Simply Singing

It's a balance thing, really. On Mondays, I don't teach at all until 6:30pm. At 6:30 rounds of students start shuffling in and out of my apartment for  ClubSING . There is a constant flow of students, and I teach for a solid three hours…straight. These kiddos crack me up, sing me sweet songs, and we learn together about music, our voices, and language. 
Tonight was just…great.

I'm in my third round of ClubSING. Total, there are about 70 students who come, their divided 35 one week and 35 the next. Thus far we've tackled solfeggi [do-re-mi-fa-so], three-four and four-four time [Amazing Grace vs. America, the Beautiful], and tonight we mastered the differences between major and minor songs. I can't stop beaming because it was far more successful than I could have ever hoped it to be and (far more important than being successful) we had FUN!

I must preface with this: my senior year of college I had a 6-week student teaching gig at Cumberland Valley High School. That school is Boss. My cooperating teacher was Boss. The choir was hugeeeee (more than 200 students), and everything about my experience there was positive. Oh, I was happy and thrilled to bring to them little shenanigans that I knew which they quickly adapted to and loved, but there is one shenanigan that I took away from them that will forever bring a smile to my face. It's a warm-up song called "Hi-ya!" There are no words except for "hi-ya." It's to the tune of 'King of Kings and Lord of Lords" and lets just say that there's dancing and motions that go along with it. It would occur weekly for "Fun Friday Warm Ups" along with "Naa Naa" and "Cuma La Vista". [Sorry all, I just totally went into choir-director land on all of you, probably leaving you with not a clue as to what I'm really saying. I'll have to demonstrate when I get back to the states.]

Anyways….  point is, I taught it to my students, and they loved it. They also loved 'Oh Susanna!' as well as the yao lan chu [lullaby] 'The Pretty Horses'. There positive reactions were simply motivating to keep teaching them to sing. I haven't seen so many of them smiling in such a long time. The reactions I had from students tonight was a motivation for me to continue to give it my all. The number of students who voiced that coming to ClubSING was a priority for them over other things, that learning music and being together was more important than homework and meetings was simply…well, humbling for me and a really good memory.

So next week, when I'm looking at my clock at 5:30 and questioning myself as to why I didn't allow myself a day off, doing something no one requires me to do, and why I'm sacrificing my whole evening to teach while the rest of my team is having fun together …I now have the answer as to why.