Only Three More Classes to Teach!

The end of the year is so close I can actually taste it! Since the HS is taking exams, I only have my middle school classes to teach - one today and two tomorrow. Wednesday, the official last day of school, is the end of the school year assembly and field day type shindig. School's over at noon. Thursday is the checkout day, and Friday night I fly back to the States! Target, here I come!!!!!

I have been somewhat consumed recently with the write up of my master's project - it was due today. I've been very grateful to have fabulous editors look it over and give me suggestions. I'm proud of what was accomplished (even if the administration did think it was too long).

So, I've been ruminating on performance and concerts a lot recently, and I've come to a few conclusions:
1. In school concerts, different is not good.
2. Different is scary.
3. Different requires something from the audience.
4. The audience has been conditioned to have no involvement with what is happening on the stage.
5. The audience (and administration) expects kids, looking fresh faced and scrubbed to sing one or two songs and then sit down.
6. As the high school principal told me, the audience wants to say: "That was pretty".

Now I wonder what I as a music educator can do to educate the audience and administration on the purposes of performance. And do I really know what those purposes are?

Well, I think we perform music because it is a living art. It needs to be heard and created to live. Notes on the page are wonderful, but until they are sung or played (and unless one is really good at hearing 4 or more parts in one's head) that's all they are - notes on a page. Performance of music can and should be entertaining, but that's not the end goal, is it? I need to think more about this.

Funny note: the MS band teacher got stuck teaching the fabulous 8th grade "choices" class, and he came looking for ideas of stuff to do on the last day of class. I had told him about an activity earlier - the warm and fuzzy - that puts a kid's name at the top of a paper and the other kids write a positive thing about him, fold the paper over to hide the comment and pass it on to the next. I brought that up as a possible activity again, only he called it "the Mormon fuzzy". Apparently, I mumbled and that's how he heard it. So. There you go. The Warm and Fuzzy is a Mormon Fuzzy.