My life in 6 Songs: Part I

Having recently read the book by Daniel Levitin, The World in Six Songs, I have been thinking of my own life in terms of the music I have learned throughout it. This thought process got started last weekend when I pulled my dusty mountain banjo out of its case for a jam session at a friend's house. Hadn't played the thing in at least one, maybe two years, and yet, my fingers remembered the few little Appalachian-flavored tunes I learned some 35 years ago. Clumsy and slow, but definitely still accessible from the muscle memory banks, the songs brought forth a flood of memories of the days living in Ohio where I learned them.

I was a young college student, a transplant from New York, studying first Music Therapy and then Cello Performance at Ohio University, ending up, finally, with the Music Education degree that has served me so well this last decade and a half. Athens, the home of OU, sits at the southeast corner of the state, at the edge of the Appalachian Mountains and region. Such a place, I found, was home to a whole new kind of music I had never heard before. Not bluegrass, but something more raw and simple that appealed to me right away and made me want to learn.

There was an Anthropology professor in those days, Art Saxe, who lived with his wife, Susan, on a 40-or-so acre farm at the top of a knobby hill in Millfield, once a coal mining town about 15 miles from Athens. Art had befriended some of the local musicians, some of us students, and also some hippies that lived down the road from him. During the first summer I lived there, we would gather in Art's living room to drink homemade wine and beer and play music together. He knew- it seemed- hundreds of these mountain songs, and sang them with gusto while thumping on a banjo made from the torque converter of -I think- an old Plymouth. I would bring a fiddle along and he patiently taught me what he knew. I learned that I needed steel strings, not the silver wound gut or synthetic that I had been using. I also learned that I needed to flatten my bridge out, the better to play on two strings at once.

I got hooked up with this group of musical friends in the spring when I had cat-sat at a friend's apartment in town over spring break. Her apartment had a window that opened on to a roof where I would play my fiddle in the open air. This was a fiddle that I had borrowed from a boy, an English major, on whom I had a desperate crush. He and I joined together with another boy and  formed a band that played Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Jonathan Prine songs around town. I had started learning a few fiddle tunes by this time and they were always the hit of any gig. But I was still thinking bluegrass and the mountain style hadn't quite sunk in yet.

So here I was on a sunny spring day, playing fiddle on a roof, and a young man appeared in the alley and shouted up to me "Don't go away, I'll be right back!" And back he came with a guitar. He introduced himself -Lucien Geoffrey Matte- and we shared tunes and jammed the rest of the afternoon away. Soon he introduced me to his friend, David Kuhaneck who played clawhammer banjo in the frailing style of Appalachia, and I was hooked. It was through these two new friends that I became a regular at Art Saxe's summer night gatherings.

The night air of summer in Appalachia is like nothing else I have ever experienced anywhere. It is dense with the sound of night insects, the twinkle of fireflies, the buzz of hunting night hawks and the condensation of the day's humidity. Between songs, the space between the musicians filled up with this mix, making a continuous, velvety fabric of sound, smells and fecund too much-ness. Learning the songs here wasn't like learning music in school. The songs kept coming, and I had to grab what I could as they flew by. Consciousness altered with beer and other substances, I felt like a goldfish finding the castle all over again in his little bowl. Every time, every song unremembered until so many songs went by so many times, finally some of them stuck.

Chickens a-crowin' on Sourwood Mountain
Hay, dang dang, diddle aylee dang,
So many pretty girls, I just can't count 'em
Hay dang dang, diddle aylee dang.

Or

Old Molly Hare
What're you doin' there?
Sittin in a corner
Smokin' a cigar.

Or

Oh the cuckoo
She's a pretty bird
She warbles when she flies
She don't ever holler cuckoo
Till the fourth of July

 Sometimes, returning home at daybreak, the mist settling into the hollows in gauzy wisps seemed like a reflection of the sleepy dreams of music in my head.

The next fall, Art was in the hospital for a while, I forget what for, but Susan made him a tape to listen to of all the versions of his favorite song, Ragtime Annie, that he had on various records. That is one song of those many that I learned and learned well, and play to this day, in the version that Art himself taught me. Won second place in the fiddle contest at Julian a few years back with that song.

The Appalachian Mountains are far away and Art is probably long retired and moved to Florida or something by now, but those tunes are in me still, and can still fill me up, just like a hot summer evening on a steamy mountain top.

National Boards?????

Fellow music teacher colleague and friend, Karen, is thinking about tackling the daunting prospect of  acquiring a National Board Certificate. She has taken the first plunge by attending a four-hour informational meeting. She has gotten me thinking about it too. It's funny how, even though it immediately pops into my head that it is WAY too much work, on top of the way too much work I already have on my plate every week, month and year, a little spark of excitement lights up my brain imagining that I could really slow down and THINK about how and what and why I am doing what I do. Get feedback, develop new ideas toward best practices, and in the end, get some recognition and a raise. It's not an unattractive idea. Especially if there would be a fellow music teacher on the road too.

We (okay, I AM seriously considering this, even though I wouldn't even have dipped a toe in the water if it hadn't been for Karen diving in first) have till July 11 to decide. Meanwhile I am reading everything I can about the process, talking it over with husband and those who have been there and done that.

It takes a certain self-confidence in one's teaching practices even to think about taking this on. The whole point of the project is critical reflection and it's maybe only after this pretty good year that I feel I could stand up to such self-inflicted scrutiny. After 15 years in this district, I could actually hold a mirror up to my classroom and maybe not flinch. It would be okay to look closely and see what I do, and not run screaming from the profession as an abject failure. Maybe it would even be fun. I'm thinking this blog atmosphere might be useful as a tool to help me think out loud, so to speak.

I will think on this some more...any thoughts, friends?

When the Leadership promotes the Arts, amazing things happen

Gayle Bluemel has always looked at her position as the principal of Sierra Madre School as one of facilitating the wonderful work of the inspired and inspiring teachers who work there. Keeping directives from "above" to a minimum, she has always supported and encouraged the teachers, students and parents in this thriving school community to move above and beyond their own and everyone else's expectations. As she finishes her last few days in her distinguished career, this tribute, prepared in secret by hundreds of people, was the perfect gift to a woman whose educational philosophy directly results in the actual ability to pull something like this off. Have a look!

http://sierramadre.patch.com/articles/flash-mob-serenades-retiring-principal?ncid=M255

The End of the Year Already

The time has flown. It seems we just loaded our cars with the instruments from the warehouse to distribute to eager new students, and now we are already collecting them, cleaning them and taking them back. All around, I have to say, it's been a pretty good year.  I know that for the first time in 15 years, I actually feel my own competency, know where I need to develop and improve and have begun to understand why I do what I do and why it matters.

In some ways our music department for the whole district has become more closely knit than ever, and the benefit goes to the kids.We have been trying to have more continuity between schools, keeping track of where kids go when they leave our programs at elementary or middle school. We have tried to connect kids from different schools through the music they can share. We have joined together as a faculty of performers to make the Staff Lounge jazz band.  I personally have watched several of my colleagues teach this year, and, I hope, have learned some new tricks.

My own classes have done well. I feel that the students who stayed with it through the whole year will move on to the next level next year with skills in place to succeed. I still puzzle over the ones who don't make it through the year, and am determined to address this- and maybe solve it- in the coming year.

Update the inventory, nudge some performers through a couple of promotion ceremonies, pack a few boxes (did I tell you we are getting a new room next year? Not much view, but GREAT air conditioning!) turn in the keys, and it's all over, Rover. There is summer school to look forward to, but a week off to hang in the desert with my sister, play Scrabble, swim, talk and talk. All too soon we teachers will be back at the warehouse, carrying armloads of instruments back out to our cars and trucks, wondering when the heat will break, wondering if there will be any stars, wondering what the new year will bring.