60th Anniversary...

Yesterday, I attended a very special event honoring my mother, who 60 years ago, was an integral part of starting a School for Little Children - a preschool - at our church. This school has since become nationally respected for its pioneering work with young children and their families.

My mother looked forward to the event for weeks, but also had her apprehensions because she felt odd being singled out as so important. However, I know that it is one of the three things she has done in her 96 years of which she is most proud.

Now, I know I'm giving away valuable information, but I'm not even old enough to have celebrated the 60th anniversary of anything in my life, but encouraging her through this event set my reflective cogs in motion. (It doesn't take much, so this was a biggie!) The question: What have I done in my lifetime that might be as meaningful - what would be my Top Three? Tough question. I couldn't come up with anything as lasting as starting a preschool in a time when that was a very forward-thinking thing to do.

Besides managing to raise my three children without their loving father alongside - which was the goal to which I had to apply myself fully for so long, I could only think of small things that I could hope were especially meaningful to people I touched in my lifetime. Singing for a young patient at M.D. Anderson whose family requested that I visit his room because he was too weak to get out of bed; teaching music theory to a mischievous teenager at HSPVA who went on to set up a successful business in L.A.; playing in an orchestra for a touring opera company that took full-production opera to people in arts-hungry small towns like Eagle Pass, Texas and Sedona, Arizona - towns where they watched opera from bleachers in the basketball gym, or drove down the mountain in the snow to attend, not knowing whether they would be able to get home after the performance.

I don't know what the future holds as far as illuminating other chances to make a difference. I'm not sure that it really has to matter that much. But I can keep looking for opportunities!

Deja Vu

Earlier this week I was asked to field a mass e-mail request for 300-400 coffee cans for an art project for July 4th. The former preschool teacher in me giggled. Preschool teachers hoard these items over months, knowing that they have a special craft rolling around some week for which they will need these sacred objects. Preschool teachers, in fact, hoard everything. Their garages are full of recyclables that "surely could be used for something someday". Their brains are in imaginative overdrive... always. So the idea of coming up with 300-400 coffee cans in two weeks' time I found, uh, funny.
Now, I confess that as a music teacher, I had a special interest in Folgers plastic coffee containers. Bright red, came in several different sizes so that you could store them inside of each other, they stacked well, and they made great drums. Better in some ways than the ones you ordered from school music instrument sites - those drums that caved in the minute one overly energetic, or perhaps, overly devious 4-year-old decided that he wanted to see exactly how loudly it would play.
Ah, fond memories. Giggle, giggle.
Actually, yes they are fond, and though I have given away or thrown out most of my hoarded materials at this point, I do still have all of my lesson plans, the outlines to my workshops, and the notes on child development and musical development so someday I will share bits of that here and label it boldly so that if it doesn't interest you, you can just skip along and read something else. Fair enough? There may be some struggling teachers out there wishing for ways to integrate required music elements into their NAEYC accreditation wish lists. Education is about passing along the knowledge wherever you are.