A Musical Experiment
In the fall of 1999, at a time in my teaching life when I was thinking seriously about finding another profession (one that would pay more in both cash and public appreciation), an eighth grade girl with very long, straight hair and very wide, twinkling eyes took a back-row seat in my English class on the first day of school. I didn't know it then, but Emilie (that was the name she went by at the time; there have been many others since) would become the reason I decided to stick around long enough to start writing these blogs and to meet all of you. While I still have my occasional moments of doubt and regret about choosing this career, I am grateful that Emilie came along when she did to remind me how much fun learning can be. (She reminded me that I am still learning, too.)
That doesn't mean that she enjoyed every moment of my classes. Certainly she spent as much time as most of you do with glazed eyes and stupefied expressions, but she and her friends would still stop in before and after school to say hi, and at the end of her eighth grade year, I determined that she was certainly an "honors-caliber" student, so I recommended her for the Honors English class the following year. During that class, I got to know Emilie not only as the fine writer I had always known her to be, but also as an artist, a poet, and a social activist of sorts. And I also got to know something about her taste in literature and music.
Somehow, I don't remember exactly how, she and I started trading books. Since Emilie didn't have a TV in her house at the time, she did more reading than most other kids her age. (Heck, she did more reading than 99% of the population, including this English teacher!) She had a huge mental catalogue of young-adult novels that I had never even heard of, and she would even bring in copies of her treasured favorites to share with me. The book sharing led to some interesting duscussions, which in turn led to my purchasing class sets of many of the books she recommended so that I could, in turn, share them with my classes (and my own children).
About that time, the technology to burn one's own music CDs became widely available for the first time, and somehow Emilie and I started to swap not only books, but also music. While my heavy metal tastes were generally enough to shred the eardrums of...well...everyone, Emilie was infinitely tolerant. She brought me some of her favorite alternative artists, and I countered with some of my favorite classic rock. My collection of music was almost as large as her collection of books, so I made it my task to find some of "my" music that she would enjoy and could begin to call her own. It was an exercise in interpretation for both of us. We had to ask ourselves: Knowing what I know about this person, what music from my collection will s/he enjoy? In other words, it was a search for common ground, and it turned out to be a search full of pleasant surprises. How many books would I have overlooked and how many songs would I have never enjoyed if Emilie hadn't suggested them? I haven't heard from Emilie in a few years, but I am surrounded by reminders of her, and I'd like to believe that somewhere in her collection is still a CD called "Emilie's Mix" with my fingerprints on it.
So, when Brett asked me earlier this year what I could have possibly enjoyed about the music of make-up covered demons like KISS, I thought of Emilie and made him a deal: "I'll give you a KISS CD that I think you will enjoy, but in return you have to give me a CD of some of your favorite music that you think I might like." We shook on it, and the following week we were both in possession of some music that allowed us to expand our musical horizons. Not only that, we discovered that although we come from different times and backgrounds, there are songs we like in common. Maybe we aren't as different as we thought originally?
Since then, I have struck similar bargains with Bria, Adam, and Chelsey. The places where our musical tastes intersect make me feel, for a time, a bit younger, and they remind me of Emilie, who convinced me that there were plenty of good reasons to keep teaching.
Who's next?
That doesn't mean that she enjoyed every moment of my classes. Certainly she spent as much time as most of you do with glazed eyes and stupefied expressions, but she and her friends would still stop in before and after school to say hi, and at the end of her eighth grade year, I determined that she was certainly an "honors-caliber" student, so I recommended her for the Honors English class the following year. During that class, I got to know Emilie not only as the fine writer I had always known her to be, but also as an artist, a poet, and a social activist of sorts. And I also got to know something about her taste in literature and music.
Somehow, I don't remember exactly how, she and I started trading books. Since Emilie didn't have a TV in her house at the time, she did more reading than most other kids her age. (Heck, she did more reading than 99% of the population, including this English teacher!) She had a huge mental catalogue of young-adult novels that I had never even heard of, and she would even bring in copies of her treasured favorites to share with me. The book sharing led to some interesting duscussions, which in turn led to my purchasing class sets of many of the books she recommended so that I could, in turn, share them with my classes (and my own children).
About that time, the technology to burn one's own music CDs became widely available for the first time, and somehow Emilie and I started to swap not only books, but also music. While my heavy metal tastes were generally enough to shred the eardrums of...well...everyone, Emilie was infinitely tolerant. She brought me some of her favorite alternative artists, and I countered with some of my favorite classic rock. My collection of music was almost as large as her collection of books, so I made it my task to find some of "my" music that she would enjoy and could begin to call her own. It was an exercise in interpretation for both of us. We had to ask ourselves: Knowing what I know about this person, what music from my collection will s/he enjoy? In other words, it was a search for common ground, and it turned out to be a search full of pleasant surprises. How many books would I have overlooked and how many songs would I have never enjoyed if Emilie hadn't suggested them? I haven't heard from Emilie in a few years, but I am surrounded by reminders of her, and I'd like to believe that somewhere in her collection is still a CD called "Emilie's Mix" with my fingerprints on it.
So, when Brett asked me earlier this year what I could have possibly enjoyed about the music of make-up covered demons like KISS, I thought of Emilie and made him a deal: "I'll give you a KISS CD that I think you will enjoy, but in return you have to give me a CD of some of your favorite music that you think I might like." We shook on it, and the following week we were both in possession of some music that allowed us to expand our musical horizons. Not only that, we discovered that although we come from different times and backgrounds, there are songs we like in common. Maybe we aren't as different as we thought originally?
Since then, I have struck similar bargains with Bria, Adam, and Chelsey. The places where our musical tastes intersect make me feel, for a time, a bit younger, and they remind me of Emilie, who convinced me that there were plenty of good reasons to keep teaching.
Who's next?
posted by MRT at 12:27 PM
2 Comments:
That's a nifty experiment! That's a good way to learn new things and like them (or not)!
May I suggest The Wave by Todd Strasser? It's a small, easy-read book, but ... wow!
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