Little reminders....
I'm teaching a camp workshop this summer for 3rd through 5th Graders. I have 5 campers, 2 who are my students during the year and 3 who are not. I see my crew in 4 45 minute blocks during the day: drama, movement, composition, and Recorder/Voice (we do those together because I have some singers and some recorder lovers). I also eat lunch with them, swim with them, and go to group activities with them. It's wonderful so far.
Today I gave the kids a composition grid and said go to it. I'm used to getting pestered with steady questions throughout this, so I try to do little things in between wandering from camper to camper to check in.
All of a sudden, as I was inputting compositions into the computer, I heard something that made me look up.
It was the great all encompassing silence of focus and concentration.
Each child was intently working with their grid, picking different rhythms and notes to try. Every once in a while each camper would cock their head, pick up a mallet, and play part of their melody on their Orff instrument. The notes would quietly hum in the air, either xylophone plinks with their wooden loveliness or the long warm resonance of a metallophone. Then the camper would either smile to themselves and move on, or shake their head with another cock of the head, erase what they had, and try something new.
That moment? That is why I teach.
Today I gave the kids a composition grid and said go to it. I'm used to getting pestered with steady questions throughout this, so I try to do little things in between wandering from camper to camper to check in.
All of a sudden, as I was inputting compositions into the computer, I heard something that made me look up.
It was the great all encompassing silence of focus and concentration.
Each child was intently working with their grid, picking different rhythms and notes to try. Every once in a while each camper would cock their head, pick up a mallet, and play part of their melody on their Orff instrument. The notes would quietly hum in the air, either xylophone plinks with their wooden loveliness or the long warm resonance of a metallophone. Then the camper would either smile to themselves and move on, or shake their head with another cock of the head, erase what they had, and try something new.
That moment? That is why I teach.