Where the Stories Began…
My career in music education started accidentally. I’d been living in France as an itinerant musician for all of 2 months when I was offered a position as Music Teacher at the International School of Paris (ISP). I really wanted to prolong my stay in the City of Light, so the prospect of having a steady income and an extended visa seemed like a dream come true.
Looking back, I can see that I was overly confident. I’d assumed that my musical background and teaching experience (working as a one-on-one music theory tutor during my last two years at Berklee) would provide me with the necessary skills to teach kids in a classroom. I imagined myself as an energetic, personable and dynamic teacher…and the students would certainly be bright, well-behaved and eagerly engaged.
It soon became clear to me that teaching general music classes at an international school (with a colorful blend of kids from 35 different countries) would be infinitely more challenging than I’d thought. I became easily frustrated when my seemingly well-planned lessons didn’t run smoothly. Any minor disruption (a student asks to go to the bathroom, then three more suddenly need to go; someone blurts out a wisecrack, sending the class into fits of laughter; etc…) could set off a wave of distraction interrupting the flow of a lesson and take the wind out of my sails.
Within a couple of weeks of teaching, it began to sink in: these groups of individuals with distinctive personalities were not as easily manageable as I’d first thought; the social dynamics of a classroom are complicated; patience, empathy and flexibility are key elements of successful teaching. No matter how enthusiastic I was about my lessons, there was no guarantee that the class would respond with the kind of wide-eyed eagerness I’d hoped for. My greatest challenge in teaching music was in getting students to engage, period.
I was born into a family of storytellers. My grandparents were farmers in a small Michigan settlement and my grandmother volunteered as the town librarian. She loved to tell stories—my favorites were the tales of my father’s childhood escapades. She read to me too—A. A. Milne and Beatrice Potter were her favorites. I’d sit on her lap, holding her hand, twisting her opal wedding band, listening to her soothing voice (“Peter Rabbit was in Mr. McGregor’s garden again…”).
My parents were adventurous and gregarious. They loved to tell stories about their travels. My father liked to sing, too. On long family car rides, he’d amuse himself (and torture his four children) by belting out a long Russian ballad. He’d sing with great abandon and always made up enough verses to accommodate the entire trip, no matter how long it was. With each verse, he purposefully increased the volume and the emotional intensity—his technique for drowning out the whining complaints of his captive audience.
Storytelling seemed to come naturally to me as well. Initially, my stories in the classroom were improvised, often a brief (usually exaggerated) account of a strange or funny incident that had occurred to me. Kids of all ages seemed to perk up when I offered personal information. Stories about about my dog, my family, or anything about my life outside of school could capture their attention. If I made it humorous or self-deprecating, all the better. These glimpses into the personal life of their teacher invariably incited comments and questions from students and provided excellent opportunities for open dialogue.
I also began presenting biographical and historical anecdotes in short story form as a way of introducing musical topics. With elementary school students, I sometimes incorporated picture books, poetry or folk tales to set the tone for a lesson. Who doesn’t like a good story or a clever rhyming poem? Who can’t feel the rhythm of a nursery rhyme or look at a picture book of the seashore and imagine the soundscape? Sometimes, I’d start a lesson with a story or a poem and I could almost see the spark of interest, like a light from within each of the students. For me, that was success—a first step towards teaching a lesson to students who were actively engaged.
Octavia’s Incredible Music Room Adventures are stories that have swirled around in my head for several years. As a character, Octavia emerged one day when I was teaching a 3rd grade music class. A real spider had suspended itself from the ceiling of the classroom on an invisible line, causing a major disruption and sending a cluster of screeching students to the farthest corners of the room. In my effort to calm things down, I tried to make light of it:
“Her name is Octavia… She lives in our music room and she’s harmless. She loves music and she doesn’t want anyone to be afraid of her….” The spider disappeared and things eventually settled down. The lesson digressed into a discussion on the meaning of the ‘octa-’ prefix and its use as part of a musical term. By the end of the class, everyone had learned the meaning of the word ‘octave’ and we had successfully sung a major scale from ‘Do’ to ‘Do.’
After that, Kids began arriving at music class asking if I’d seen Octavia again. They were always on the lookout for her during class. I began thinking up new Octavia adventures in the car on my way to work and they eagerly anticipated each new Octavia installment. Some of the kids came up with their own Octavia episodes. The stories developed over time. I wrote them down and started composing music to accompany them.
Octavia’s Incredible Music Room Adventures are designed to reinforce understanding of musical terms, inspire interest in musical instruments, facilitate engagement in reading and storytelling, and help children explore the kinds of social/emotional challenges that they might encounter in their personal lives. Mostly though, I hope they can simply be enjoyed as good stories.
—Susan
