I can't really define what it's like to embark on teaching a class. From long experience, I know we're starting a journey through the unexpected, in spite of the best Unit Plans. Teacher and students are clumsy at first, then become coordinated in a kind of dance. Are you willing to learn this? Why learn that? Do I really enjoy teaching this or that?
I'm working with some beginning singers at Oakland Technical High School, in an after school chorus/voice class. We only meet once or twice a week to accommodate high schoolers' busy schedules. One of our projects is new this year: creating improvisatory soundscapes or mood pieces for the school's Advanced Drama production of "Dracula." Working with random vocal and non vocal sounds opens up an avant garde genre beyond music, forcing us to explore what our ears hear. It's a great activity for beginners because no one has to blend, read music, match pitches, or do anything except imagine a mood and make sounds to express that mood. No right or wrong, just freedom to take risks and invent.
My students came in a week ago saying they couldn't really sing, they had no prior training. We'll use repetition, applause for the slightest effort, exposure to new things, discovering what each person brings in, straightforward technique/training, tons of mistakes. Somewhere along the road each student's voice will open up in a new way and our group will thrill to the sound of beauty. But there won't be a map or a template. It will be a unique journey and I love it.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
RIP
Rest in Peace, Ann Wood. My mom died this week. This was the first time in many years that I have looked at the obituary page of the newspaper. The passionate statements of loving relatives about a daughter, grandmother or father who also passed away this week were sad and comforting.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
family
This week I am keeping vigil. My mother, who turns 95 in October, is fast asleep in a coma. In a society where dementia, Alzheimer's, old age and death are not familiar, my mom has blessed me with the chance to be close at this time in her life. We all will go through this transition, but I am ashamed to admit how unaware I have been of death as I bustled through my small daily routines. May we all discover what is truly important.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
BackToSchool
"I've got 44 students in my period 5 class," says one high school teacher.
"Please be patient. We're taking a count, and sorting out class sizes," reads a message from the school administration.
"Why has my student been denied acceptance to the (name of great program)? Shouldn't priority be given to returning students over new students?" emails a worried parent.
School is back in session. The story isn't clear yet, but I wonder if some private school students have returned to public or charter schools due to the economy. Initial comments from the fray speak of overcrowding, canceled programs, and a little confusion.
Chaos is typical in public high schools the first few weeks of fall, as students are gradually assigned and re-assigned to classes. Getting the required credits to graduate is a complex business, and public school counselors are responsible for hundreds of students' schedules.
Yet as I walk through a few corridors and across a yard, I notice that except for a few lost freshmen, students seem happy and unperturbed. Developmentally appropriate behavior reigns, meaning adolescents are intensely interested in their peers. Hand holding, clusters of laughing teenagers, a few young men with skateboards, guitars or frisbees. What is not to like about high school, in spite of the fretting of adults?
"Please be patient. We're taking a count, and sorting out class sizes," reads a message from the school administration.
"Why has my student been denied acceptance to the (name of great program)? Shouldn't priority be given to returning students over new students?" emails a worried parent.
School is back in session. The story isn't clear yet, but I wonder if some private school students have returned to public or charter schools due to the economy. Initial comments from the fray speak of overcrowding, canceled programs, and a little confusion.
Chaos is typical in public high schools the first few weeks of fall, as students are gradually assigned and re-assigned to classes. Getting the required credits to graduate is a complex business, and public school counselors are responsible for hundreds of students' schedules.
Yet as I walk through a few corridors and across a yard, I notice that except for a few lost freshmen, students seem happy and unperturbed. Developmentally appropriate behavior reigns, meaning adolescents are intensely interested in their peers. Hand holding, clusters of laughing teenagers, a few young men with skateboards, guitars or frisbees. What is not to like about high school, in spite of the fretting of adults?
Monday, August 30, 2010
Moving
"Do you feel all right?"
"Yes, I feel all right!"
Jeff Giaquinto, leader of the amazing Brass Liberation band, called and we responded as we danced in the street yesterday. It was perhaps the most unusual Moving Sale ever held. We didn't know who would respond to our ads and emails that announced our move away from the East Oakland site we've occupied for two years. But we set up our Garage Sale Shop, were thankful for all the donations to sell, and hoped.
About 10 musicians dressed in black pants and bright red shirts stood in the street and on the curb out front, sending passionate music to listeners in upstairs windows and passing cars. An actual tuba. Trombones. Trumpets. Drums. Clarinets. Saxophone. Someone found an old, bent lavender umbrella decorated with streamers and pom poms, connecting us to New Orleans and the Katrina hurricane anniversary.
Neighbors and friends drifted in and out of the sale at Opera Piccola's headquarters on MacArthur Boulevard, finding great deals packed onto tables and boxes overflowing onto the floor with secondhand and new stuff. We sipped coffee, chatted, snacked and unearthed treasures from other people's lives. The sun shone on strangers getting to know each other. A woman held her baby on her porch behind the band. Another woman pulled her car up to the curb, ran across the street waving her handkerchief and joined the dance.
Our small, determined company is moving to a new and unknown location in order to share resources with another non profit. "I wish I'd found your place sooner," sighed one shopper, acknowledging how we can neighbors for months, even years, and not even meet. "We're still here, just not sure where," Corrina Marshall, our E.D. said.
We floated on the euphoria of throwing out doors wide and welcoming in the unexpected. This could be practice for the next phase of our existence in a changed world. Under the late summer sun, we practiced embracing uncertainty and it became a party.
"Yes, I feel all right!"
Jeff Giaquinto, leader of the amazing Brass Liberation band, called and we responded as we danced in the street yesterday. It was perhaps the most unusual Moving Sale ever held. We didn't know who would respond to our ads and emails that announced our move away from the East Oakland site we've occupied for two years. But we set up our Garage Sale Shop, were thankful for all the donations to sell, and hoped.
About 10 musicians dressed in black pants and bright red shirts stood in the street and on the curb out front, sending passionate music to listeners in upstairs windows and passing cars. An actual tuba. Trombones. Trumpets. Drums. Clarinets. Saxophone. Someone found an old, bent lavender umbrella decorated with streamers and pom poms, connecting us to New Orleans and the Katrina hurricane anniversary.
Neighbors and friends drifted in and out of the sale at Opera Piccola's headquarters on MacArthur Boulevard, finding great deals packed onto tables and boxes overflowing onto the floor with secondhand and new stuff. We sipped coffee, chatted, snacked and unearthed treasures from other people's lives. The sun shone on strangers getting to know each other. A woman held her baby on her porch behind the band. Another woman pulled her car up to the curb, ran across the street waving her handkerchief and joined the dance.
Our small, determined company is moving to a new and unknown location in order to share resources with another non profit. "I wish I'd found your place sooner," sighed one shopper, acknowledging how we can neighbors for months, even years, and not even meet. "We're still here, just not sure where," Corrina Marshall, our E.D. said.
We floated on the euphoria of throwing out doors wide and welcoming in the unexpected. This could be practice for the next phase of our existence in a changed world. Under the late summer sun, we practiced embracing uncertainty and it became a party.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Wedding
The creative mind is one that takes risks and discover new things, transforming old models for new situations. Having been involved with the arts since I was a child singing songs or reading novels every minute I could, I've formed the habit of re-making. I can't help it!
Our older son got married a week ago, at San Francisco City Hall. Since only a few family members could attend the ceremony there (along with hundreds of other brides and grooms waiting their turn), we celebrated with friends afterwards. How many ways can we bless a loved couple starting out in marriage? We didn't have a year to plan; actually, not even a month. This was my first time being mother of the groom, and I was unsure of my role. However, I talked to our younger son, the Best Man, and friends of the couple, about making toasts at the dinner in keeping with tradition.
Then, aha! Idea. "Eureka, I have found it," to use Archimedes' famous term for the right brain getting a sudden solution. I looked up South Korean wedding customs because the bride's family was unable to attend from so far away. One of the customs grabbed me. We should give carved wooden wedding ducks to the bridal couple. Not only that: at the wedding, the groom's mother throws one of the ducks to the bride, who tries to catch it in the apron of her traditional South Korean costume. If she catches the duck, the first child will be a boy- so the custom says - and if she misses the duck, the first child will be a girl. The City of San Francisco doesn't allow things like this to be inserted into the brief ceremony on the palatial steps of City Hall. So... I decided to bring this custom to the wedding dinner.
After some searching, I found a beautiful wooden duck at Folk Art on Piedmont Avenue (okay, it was carved in Malaysia, not Korea). I could only afford one duck, but it was a start. The gathering at the dinner was shocked and thrilled when we announced the custom. Since the bride wore a shiny short white strapless wedding dress, not a traditional costume, she grabbed a white linen napkin from the table. "Ready?" I said. Amid cheering, I threw the duck (underhand, I'm not a pitcher) toward our nervous, beautiful daughter-in-law.
"Oh no!" the crowd cried when she missed. "Oh yes!" cried we feminists, who wanted the baby to be a girl. Since we'd already established a non-sexist approach to marriage by my son asking both my husband AND myself for permission to marry, my son hopped up and insisted on trying to catch the duck. "Hooray," cried the crowd when he caught it, although after all the food and drink I suspect they were unclear why we were cheering. Did this double catching effort mean fraternal twins? Then both bride and groom held the napkin at each end, together. They caught the duck! All this activity under a blessing of bubbles, the advertised "eco friendly" alternative to rice throwing.
The concluding Reception Remix Toast? A dramatic reading of an adaptation of "The Night the Bed Fell," by James Thurber. Since my husband and I met while rehearsing the opening scene of "The Marriage of Figaro," in which Figaro measures the room to fit a bed, and since the day before the wedding my husband had spent hours helping our son put together the couple's new bed from IKEA, we figured that beds and weddings went together. It was a stretch. But that's what we do. We risk, we stretch and explore. We seize metaphors. We re-make.
Our older son got married a week ago, at San Francisco City Hall. Since only a few family members could attend the ceremony there (along with hundreds of other brides and grooms waiting their turn), we celebrated with friends afterwards. How many ways can we bless a loved couple starting out in marriage? We didn't have a year to plan; actually, not even a month. This was my first time being mother of the groom, and I was unsure of my role. However, I talked to our younger son, the Best Man, and friends of the couple, about making toasts at the dinner in keeping with tradition.
Then, aha! Idea. "Eureka, I have found it," to use Archimedes' famous term for the right brain getting a sudden solution. I looked up South Korean wedding customs because the bride's family was unable to attend from so far away. One of the customs grabbed me. We should give carved wooden wedding ducks to the bridal couple. Not only that: at the wedding, the groom's mother throws one of the ducks to the bride, who tries to catch it in the apron of her traditional South Korean costume. If she catches the duck, the first child will be a boy- so the custom says - and if she misses the duck, the first child will be a girl. The City of San Francisco doesn't allow things like this to be inserted into the brief ceremony on the palatial steps of City Hall. So... I decided to bring this custom to the wedding dinner.
After some searching, I found a beautiful wooden duck at Folk Art on Piedmont Avenue (okay, it was carved in Malaysia, not Korea). I could only afford one duck, but it was a start. The gathering at the dinner was shocked and thrilled when we announced the custom. Since the bride wore a shiny short white strapless wedding dress, not a traditional costume, she grabbed a white linen napkin from the table. "Ready?" I said. Amid cheering, I threw the duck (underhand, I'm not a pitcher) toward our nervous, beautiful daughter-in-law.
"Oh no!" the crowd cried when she missed. "Oh yes!" cried we feminists, who wanted the baby to be a girl. Since we'd already established a non-sexist approach to marriage by my son asking both my husband AND myself for permission to marry, my son hopped up and insisted on trying to catch the duck. "Hooray," cried the crowd when he caught it, although after all the food and drink I suspect they were unclear why we were cheering. Did this double catching effort mean fraternal twins? Then both bride and groom held the napkin at each end, together. They caught the duck! All this activity under a blessing of bubbles, the advertised "eco friendly" alternative to rice throwing.
The concluding Reception Remix Toast? A dramatic reading of an adaptation of "The Night the Bed Fell," by James Thurber. Since my husband and I met while rehearsing the opening scene of "The Marriage of Figaro," in which Figaro measures the room to fit a bed, and since the day before the wedding my husband had spent hours helping our son put together the couple's new bed from IKEA, we figured that beds and weddings went together. It was a stretch. But that's what we do. We risk, we stretch and explore. We seize metaphors. We re-make.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Deep
"What do you see?"
"What do you think?"
"What do you wonder?"
Last week was busy. Among other things, I took an intensive class in arts integration offered by the Alameda County Office of Education Art is Education program linked to the California College of Art in Oakland.-- Arts integration is a fancy term for the art of connecting the arts to everything else you can think of. And yes, art does. This field of study results in amazing intellectual bursts, aptly demonstrated by the talented leaders of the course.
I have too much to do to make this blog entry a detailed report, and anyway, that would be done more effectively by the printed handouts from the course, taught brilliantly by Tana Johnson and Julia Marshall. I just have a few kind of sidelong impressions as I look back at the week.
The three questions at the top of the page are part of it, but not all. Those questions are a short way of reminding me to stand back from what I'm doing or experiencing and respond like an observer or scientist. Or artist. Or learner. I want to live my life "in the moment," but some of those moments I want to expand on, by knowing what I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, wondering.
But something else is going on here. Part of the structured activity was creating our own avatar or mythological creature with special abilities/powers. When it came to creating a graphic story (cartoon to my generation), after all the preliminary steps, something happened in my heart. When I looked at the one page I'd created, with figures and dialogue bubbles on blue and purple backgrounds, I thought someone else had looked into my psyche and interpreted it with Jung standing by. To my near-tears amazement, the "comic" was about a mother avatar and her little girl avatar, who was thirsty and had to wait for dream time. A mythical blue sheep appears in the final box, alongside a tilted little avatar, who says, "ummm. (Sigh)" The metaphors in this simple activity reached deeper than I can say without telling you my life story. Soul deep.
"What do you think?"
"What do you wonder?"
Last week was busy. Among other things, I took an intensive class in arts integration offered by the Alameda County Office of Education Art is Education program linked to the California College of Art in Oakland.-- Arts integration is a fancy term for the art of connecting the arts to everything else you can think of. And yes, art does. This field of study results in amazing intellectual bursts, aptly demonstrated by the talented leaders of the course.
I have too much to do to make this blog entry a detailed report, and anyway, that would be done more effectively by the printed handouts from the course, taught brilliantly by Tana Johnson and Julia Marshall. I just have a few kind of sidelong impressions as I look back at the week.
The three questions at the top of the page are part of it, but not all. Those questions are a short way of reminding me to stand back from what I'm doing or experiencing and respond like an observer or scientist. Or artist. Or learner. I want to live my life "in the moment," but some of those moments I want to expand on, by knowing what I'm seeing, thinking, feeling, wondering.
But something else is going on here. Part of the structured activity was creating our own avatar or mythological creature with special abilities/powers. When it came to creating a graphic story (cartoon to my generation), after all the preliminary steps, something happened in my heart. When I looked at the one page I'd created, with figures and dialogue bubbles on blue and purple backgrounds, I thought someone else had looked into my psyche and interpreted it with Jung standing by. To my near-tears amazement, the "comic" was about a mother avatar and her little girl avatar, who was thirsty and had to wait for dream time. A mythical blue sheep appears in the final box, alongside a tilted little avatar, who says, "ummm. (Sigh)" The metaphors in this simple activity reached deeper than I can say without telling you my life story. Soul deep.
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