overbearing and still tolerates them in ways that I would not.
Ollie never tried to ride Buffy like a horse, however Ethan continues to give this a try every so often. Buffy is fast enough to outrun Ethan at this stage and get away. Instead, she usually just stands there and lets him grab at her torso and try to mount her. In a way she look sad when he does this but if this really bothers her, she would leave, and since she doesn’t, it shows that she is trying in her way to play with him.
I often get Ollie and Ethan’s name mixed up and the addition of Lucas has only made matters worse. I have called Lucas by the wrong name more times than I have called him by his correct name. Sigh, this is going to be a process.
Lucas is wonderful. He smells like happiness and he is wonderfully squishy. His face changes depending how his positioned because his cheeks are so chubby that gravity affects them. If he’s sitting up they drop downwards, which look slightly different than when he’s on his back. Lucas is doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing. He nurses, cries, poos, sleeps, and wakes us up int the middle of the night. Every day his eyes open a little bit wider, and he reaches with his little hands out into the world a little farther.
Ollie is being a great older brother. He greets Lucas and he is interested in holding him, and giving him a bottle. Ollie doesn’t quite know what else to do with Lucas and that’s okay. Most of his life right now isn’t changed dramatically because of Lucas, which I feel is helping with the transition to being part of a larger family.
Ethan is fascinated by Lucas. When Ethan first met Lucas in the hospital he repeatedly pointed at Lucas and said, “baby.” When he went to school the next day he spent the entire day carrying around a baby doll, and telling people that it was a baby. Ethan loves to greet Lucas and likes to touch him. Ethan is a toddler who sometimes hits when he’s trying to touch, but he’s been wonderful with Lucas gently touching him on the head and chest.
I love seeing my parents with my children. They are wonderful with them, and it feels like seeing into a time portal. I imagine that this is how they were with me when I was younger, and it’s a powerful and endearing thing to think about. To see two people, fall so completely in love with Lucas immediately is powerful and amazing. Both of my parents spent long periods of time, almost as long as an hour, holding Lucas and simply looking at him. I don’t know what they were feeling and thinking in these moments, but I know it’s right, it’s beautiful, and it makes me proud to be their son.
Monday, December 16, 2019
Friday, December 13, 2019
Year 10: Week 15 - Paternity Leave
So I didn’t teach last week, and I’m not going to be teaching for about another four weeks.
The original plan was that I would work up until my 3rd child’s due date this past Friday, the baby would come and I would peace out, and my paternity sub would jump in. Lucas didn’t get the memo, so he came last Sunday early in the morning…and I mean EARLY morning. This meant that my paternity leave started four days early.
Friday afternoon I had the feeling that I should tidy up my desk. After I cleared my desk off, I remember pausing for a moment. I had this feeling that I wasn’t going to be back for a while, and then I shook that feeling off and went home.
The week before the baby came was really hard. On top of doing the work that I needed to do to get by day by day, I was furiously trying to plan for being away. That was really difficult, because this past week and next week were two of the trickiest weeks of teaching. Next week is our annual JK-5th grade winter performance, and last week was critical time to prepare for this performance. AND our band concert is right after winter break so this is also a very important time for my 6th grade and my 8th grade band.
The idea of being away and having a paternity substitute jump in right before a performance, prepare for it, and then lead it, is…well, it’s taken a lot of to process all of this.
When we first found out Lucas’ due date, all I could do was laugh. It was a horrible time to be away because I would miss this performance, but it was in a humorous way, the best time to be away because I wouldn’t have to deal with the work and the stress of the winter performance.
Lucas is my third kid so I knew that there was no way I wouldn’t take time. Then my brain moved on to accepting whatever was going to come and prepare the best that I could. I big question mark was my paternity sub. If they were going to be awesome then I could basically aim for the sub to do what I would do, if not, I would have to figure something out that was easier to put together.
At some point in the fall I decided that I was going to plan for the best situation, and plan as if I wasn’t leaving. I could have repeated songs, I could have made simpler arrangements, and I could have pre-taught these songs much earlier in the curriculum, but I didn’t.
I had an idea of who my sub was going to be, and I was really excited for the possibility that he would work with my students when I was away. So, I had him do some things with some of my students as a guest teacher and hoped for the best.
The moment came was he was approved as my sub and I felt a huge wave of relief. We met soon after and went over all of my ideas and plans.
I’ve been busy with my family, however my mind has traveled to what is going on to school. I know I could check it, but I’ve resisted that urge. To honor my family and time with them, I need to stay focused at home, and to respect my paternity sub’s work and give him space to be successful, he needs space, and freedom to make things work.
I'm sad that I'm missing things at school, and I'm also so happy that I have time with my family right now. It's the right decision to be away from my students, but that doesn't mean that part of me doesn't wish that I could have it all. And then the night comes. When I feel the presence of my three sleeping children, Diana, and Buffy, I do feel like I have it all.
The original plan was that I would work up until my 3rd child’s due date this past Friday, the baby would come and I would peace out, and my paternity sub would jump in. Lucas didn’t get the memo, so he came last Sunday early in the morning…and I mean EARLY morning. This meant that my paternity leave started four days early.
Friday afternoon I had the feeling that I should tidy up my desk. After I cleared my desk off, I remember pausing for a moment. I had this feeling that I wasn’t going to be back for a while, and then I shook that feeling off and went home.
The week before the baby came was really hard. On top of doing the work that I needed to do to get by day by day, I was furiously trying to plan for being away. That was really difficult, because this past week and next week were two of the trickiest weeks of teaching. Next week is our annual JK-5th grade winter performance, and last week was critical time to prepare for this performance. AND our band concert is right after winter break so this is also a very important time for my 6th grade and my 8th grade band.
The idea of being away and having a paternity substitute jump in right before a performance, prepare for it, and then lead it, is…well, it’s taken a lot of to process all of this.
When we first found out Lucas’ due date, all I could do was laugh. It was a horrible time to be away because I would miss this performance, but it was in a humorous way, the best time to be away because I wouldn’t have to deal with the work and the stress of the winter performance.
Lucas is my third kid so I knew that there was no way I wouldn’t take time. Then my brain moved on to accepting whatever was going to come and prepare the best that I could. I big question mark was my paternity sub. If they were going to be awesome then I could basically aim for the sub to do what I would do, if not, I would have to figure something out that was easier to put together.
At some point in the fall I decided that I was going to plan for the best situation, and plan as if I wasn’t leaving. I could have repeated songs, I could have made simpler arrangements, and I could have pre-taught these songs much earlier in the curriculum, but I didn’t.
I had an idea of who my sub was going to be, and I was really excited for the possibility that he would work with my students when I was away. So, I had him do some things with some of my students as a guest teacher and hoped for the best.
The moment came was he was approved as my sub and I felt a huge wave of relief. We met soon after and went over all of my ideas and plans.
I’ve been busy with my family, however my mind has traveled to what is going on to school. I know I could check it, but I’ve resisted that urge. To honor my family and time with them, I need to stay focused at home, and to respect my paternity sub’s work and give him space to be successful, he needs space, and freedom to make things work.
I'm sad that I'm missing things at school, and I'm also so happy that I have time with my family right now. It's the right decision to be away from my students, but that doesn't mean that part of me doesn't wish that I could have it all. And then the night comes. When I feel the presence of my three sleeping children, Diana, and Buffy, I do feel like I have it all.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Parenthood: Week 348 – The Experience I Cannot Know
This past Saturday, for the third time in my life, Diana my wife went into labor, which led to the birth of our third son Lucas early Sunday morning.
Witnessing and helping Diana through these experiences of child labor hasn’t changed what I think about women, but it has confirmed ideas that I have, and has led to an evolution in the way that I view our world and the human experience.
I have always believed that women are strong, and in some way stronger than men. However, there is something more to this belief that came to me as I witnessed Diana move through one of the difficult parts of the human experience.
The process of childbirth is one of the most difficult physical, and emotional experiences that a human can go through. And no, painkillers and the option of caesarean section do not create a pain free way of moving through this process. Childbirth is scary and life threatening. Things can go south very quickly for the mother and the child even in the best of situation.
It’s an experience that is central and fundamental to all of our existences, yet most people’s ideas about the business of being born are flawed, full of misunderstandings, and influenced by patriarchal ideas about gender. If every adult intimately understood and experienced in a meaningful way the challenges and plurality of experiences that people go through in child birth, we would have a very different society.
Cis-gendered men like myself can never experience childbirth. It’s something that I can read about and learn about but I can never truly “get.” There’s a limit to my understanding of what it means to be human because I will never be able to experience what it means to bear a child first-hand. Cis-gendered men, can never birth children, and the strength and insights that women gain from this process, I will never be able to attain. There are other experiences that I can have that I can grow from, that can make strong, but not in the same a women can gain strength through childbirth.
Someone can be a great teacher without being a parent. However, not including a person who is a parent in a teaching community is mistake. Not including someone who has experienced childbirth on a board where important decision are being made is absurd. How could you possibly make an important decision in life without consulting the perspective that can only come from someone who has created life?
There is nothing I can compare the strength, courage, and perseverance Diana displayed last weekend, and the last 9 months. Watching her, only a day later taking charge in the hospital getting ready to go home, I was in awe. It takes me a day to recover running a 5K. Diana had been through something far more difficult a day earlier and was already making things happen.
Part of me wishes that I could experience what Diana did with childbirth, but mostly I'm happy that this is something that she has done, that I can sit back and admire. I love that she has been to a place that I can't go. I love that she has strength to draw from these experiences, and more than ever in my life, I love her.
Witnessing and helping Diana through these experiences of child labor hasn’t changed what I think about women, but it has confirmed ideas that I have, and has led to an evolution in the way that I view our world and the human experience.
I have always believed that women are strong, and in some way stronger than men. However, there is something more to this belief that came to me as I witnessed Diana move through one of the difficult parts of the human experience.
The process of childbirth is one of the most difficult physical, and emotional experiences that a human can go through. And no, painkillers and the option of caesarean section do not create a pain free way of moving through this process. Childbirth is scary and life threatening. Things can go south very quickly for the mother and the child even in the best of situation.
It’s an experience that is central and fundamental to all of our existences, yet most people’s ideas about the business of being born are flawed, full of misunderstandings, and influenced by patriarchal ideas about gender. If every adult intimately understood and experienced in a meaningful way the challenges and plurality of experiences that people go through in child birth, we would have a very different society.
Cis-gendered men like myself can never experience childbirth. It’s something that I can read about and learn about but I can never truly “get.” There’s a limit to my understanding of what it means to be human because I will never be able to experience what it means to bear a child first-hand. Cis-gendered men, can never birth children, and the strength and insights that women gain from this process, I will never be able to attain. There are other experiences that I can have that I can grow from, that can make strong, but not in the same a women can gain strength through childbirth.
Someone can be a great teacher without being a parent. However, not including a person who is a parent in a teaching community is mistake. Not including someone who has experienced childbirth on a board where important decision are being made is absurd. How could you possibly make an important decision in life without consulting the perspective that can only come from someone who has created life?
There is nothing I can compare the strength, courage, and perseverance Diana displayed last weekend, and the last 9 months. Watching her, only a day later taking charge in the hospital getting ready to go home, I was in awe. It takes me a day to recover running a 5K. Diana had been through something far more difficult a day earlier and was already making things happen.
Part of me wishes that I could experience what Diana did with childbirth, but mostly I'm happy that this is something that she has done, that I can sit back and admire. I love that she has been to a place that I can't go. I love that she has strength to draw from these experiences, and more than ever in my life, I love her.
Friday, December 6, 2019
Year 10: Week 14 – Stress
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…kind of.
For music teachers this is often the most stressful time of the year, which is why on your music teacher friend's Facebook pages there are posts and memes about giving music teacher hugs and how much we have aged over the month of December.
On top of the stress of the holiday season and how it takes over music teacher's personal lives, many music teachers have to put on performances right before winter break. For many music teachers it’s not a great time in the arc of the school years since December really isn’t the middle of the school year in many school calendars and depending when you start the school year, it can feel really early to put students on stage.
This leads to many music teachers in the month of December feeling a lot of stress. This week while I’ve been preparing for my paternity leave, which is going to happen over my 3rd and 5th grader’s Winter performance and happening during a critical time for my band students to prepare for their performance after break is no small task. Yes, I have an AMAZING paternity sub lined up, but it’s still a lot to prepare for, and a lot to process. This has been stressful.
The stress that I have, I’ve realized is slightly misplaced, and mostly self-induced and I wonder if this is similar for other music teachers. I have a standard, and a way that I want my students to prepare and to perform. I am pushing myself to that standard. Can my students to one fewer song? Yes, probably, but like most music teachers, I don’t really play it safe. I want to push my students to their full potential, which means I’m taking some chances, doing things, I haven’t done before and putting stress on myself.
There’s also the stress of community and parental expectations, which is mostly through my own perception. Most parents want their children to present in performance as being prepared and enjoying themselves. That’s it, and what we do to raise them to a higher level of musical excellence, which adds a lot of stress on us, is really on us.
The stress that I feel and the worry I am processing, I wonder about. Is this stress based on the work that will truly benefit the students, or is based on my own expectations of my professional work, which many times does benefit the students, but I’m sure on some level is more about me.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to push yourself as a teacher to grow and to do more year to year, but I also feel teachers need to do this in a way that helps students and create opportunities to grow with limited stress.
It’s important that students feel the importance of our work and value the limited time we have in making music together, but I do not believe that stress motivates and help students grow. And undo stress that teachers feel and often put upon themselves, makes teachers forget the sheer joy of creating music with children.
My time is running out. I don’t know exactly how many more days I have before my leave and at some point in the middle of the past week, I stopped let myself have fun with my students. It’s weird. I know that I’m not good at motivating my students through being stern but I seem to revert to that in times of stress. And when I smiled, and showed my students how much joy I got out of their hard work, we all started to have more fun and be more productive.
I let stress take my smile a way for part of this week, and it didn’t help my students prepare for their performances.
We have to figure out where are stress comes from, and see where it leads us. There are so many important things to teach in preparation for performances. If we get to a polished performance through a process full of stress, then that’s all our students will remember.
Music is not about stress,. Music is about understanding and sharing the human experience in ways that words cannot. In this way music is life-affirming and powerful. If this happens in our classroom leading up to our concert, this is what they will remember regardless of how well a concert goes.
The glory of a great performance only last an evening, understanding the joy and meaning in the process of learning music lasts a lifetime.
For music teachers this is often the most stressful time of the year, which is why on your music teacher friend's Facebook pages there are posts and memes about giving music teacher hugs and how much we have aged over the month of December.
On top of the stress of the holiday season and how it takes over music teacher's personal lives, many music teachers have to put on performances right before winter break. For many music teachers it’s not a great time in the arc of the school years since December really isn’t the middle of the school year in many school calendars and depending when you start the school year, it can feel really early to put students on stage.
This leads to many music teachers in the month of December feeling a lot of stress. This week while I’ve been preparing for my paternity leave, which is going to happen over my 3rd and 5th grader’s Winter performance and happening during a critical time for my band students to prepare for their performance after break is no small task. Yes, I have an AMAZING paternity sub lined up, but it’s still a lot to prepare for, and a lot to process. This has been stressful.
The stress that I have, I’ve realized is slightly misplaced, and mostly self-induced and I wonder if this is similar for other music teachers. I have a standard, and a way that I want my students to prepare and to perform. I am pushing myself to that standard. Can my students to one fewer song? Yes, probably, but like most music teachers, I don’t really play it safe. I want to push my students to their full potential, which means I’m taking some chances, doing things, I haven’t done before and putting stress on myself.
There’s also the stress of community and parental expectations, which is mostly through my own perception. Most parents want their children to present in performance as being prepared and enjoying themselves. That’s it, and what we do to raise them to a higher level of musical excellence, which adds a lot of stress on us, is really on us.
The stress that I feel and the worry I am processing, I wonder about. Is this stress based on the work that will truly benefit the students, or is based on my own expectations of my professional work, which many times does benefit the students, but I’m sure on some level is more about me.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to push yourself as a teacher to grow and to do more year to year, but I also feel teachers need to do this in a way that helps students and create opportunities to grow with limited stress.
It’s important that students feel the importance of our work and value the limited time we have in making music together, but I do not believe that stress motivates and help students grow. And undo stress that teachers feel and often put upon themselves, makes teachers forget the sheer joy of creating music with children.
My time is running out. I don’t know exactly how many more days I have before my leave and at some point in the middle of the past week, I stopped let myself have fun with my students. It’s weird. I know that I’m not good at motivating my students through being stern but I seem to revert to that in times of stress. And when I smiled, and showed my students how much joy I got out of their hard work, we all started to have more fun and be more productive.
I let stress take my smile a way for part of this week, and it didn’t help my students prepare for their performances.
We have to figure out where are stress comes from, and see where it leads us. There are so many important things to teach in preparation for performances. If we get to a polished performance through a process full of stress, then that’s all our students will remember.
Music is not about stress,. Music is about understanding and sharing the human experience in ways that words cannot. In this way music is life-affirming and powerful. If this happens in our classroom leading up to our concert, this is what they will remember regardless of how well a concert goes.
The glory of a great performance only last an evening, understanding the joy and meaning in the process of learning music lasts a lifetime.
Monday, December 2, 2019
Parenthood: Week 347 – Every Day
In a recent podcast Dave Meltzer explained that one of the reasons that people in his generation grow and learn about what it means to be anti-racist and more accepting of diversity is through their children. Children, he explains, encourage us to grow and learn about new things in life. Children ensure that every single day of our lives is different.
Dave Melzer isn’t a parenting expert. He is a sports journalist who primarily focuses on professional wrestling and MMA. It is not an understatement to say that Meltzer is a genius, with an encyclopedic memory for sports. He is one of, if not the most prolific sports journalists of all time. Check out this great New York Times profile about him.
One of the reasons I respect Meltzer so much is that he has incredible instincts about recognizing racism, how to respond to issues related to racism, and what it means to navigate the modern world with all that has progressed in society. His mind, and his understanding of the world makes professional wrestling a wonderful world to explore. Following along with Meltzer is one of the reasons that I follow professional wrestling.
Back to the opening statement…Meltzer is right.
If you want your life to basically be the same every day, it’s possible. Stick with the friends you made in high school and college, go to the same job, and have the same hobbies. The years will go by like lightning and you can expect nothing much to change in your life. If you are fortunate enough, you can have forty years of your life go by without much change.
If consistency and predictability is what you want out of life. Fine, do your thing.
However, if you want your life to be different every day, have kids.
Every single day of my life since having children has been unique. Unpredictability has become the norm. Sometimes Ethan will sleep through the night, others nights he will not. Some night Ollie doesn’t have a lot to say at the dinner table, while tonight he told us that he wanted a unibrow because he heard about it in the story someone read to him at school.
Development stages pass like the seasons, new adventures are always on the horizon, and there’s always new things to learn and explore. Children motivate me to try new things with them, and my children motivate me to want to learn and be a better me.
Pushing for consistently day to day with children in routines is important for structure but these routines aren’t a cage to control children but structures for children to grow like tomatoes moving up and around wooden stakes. You can’t predict exactly how a plant will grow, and that’s the exciting part.
Why kid number 3? Because I like that my life is different every day, and I want more of that. To me, what makes life awesome, interesting, emotional and powerful is the difference from day to day, what is unique about each morning, each afternoon, and each evening. Children ensure that every day is an adventure. It feels right for more of this, for myself, for my wife, and for my children.
I like the rollercoaster. It’s scary, but it’s fun. I’ve loved going on this ride with Diana, and I’m looking forward to bringing Ollie and Ethan along for the ride, as we welcome a special one into our lives.
Dave Melzer isn’t a parenting expert. He is a sports journalist who primarily focuses on professional wrestling and MMA. It is not an understatement to say that Meltzer is a genius, with an encyclopedic memory for sports. He is one of, if not the most prolific sports journalists of all time. Check out this great New York Times profile about him.
One of the reasons I respect Meltzer so much is that he has incredible instincts about recognizing racism, how to respond to issues related to racism, and what it means to navigate the modern world with all that has progressed in society. His mind, and his understanding of the world makes professional wrestling a wonderful world to explore. Following along with Meltzer is one of the reasons that I follow professional wrestling.
Back to the opening statement…Meltzer is right.
If you want your life to basically be the same every day, it’s possible. Stick with the friends you made in high school and college, go to the same job, and have the same hobbies. The years will go by like lightning and you can expect nothing much to change in your life. If you are fortunate enough, you can have forty years of your life go by without much change.
If consistency and predictability is what you want out of life. Fine, do your thing.
However, if you want your life to be different every day, have kids.
Every single day of my life since having children has been unique. Unpredictability has become the norm. Sometimes Ethan will sleep through the night, others nights he will not. Some night Ollie doesn’t have a lot to say at the dinner table, while tonight he told us that he wanted a unibrow because he heard about it in the story someone read to him at school.
Development stages pass like the seasons, new adventures are always on the horizon, and there’s always new things to learn and explore. Children motivate me to try new things with them, and my children motivate me to want to learn and be a better me.
Pushing for consistently day to day with children in routines is important for structure but these routines aren’t a cage to control children but structures for children to grow like tomatoes moving up and around wooden stakes. You can’t predict exactly how a plant will grow, and that’s the exciting part.
Why kid number 3? Because I like that my life is different every day, and I want more of that. To me, what makes life awesome, interesting, emotional and powerful is the difference from day to day, what is unique about each morning, each afternoon, and each evening. Children ensure that every day is an adventure. It feels right for more of this, for myself, for my wife, and for my children.
I like the rollercoaster. It’s scary, but it’s fun. I’ve loved going on this ride with Diana, and I’m looking forward to bringing Ollie and Ethan along for the ride, as we welcome a special one into our lives.
Friday, November 29, 2019
Year 10: Week 13 - Crowded Table
Most of the time, I don’t teach music that I love. First off, my job as a teacher is not to teach students what music that I enjoy. My job is to instill a love of music in my students' lives buy teaching them how to better understand music in their own lives and beyond. The music that is most effective at doing just this is often music that I don’t personally love, or even like all that much. No, I don’t torture myself by teaching music that I strongly dislike, but I rarely in my free time listen to music that I teach for enjoyment.
This is why I hesitated so much to teach “Crowded Table.” This is a song that I absolutely love and it means so much to me. One of the first singles that was released from The Highwomen is a wonderful statement of values, and an expression of what of the wants that we should all share.
I love everything about The Highwomen, and I’m going to leave it to the pros to explain what is so important and amazing about their debut self-titled album (check out this article).
I wanted to shake things up. My 3rd graders ended the Thanksgiving program long before I started at this school ten years ago by performing, “Simple Gifts.” Yes, as I taught my students, “Simple Gifts” is an important American song, attributed Elder Joseph Brackett who wrote it down in 1848. However, I felt that my students needed more, my school needed more. For over a decade (likely decades), the expressions of this one white man from the mid-1800s had been central in the traditions of our school.
My school is made up of a lot more than white men, so I was determined to do something more. Instead of trying to replace a tradition that many people valued, I created more space. I moved “Simple Gifts,” from a finale to an introduction, and brought in “Crowded Table,” a song written and recorded earlier this year by women as the ending sing-along of this central school tradition.
“Crowded Table” was perfect. The meaning of the lyrics were teachable to my 3rd graders and while rhythm was a not exactly at 3rd grade level, the range and the contours of the melody worked for my 3rd graders and most importantly of all, my students really enjoyed singing this song.
My idea was that all of the other students in the audience would singalong with the chorus of the song while the 3rd graders performed. So, I prepped the other student by teaching “Crowded Table,” to them and every time, I was nervous, hoping that they would catch onto the song. I’m usually not nervous in my hope that students will like a song, but this one felt different. This song and this whole album just has meant that much to me.
With great pride I led my 3rd graders through the first verse, and then I turned around to invite the audience to sing along with the chorus and I heard singing from crowd, and felt the spirit in the room. Each time the chorus hit, the audiences voices got louder and louder, and by the end of the song, the whole school was singing together.
If the school didn’t get into this song, and not singalong very loudly, it would have been fine. However, this possibility felt like a failure to me, and fulfilling our fears that the youth are less than. Instead the students and my school showed me that they agreed with me, that our school values were nothing just posted on the wall, and that we all wanted to create a school and a society where “everyone belongs.”
This is why I hesitated so much to teach “Crowded Table.” This is a song that I absolutely love and it means so much to me. One of the first singles that was released from The Highwomen is a wonderful statement of values, and an expression of what of the wants that we should all share.
I love everything about The Highwomen, and I’m going to leave it to the pros to explain what is so important and amazing about their debut self-titled album (check out this article).
I wanted to shake things up. My 3rd graders ended the Thanksgiving program long before I started at this school ten years ago by performing, “Simple Gifts.” Yes, as I taught my students, “Simple Gifts” is an important American song, attributed Elder Joseph Brackett who wrote it down in 1848. However, I felt that my students needed more, my school needed more. For over a decade (likely decades), the expressions of this one white man from the mid-1800s had been central in the traditions of our school.
My school is made up of a lot more than white men, so I was determined to do something more. Instead of trying to replace a tradition that many people valued, I created more space. I moved “Simple Gifts,” from a finale to an introduction, and brought in “Crowded Table,” a song written and recorded earlier this year by women as the ending sing-along of this central school tradition.
“Crowded Table” was perfect. The meaning of the lyrics were teachable to my 3rd graders and while rhythm was a not exactly at 3rd grade level, the range and the contours of the melody worked for my 3rd graders and most importantly of all, my students really enjoyed singing this song.
My idea was that all of the other students in the audience would singalong with the chorus of the song while the 3rd graders performed. So, I prepped the other student by teaching “Crowded Table,” to them and every time, I was nervous, hoping that they would catch onto the song. I’m usually not nervous in my hope that students will like a song, but this one felt different. This song and this whole album just has meant that much to me.
With great pride I led my 3rd graders through the first verse, and then I turned around to invite the audience to sing along with the chorus and I heard singing from crowd, and felt the spirit in the room. Each time the chorus hit, the audiences voices got louder and louder, and by the end of the song, the whole school was singing together.
If the school didn’t get into this song, and not singalong very loudly, it would have been fine. However, this possibility felt like a failure to me, and fulfilling our fears that the youth are less than. Instead the students and my school showed me that they agreed with me, that our school values were nothing just posted on the wall, and that we all wanted to create a school and a society where “everyone belongs.”
Monday, November 25, 2019
Parenthood: Week 346 - Swinging
“Ethan, do you want more swing?”I wasn’t sure how long I had been pushing my children on the swings in our backyard. I knew that at least three songs had past that I was playing off of my iPhone through a speaker balancing on a tree stump.
“More!”
“Ollie, do you want to take a break?”
“MORE SWING!!”
It was Sunday morning and I had the boys to myself. Diana was teaching her last Sunday morning enrichment class for gifted students. She had been teaching this course for a couple weeks, which gave me the opportunity to have some daddy time with the boys.
Some Sundays with the boys went really well. I would get them out of the house to go to a play area or a park and we’d have a great time. There were other times that did not go so well, like when I took them to a store with toys and a meltdown ensued as I refused to by toys for them.
Days when I felt less motivated and didn’t get them out of the house in general didn’t go so well. Yes, sleeping in is nice, but the price that I pay for sleeping in is that the mornings are more hectic, and it’s harder to get them fed, ready for the day and get myself ready for the day. Most of the time the boys would let me do one of these three things in peaces: eat breakfast, go to the bathroom, or get dressed. If I pushed myself out of bed earlier, and had a plan, things almost always went smoother.
Having a relaxing Sunday morning at home has never been that relaxing.
Yesterday, I did have a plan. I got up one the early side, and got Ethan eating some snacks earlier so I could get breakfast on the table for everyone. I got them changed and got myself ready and we headed to the backyard.
Ollie on recent neighborhood bike rides kept crashing into leaf piles while we walking Buffy. This was entertaining for him, but it delayed our walks with Buffy. And it was annoying to wait for him to pull his bike out of leaf piles over and over.
This morning was going to be different. I was going to give my boys control of their time. So much of our children’s lives, we determine when their schedule. We often cut our children off when they want to do more of something they are enjoying. On this morning I wanted things to be different.
After we racked up piles of leaves and jumped around in them, Ethan pointed to the swings. I racked a nice cushion of leaves underneath the swings so my Ollie could jump out of the swing into the pile, and then I pushed them and got them going.
In the past, at parks I’ve stopped my boys from doing certain activities like the swings or playing on slides because I was bored or we were out of time. Yesterday, I let them take the lead.
After about ten minutes of pushing them on the swing, I gave up keeping track of time, and I stopped asking if they were done or wanted a break. Next, I gave up on trying to lead them into a different activity. Finally, I pushed aside my boredom and focused on Ethan’s constant giggles and let his joy become my focus.
I starting noticing things that I had missed. The air was getting warmer. Ethan’s hands were gripping the chains of the swings with more strength then I had ever before. Ollie and Ethan swung in and out of sync in some kind of wonderful dance, and the leaves beneath my boots crackled gently as I shifted my weight.
Like awakening from a dream, Ollie said “Ok, I want a break,” and he jumped off. Soon after Ethan reached his arms up to signal that he was done as well. Shortly after that we headed back into the house and sense of time reentered my consciousness and we were back.
It's sometimes scary to let our children take charge, but sometimes when we let them lead us, it takes us to wonderful places, we never imagined.
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