Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
or if he moves will he fall?
-Ozzy
Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to walk through the hall of your high school as a student, to the beat of a bashing drum, fuzzy electric guitar, and the rest of a live rock band vibrating the floors beneath your feet? The kids at Fossil found out exactly what that was like the other day.
A friend and fellow AmeriCorps member asked me to sub for his class for a few days recently and I jumped at the chance to teach. We’ve been spending a lot of time networking and setting up the program so I find that I’ve usually only taught a couple of days out of the week so far.
The drive was as beautiful as ever. The contrast of the sky from one side of the Cascades to the other is striking. The East so saturated in vitamin D, clear and crisp and home sky so devoid of color. My partner and I hoped up over the lip of the gorge to face the sun and the long reaching arms of the windmills for the first time in a week or more.
We made it to the school with just enough time to get briefed on the students, set up and there they were, shinning faces and all. As I worked with the first class, the words of the secretary kept echoing in the back of my mind. “Watch out for that Junior High class, they’ve been giving your friend a run for his money.” Well, don’t worry too much, for I lived to tell the tail.
I’m proud to say, the first couple of classes went off as smooth as any can that you’ve planned for and never met. It was time for the dreaded class. A group of four seemingly docile students with a passion for music joined me in our little space. Four students seemed so harmless. Minding the advice I was given, I proceeded to have them play bucket drums to give them a chance to really take out any aggressions they might have on their instrument instead of me. As I began to work with them I recognized a genuine passion for music making. Most of them were in line with some of the better-behaved students I’d worked with. One of them, the only boy in the class, seemed to have a bit of spunk but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been curbed by being given something to do. He was eager to do well.
A few minutes into class a final kid, we’ll call him Fred McDowell, sulked through the door and that’s when the fun started. Immediately Fred derailed spunky and all hell broke loose. The two of them were not only successful in derailing the lesson but you could see the frustration on all three of the girl’s faces. I got the impression they had seen this before.
Ultimately, Fred ended up in the hall until he was ready but the damage was done. I found out later that Fred was forced into the class because he wasn’t doing so well in school and in fact was not interested in playing music at all as he shared with me more than a few times over the next couple of days. The kids all sat with an exasperated look on their face.
We decided the best thing to do was have some time for each of them to pick an instrument of choice and have a little dabbling time, while I traipsed around and offered advice. Everybody picked something different. I was totally shocked when Fred was finally ready to come back in and saw what we were doing. He immediately grabbed the bass and started going to town. Apparently, the teacher had been giving him some lessons. After this we tried a final group game that Fred had suggested. I wanted to give him a chance to be successful. I should have known better. Immediately the rest of the group showed animosity to the game and each other. It was the same animosity that had been targeted at Fred. This was a damaged society. Barf.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned trying to imagine how I was going to be able to make an impact on a group of kids whom I now had a damaged relationship with only two days left. I went over and over the class in my head until I must have passed out eventually. With no great ideas I trudged back to school a bit defeated. I still had the rest of the great classes to look forward to.
I entered the room and looked around. That’s when it hit me all at once. We had had somebody playing a loud electric guitar, someone playing bass, another working on vocal exercises, a fourth at the piano…or should I say keys, and a final willing participant that to my later enjoyment found would be super pumped to play the drums. Built in Rock band. Oh man, oh man did I get excited. I made the plan while I still had a minute.
Over the next two days Iron man shook the halls of Fossil.
No comments:
Post a Comment