Teaching children: My mother as child

Teaching children: My mother as child
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True self-expression

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This is a former student (she's going into first grade, now). When I teach courses on young children and the arts, this picture resonates for me. A child who has the opportunity to listen to music, feel it, and respond to it is finding her creative center. In schools, today, children need to learn through all their senses, through their bodies, as well as their minds and imaginations. I teach my college students that American children are several years "developmentally delayed", musically. As a nation we are more music consumers, than music makers. I show them videos of children in other cultures making sophisticated rhythm and music when they are only four and five years old--mostly unheard of here. I emphasize the connection between musical and language development, and how those areas of the brain are close together. We discuss ways to infuse music and movement into every aspect of the curriculum. Before the state cut out the Community College class on Music & Mo...
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Preschool Halloween parade. Parents rush in right before with siblings in tow. Undressing and dressing commence. Little ones cry or stomp, refuse to wear some part of their costume. Parents coax, cajole, praise. Everyone is taking pictures, even we teachers. How many pictures do I have of four year olds in Halloween costumes from twenty years of teaching? We walk in a line down to the school office for our first "treat", an apple, then on to the church office for our second treat, a pencil. Then down to the Social Hall for a few more, only one of which is actual candy. We dance one teacher's favorite, The Chicken Dance. Next we dance to mine, Ghostbusters. I secretly think my choice is much more fun. The children seem to agree. The princesses (they are all princesses this year) grab each others' hands and circle, giggling. The boys bob up and down, not too sure Batman or Spiderman would be caught doing something so undignified. Not everyone dances. Some are already c...
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I sang in four Synogogues in Cleveland, before moving to Washington. My first "temple job" was, strangely enough, the place of worship of my mother's family. Mom went to temple with her Grandmother, sitting in a pew next to her grandma, listening to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, a leading light of the Reform movement in America and a leading proponent of Zionism. How I came to sing at Silver's was this: My voice teacher, Mel Hakola, was "cantorial soloist" at Silver's. Mel was Finnish, but he'd been the cantorial soloist (a cantor substitute) for many years. Mel said they needed an alto, and I got the job. It was an experience never to be forgotten, singing in Hebrew, a language I didn't know, inspite of my ancestry, hidden behind and above the Bema, and hidden from the congregation. My voice teacher sang the Sh'ma, and all the other important service music. We sang responses. A good Jewish service is much more participatory for the choir than a...
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