The Purple Reaction is a music blog that focuses on music in our culture and explores the history, theory and artistry that make the music we love so great. This is a celebration of art, the emotional connections that we feel through music and the deep personal meaning we experience through great music.
This blog features new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
For this whole school year, my school has taken a very cautious approach to COVID-19 mitigation procedures.
I have appreciated this approach, which has led us to have no community spread of COVID-19 at our school.
One of the hardest adjustments I had to make was the policy that we would not have singing or wind instruments at my school. While other schools figured out ways to make singing and wind instruments work at their schools, I did not feel the research over the summer was strong enough to provide safety guidelines, and I did not want to take any chances. For a time, I was more focused on making sure students got music class than what we wuld do in music class.
Initially, I felt okay about not doing singing or wind instruments. With my 4th & 5th graders, there were other activities we did that didn’t include singing. I had done this stuff before, so I figured I would focus on those. With my middle school students, not having band class meant that we would be teaching a general music curriculum, which I had never taught at this level. While I was nervous about doing this, the lack of a concert to prepare for took a certain amount of pressure away, so I felt freer to be creative with the curriculum.
After winter break, I decided to move my students into work that would directly reflect what was going on in society. We did lessons around debating the quality music as a way to work on having disagreements in a way that helped us get to know each other and didn’t make people feel personally attacked. I did a unit on American anthems. We looked at the racism in the lyrics and origins of “The Star-Spangled” banner left out of the dominant narrative. Then we looked at other American anthems like “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”
Students ranked different performances of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I was so excited when students loved Marvin Gaye’s incredible interpretation of this song and a little discouraged when others wanted to spend far too much time talking about Fergie’s. Students wrote new lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” all of which were critical of America but showed a desire to be better by remembering and acknowledging what is not great about America.
The teaching was different. These weren’t lessons where students all sang, and I could sing and hear their engagement. Sometimes I would be explaining something, and it was hard by their expressions if they were engaging with the material. Then a student would say something I hadn’t thought of, and my students reminded me of how much I enjoyed teaching because of how much I learn from my students.
Singing will be back, and so will band instruments. I’m not sure how much things will revert to the curriculum I used to use, but right now, I’m looking forward to continuing work with my students, trying to figure out what it means to American through music.
It’s hard to know why things were so difficult last week.
Maybe it was Buffy.
For two nights last week, Buffy needed to go out to the backyard to do her business about every two hours.
After the first night, I tried to get a veterinarian appointment and couldn’t make it happen. Her symptoms were better, and she was eating normally, and her energy level seemed fine.
The second it was just as bad as the first night. I felt guilty that I didn’t push harder to get her in to see the vet, and I was exhausted from the lack of sleep. Diana, better at me at these kinds of things, got her an appointment, and I took her in that afternoon. There was nothing seriously wrong with her, and after a bland diet and some medication, Buffy is doing just fine.
Maybe it was Ethan.
Ethan is the kind of person who needs consistency and structure, and when I stopped being so clear that he couldn’t sleep in our bed at night, he took advantage of this. Last week there were four or five nights when he came into our room and tried to sleep with us four or five times.
A couple of nights ago, I wedged a portable crib in front of his door. This meant that when he did get up, he couldn’t get into our room. Instead, he would call for me, and I would get up and help him go to sleep in his bed. Things have vastly improved, and last night he only got up once, about forty-five minutes before his read-to-wake alarm went off.
Maybe it was the snowstorm.
Snow makes everything about parenting harder. Getting them ready to go outside is a struggle. It takes more energy to play with them outside in the snow. Shoveling takes hours away time needed for parental takes. There are boots to dry, gloves to keep track of, and tracked in melted snow to mop up.
The worst of it has hopefully passed.
Maybe it was the suffering outside of my house.
People continue to die from COVID-19, and parents in Texas have had to struggle through unimaginable challenges just to keep their children warm and fed. The continued viol
I miss my parents. I’m frustrated that I can’t visit my friend who had to say goodbye to her beloved dog last week and hug her, and I’m tired of being tired all of the time.
Throughout last week, despite the challenges and all that I was trying to sort out in my mind, my children gave me a purpose, something to do, a reason to get up, and motivation to keep things going. Caring for others through cooking, doing dishes, and laundry doesn’t make all of the challenging things go away, but it helps them maintain a focus and a direction.
There is so much that is unclear and uncertain about the future. However, my love for my children is indisputable and unwavering. Right now, when I think about last week and how hard it was, I hear the laughter of my children. There is something about parenthood that helps your process, helps you move through to the next thing. Parenthood helps you understand what to let go of and what never to forget.
Some things are fleeting, like the lack of sleep, and some feelings will never forget that teach us lessons that will forever change us.
Right, all of this stuff is intertwined, and I don’t know which of these have affected me, but what I do know is that tomorrow morning, I will wake up and look forward to the smiles, the hugs, and the wonder that is my three sons.
Failure, disappointment, and lose are a feature in life, not a flaw.
The real test of character is how one responds to these difficult times in life. It's okay to be sad. It's easy to draw back and do less, and it's extraordinary to stay engaged and find a new way to be effective in the work.
I'll never forget where I was and how it felt Senator Elizabeth Warren suspended her candidacy for President. I knew it was coming. The votes weren't there, and the math simply wasn't adding up. I held out hope, but it happened, and I was so sad. It felt similar to how I felt when Secretary Clinton lost the Presidential election. Both Warren and Clinton were highly qualified and ran a good campaign.
There are many reasons both candidates didn't win; one significant reason was that the system is sexist, and neither of them had an even playing field. Both were victims of some of the darkest and most disturbing sexist jokes and commentary. It shakes me to the core when to think about the words used to describe these two extraordinary Americans.
I knew that I would support another candidate, but I didn't know how to because this was all new to me. I had never been this involved in a political election in my entire life. And it felt good to follow the primaries and to support Senator Warren. It felt necessary, it felt empowering, and it felt like an act of love.
My wife, Diana, got more involved in the election earlier in the process. When it became clear Senator Warren was Diana's pick, I wanted to support Diana. Yes, I also like Warren independent of Diana, but the fact that Diana felt so strongly about her made me feel even more committed to the cause. I thought early in 2020 that if we were truly going to affect change and make a difference for the women in our lives, that maybe we should show support to these women by supporting their candidates.
The main reason why I felt so strongly for Warren was because of how she inspired Diana. The trump presidency was so full of pain and disappointment. I could see the trauma and hurt in Diana's eyes when he would do horrible things on almost a weekly basis. I hate what he did to our country, and I had what he did to our people, and I hate how he made my wife feel. And Elizabeth Warren was the counter to that. Diana's eyes lit up when she read about her, listened to her speeches, and the best kind of tears would come when Diana would talk about her late at night after the kids were asleep.
Diana felt empower that she went door-to-door canvassing for Warren. She took little Lucas, only a couple of months old, and did what I wasn't brave enough to do.
She did in that afternoon far more than those of us who just posted comments on Facebook. I love how proud Diana was of herself for canvassing. I love how Elizabeth Warren inspired Diana. And love how Diana became more compassionate, more caring, and more determined through her work for Warren.
In parallel, I saw Warren and my wife move on from disappointment after Warren suspended her election. Warren went on to do essential transformative work that significantly contributed to progressive causes and President Biden's victory. She didn't slow down at all. She stayed fully engaged and kept on fighting, and so did Diana.
I'll never forget Diana writing postcards to encourage people to vote late at night at our kitchen table. I thought to myself that Elizabeth Warren is probably sitting just like Diana at that very moment, tired from a full day of work...not giving up.
It's amazing quickly he got from pulling himself up to walking and now toddling around. I would say about three-quarters of the time he's now up on two feet walking around the house. He still crawls around at times. When Lucas is determined to move quickly, he crawls on all fours, tilts his head down, and charges. It's hilarious and adorable.
Lucas is now more concerned when you take away something from that he wants to play with, whether it's because of safety or because you are trying to clean things up. His frustration is mild, but you can tell he's starting to have a stronger concept of objects and a desire to revisit certain toys.
Being stuck at home doesn't seem to bother him that much. He's been in a good mood and enjoys being around his brothers.
Ethan has been having some trouble sleeping.
He made tremendous progress in the past year, becoming a more independent sleeper. A couple of weeks ago, he started visiting me about an hour before his ready-to-wake alarm clock would light up. Instead of being more disciplined in putting him back into his bed, I let him stay and cuddle with me. This has led to nights in the past week where he tries to get in my bed two or three times throughout the night.
Last night, I made it clear at around 2 am that he had to go back to his bed, and he couldn't stay in my bed. This led to my tired little guy throwing a tantrum. I eventually got him to quiet down and back into his bed. Even then, he still got up a couple of hours later and tried to crawl back into my bed.
I'm tired, and while I feel frustrated towards Ethan, it's clear that my lack of consistency around sleep expectations has confused Ethan. Sleep has always been a project with Ethan. While I don't like being sleep-deprived, I'm happy that he finds comfort in my arms and wants to cuddle with me.
One day I'll miss these cuddles.
Watching Ollie carry Lucas is hilarious.
Lucas has this thing where he likes to go up to the tv and turn it off. When Ollie watches television and sees Lucas approach the power button, he will get off the couch, lift Lucas from behind and carry him holding him beneath his arms. Lucas always has this cute look of wonder when this is happening. Ollie will put him down on the other side of the room and then sits down and try to watch his show again.
Ollie's relationship with Lucas is different than his relationship with Ethan. With Ethan, Ollie actively engages with him as a playmate, and with Lucas, he tries to entertain him and make him laugh. He keeps an eye on him to make sure that he's safe, and he understands when he has to wait because I need to do something for Lucas.
It will be interesting to see how the dynamics of my three sons' relationships with each other evolve. Right now, Ollie and Ethan can more easily play with each other because of where they are developmentally, but Ethan and Lucas are closer in age than Ollie and Ethan are, so this will change.
One of the great things about Ollie is that he's not in a rush to grow up and revels in playing with his younger brothers. It's a wonderful reminder that sometimes the best things in life are enjoyed with the youngest among us.
Dealing with uncertainty is a muscle. After making it halfway through this school year, this muscle has become strong.
We are coming up to our mid-winter break. This period between winter break and mid-winter break has felt calmer and more stable. We know how to process the challenges and the uncertainty, and because of significant steps forward, our administration made.
After winter break, the school provided COVID-19 testing to all students, faculty, and staff. To be able to come back to in-person school, you needed a negative test. Our community came through, and there was not one positive test. A couple of weeks ago, my school provided us with access to the COVID-19 vaccine, and all the adults working in the school got their first vaccination shot.
Soon we will all get our second shot and be fully vaccinated.
The mitigation measures have not changed how we have operated as a school, but it has changed how teachers feel. The week that we got our vaccinations, the teachers in a great mood, and you could feel the positivity in the building.
The most significant factor that made this period rewarding and joyful was the students. They were remote starting after Thanksgiving, so they weren’t in the building for almost a month and a half. So, when they finally came, they were really happy to be here.
Despite world events and all that is being asked of my students, for the most part, they are still moments of joy and meaning. They giggled walking down the hallways, they got on each other’s nerves, and they rolled their eyes at my bad jokes. Some of them deeply engaged in projects, others less than, but they all tried.
My middle school students impressed me with new lyrics they wrote to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” My younger students continued after every class was over, working on collaborative music composition projects on their iPads, and we all had the opportunity to explore racism in music together.
The mask and the distance between us are barriers, but that barrier cannot take away the feeling of being in a room of students joyfully creating music together. The barrier may hide smiles, but it doesn’t take away the sweet voices of children saying hi to me in the hallway. And this barrier makes it harder for all to be understood but doesn’t make us any less determined to understand each other.
As a teacher, the future of my life is full of uncertainty, but what I do know for sure is that even in these difficult times, our students can continue to inspire us to be better and do better for them and ourselves.
Yes, I complain about it being cold when it's 40 degrees out, but this past week and what we got coming up is cold by anyone's standard. Right now, it's 10 degrees outside, and the highest temperature we got coming up in the next week is 19 degrees.
One of the strategies for handling this pandemic and the anxiety around our lives' uncertainty is to focus on what's in front of you. Yes, think about the future but spend your energy on the next day and the following week.
So I didn't think about how COVID-19 would affect parenting in sub-freezing temperatures.
In past years, when it's been this cold, we would get our children out of the house in different ways. When Ollie was a toddler, I used to take him to our library. Our local branch has a heated underground garage, which was convenient these days when your face hurt after being outside for a minute. We would look at books, he would play at the play space, and sometimes he would run up and down the aisles while I would chase him around.
There were also play spaces we would go to, bookstores, and grocery stores. Winter was rough in the past, but there were always ways to get out of the house.
My children are in a better mood if they get out of the house at some point in the day, so we would go somewhere even on the coldest days.
And now there's nowhere to go.
Libraries and play spaces are closed. Retail stores and grocery stores are no longer places where my children can explore the aisles and shop with me comfortably. There are many places like Chicago where outside playgrounds in parks still are not open, which is ridiculous. Many school buildings and park district facilities are empty. These aren't challenging problems to solve. It's not a money issue. It is a lack of will.
Our country is dealing with so many issues. Creating spaces for children to play indoors when it's cold outside might seem like a minor convenience for some people; it's a symptom of a larger problem: children are not a priority in America.
One of the hardest things in America as a parent to accept how unnecessarily difficult our society had made parenting. This has only become clearer during the pandemic. I hoped in some way that this crisis it would refocus on what is right for the nation's children. But no, the focus instead was on financial gain and sports.
We can be better, and we can do better. We can have a country where no child goes to sleep hungry, but we don't. So we keep digging deep, and in this winter of discontent, we make something work for our children stuck at home, wishing for something different, knowing that change is not forthcoming.
The darkness of this winter is reminding me that America is a very cold place.
Last summer, when we were planning for the fall of 2020, there were a couple of options on the table.
All the students are in-person.
All the students have remote instruction.
There is a hybrid of in-person and remote teaching (e.g., Math class is in-person and art is remote).
Students choose between in-person and remote instruction
All of these options had advantages and drawbacks. The only one of these I had done was having all students have remote instruction. I had never done in-person during the pandemic.
The hybrid model seemed to have potential, but that was also an unknown. I was leaning towards the idea that students could choose between in-person and remote instruction. Families have very different situations and different levels of risk they are willing to take. I felt early in the process that families should choose remote instruction.
I never imagined that I would be teaching students in-person and students who were remote at the same time.
I assumed that our students receiving remote instruction would somehow have a different remote instruction experience. So, I was surprised when our administration presented their plan. I had no idea how this was going to work. However, it didn't really stress me out as the school year started.
I was already stressed trying to figure out how to teach music class without singing and what to do with band students since we couldn't have band anymore.
Since the start of the school year, I've taught in-person and remote students simultaneously. With my 4th and 5th grade pods of nine students, the most remote students I've had at a time was three. With my middle school classes, I've had as many as six remote students in a class of 18. It varies from class to class.
I cannot speak to how well this model is working with students in grades JK-3, as I only teach students grades 4-8.
On the best of days when I have a well-planned lesson and have meaningful ways for the students on Zoom to interact and participate, it works well. I'll have a student on Zoom on an iPad with a stand sitting at an empty desk. I'll move this iPad around during discussions and the student experiencing class, which is not all that different from for students in the room.
I clearly remember a great discussion as I sat in the front of the room with a desktop computer in front of me with six students on Zoom. I called on them as I did with the students present in the classroom, and the conversation felt organic and comfortable.
Teaching students who are at home while teaching students at school feels different, and there is a learning curve to getting used to doing this. It felt weird having students on a screen, some of whom had their cameras off, and trying to engage them with the students in-person at the same time. It felt awkward repeating things other students said throughout the discussion so the remote students can better participate in the discussion. And it felt horrible when early in the year, I would forget to actively involve the remote students. All of these feelings have passed, and this new norm at this point is not something that brings me stress or anxiety.
Would things be better if the remote learning students had their own individualized remote learning plan and the school did not integrate them with the in-person students? Some things would be better. The lessons could be better designed to be remote and likely be more effective. However, these students wouldn't be a member of a larger classroom room. Most importantly, they wouldn't have a seat in the room.
Some families at my school have chosen for their children to be remote for the whole year. Others have had their children be remote for short periods and then switch to being in person. This has happened for various reasons. For example, if a student is exposed to a person outside of school who has tested positive for COVID-19, they can still have school when they are quarantining with the same teachers and same classmates.
Having a place for the remote students expresses that there is a place for them if they choose to be in-person. It's an optimistic view that we will be altogether at some point, and when that moment happens, we have a seat waiting for you.
If a school wants to go with the plan to have teachers teach remote students and students in-person at the same time, there's a couple of things that need to happen:
Academic freedom: Teachers need the freedom to modify and change the curriculum to make lessons work for remote students and in-person students.
Technology: Without a good laptop, a fast internet connection, an iPad, an iPad stand, a working projector, and cords and adapters to hook up my devices TO the projector, this whole type of teaching would be impossible.
Cooperative parents: Families need to understand that the remote learning experience is different than if the entire class is remote and is willing to be a partner in making this work.
Student-teacher ratio: The class size allows the students/teacher ratio to be 1:9 for lower graders and 1:18 for middle school and upper school grades is essential for making this set-up work.
Teacher assistants and technology staff: There will be issues with the best set-ups. Having support staff is essential in helping solve problems so that teachers can focus on teaching.
Prep time: Teachers have to learn a whole new way to plan, instruct, and assess. They need more prep time. One way to provide this time to have school days shorter.
Grace, patience, and support from administrators.
It's interesting. All of the things listed above are things that teachers need all of the time. When the administration asks teachers to do more in this time of crisis, this list becomes more urgent. With all of these things I listed above, what I'm doing is really difficult, but it's possible, and it's worth the effort.
When there are no remote students, and I can focus on the students in the classroom, the class is easier to teach. However, when I have a class with in-person students and remote students, I feel proud to connect with my remote students and bring them into the classroom. It's not perfect, and sometimes it's a struggle, but like the nightly calls between my mom and my son, there can still be meaning, purpose, and joy in the imperfection.
