#16 November 2015

Post date: Nov 20, 2015 4:21:51 PM

Happy almost-Thanksgiving!

As of this week, all grades of HES students are preparing for our annual Winter Concert. Mark your calendars: you are invited to this performance on Tuesday, December 22nd at 1 pm in the HES cafeteria/gymnasium. If you send a note to school that morning, you can take your child home directly from the performance without signing out at the main office. The snow date is Wednesday, December 23rd at 9 am.

Yesterday the full HES community gathered for our monthly all-school meeting. Since STArHS gave a grant to the school for an electric-acoustic guitar and amp setup last winter, it quickly became a tradition to end all-school meeting with a singalong. Yesterday was no exception. Students in all grades PK-6 learned the song Over The River and Through the Wood, and we joyfully sang it as a full community.

The interesting thing about this is not what we sang but how it was sung. Over The River is a song about a 19th century Thanksgiving celebration. The poet, Lydia Maria Child, remembers riding in a horse-drawn sleigh to her grandmother's house in her childhood, and she vividly recalls both the delicious anticipation and the coldness of the sleigh ride. When they began learning this song, some preschoolers and kindergarteners were very interested in the line about the wind that "stings the toes and bites the nose." What does that mean? What does it feel like? When am I going to feel it? It made for some endearing conversations in Music class. The kids who had discussed it started to sing that line with particular gusto. Then I noticed in older classes that the bigger kids were also fond of this line: they sang it with extra articulation, and on more than one occasion I caught students smiling at a friend at that moment in the music. Several classes were singing this line of the song with extra expression. I had not given this line any special attention with the older students. They were not taught to do this.

Why did this happen? I don't know exactly. Maybe some younger siblings sang it or talked about it at home. Maybe it was sung informally at Aftercare. Maybe that line of text is just powerful enough to enchant kids of all ages.

The dazzling thing about this is that seemingly out of nowhere, these children are developing their own musical culture. They don't really know it, but without any adult help they are deciding that this is how we sing this song. There is natural joy growing out of a monthly routine. These are just the early days and the early signs, but it seems to me that HES is on the road to developing an authentic, community-based musical culture as these children take ownership of their style of singing. I can't wait to see what happens next!