Big emotions in music lessons
Passionata – Music lessons make all the difference
Oh, you're wearing your hair down today, that suits you well.» That's how Ilian* greeted me one morning at the door to the music room. Ilian's mother was a hairdresser and he was her best advertisement. The second-grader's hairstyles changed regularly, heralding the latest trends, and he received a lot of attention for it.
But that morning, Ilian complimented my hair, which I had not tied back for once. I was pleased with the compliment and cheerfully asked, «Can I come to you as a customer once you have a hairdressing salon?» Amanda, standing behind him, replied, «By the time Ilian has a hairdressing salon, you'll be long dead.» Her expression was as grim as her statement.
Ilian beckoned me down to his level and I bent down so he could whisper in my ear: «Amanda is angry with me. She told me she loves me. I love her too. But I can't marry her. She's not Albanian.»
I apparently burst into the middle of a Romeo and Juliet drama and was hit by a storm of emotions.
Emotional poems trigger emotional chaos
Could our current project have triggered this chaos of love? We explored our feelings and the children wrote various elfchen poems on the subject. These are poems consisting of eleven words spread over five verses. One of the class's elfchen poems went like this, for example:
Boredom
It's raining outside
I am alone.
What should I do?
Lego!
We wanted to design the emotional poems in a variety of ways and then perform them. So the children composed songs, invented dances or accompanied the words with sounds. For the poem «Boredom», we built giant neon-coloured Lego bricks out of boxes and yoghurt pots, which we made fly in UV light.
If the marriage does not take place in reality, then at least on stage.
Two of the elfchen poems were about love. One was written by Lakan and was very sad. Lakan wanted to recite it alone on stage without any fuss. The poem ended with the word «fight,» and another child suggested that we add a stick fighting dance to the recitation.
The other love poem was about a wedding. It was clear to everyone involved that this elfchen had to be staged with Ilian and Amanda as the lovers. If the wedding wasn't going to happen in real life, then at least it could happen on stage.
Snowball fight in slow motion
But the young love broke up on the way to school before the performance date, and Amanda no longer wanted to play Ilian's wife. We needed a new bride. A few children volunteered for the role. Among them was Lakan. I tried to gauge whether he wanted to make some kind of statement with it.
The boy hadn't been in the class for very long, and I remember that the first time he came to music school, he stood there embarrassed and asked, «What are they doing?» when the children practised a slow-motion snowball fight.
And his sad love elf would not have led me to guess that he was prepared to play the happy ending in the other poem. Above all, I was honestly surprised that Lakan had the courage to marry another boy on stage. Because, unfortunately, we are not yet at the point where «gay» is no longer used as a swear word by children.
Fortunately, however, there were no negative comments on Lakan's suggestion, not even from the groom Ilian, who in real life only wanted to marry an Albanian woman. So I added Lakan to the list of candidates for the role.
Passionata – Music lessons make all the difference
From the third grade onwards, they have the opportunity to join the school choir. Children and teachers regularly sing and dance together in the playground.
Making music is pure life, and educationally sound music lessons are important for every child's development.
But once again, everything turned out differently. Amanda and Ilian made up during a long break and the whole group came running to tell me that everything was back to normal. We sewed a white skirt out of a sheet and asked the class to bring colourful bits and bobs from home that could be used as decorations. One child brought coloured lids from PET bottles. The second, who remembered the assignment, brought a packet of gummy bears. We glued everything onto the wedding dress with hot glue.
On the day of the performance, Amanda had to fight behind the scenes to prevent her dress from being nibbled. Then the children played the wedding march on homemade kazoos and Ilian picked up his bride to walk down the aisle together. He wore a smart suit. In his pocket he had a tin of hair gel.
*The children's names have been changed by the editors.
