If you've ever had an influential teacher -- and let's hope that you have -- you probably have key phrases that pop into your head from your teacher/professor/mentor. My phrase comes directly from Julie Scott: "It's what you do."
"It's what you do" was one of the key phrases that kept circling around in my Orff Level I class to answer lots of the questions that started with the following stems:
"What do you do if you don't have..."
"How do you do that if you only see your students..."
"What if you have a class size of..."
"How do you handle it when..."
"What if they've never seen a..."
Julie would share her wisdom, advice, and thoughts and then add, "It's what you do."
I love Julie for so many reasons, and one of them is because she gave me the gift of the phrase, "It's what you do." I can sit in a staff development with teachers from other schools who have programs that look significantly different than mine for a myriad of reasons and I take great solace in the phrase, "It's what you do." What you do works best for your program when it works best for your program.
I was reminded of this phrase when I was singing and creating with my students today. We were singing Ram Sam Sam (which, let's just agree to disagree that we all know the real version of that song...three cheers for folk music). For each part of the version that I know (which is the right version, b-t-dubs), we add a percussion instrument. The "ram sam sam" part gets the ever-popular drum.
BUT WAIT.
It's not a drum that you beat with your hands...or is it?
The good folks at REMO call that a Hand Drum. I mean, it's printed on each of the drum heads in case you didn't know you were supposed to use your hands.
BUT WAIT.
We use mallets to play the hand drums.
CALL THE PERCUSSION POLICE!
Do you know why we use mallets in my classroom to play the hand drums? Because "it's what you do."
The mallet has a head. The drum has a picture of a crown stamped on it (God Bless King Remo). It makes perfect sense for the tiny humans to strike the drum on the crown with the head of the mallet because...(wait for it...)
THE CROWN GOES ON THE HEAD.
And justlikethat, you have all of the tiniest humans in the first few weeks of school striking a hand drum with a mallet in a way that doesn't damage the drum, the student's hearing, or the integrity of how we treat instruments in the music room. Or anywhere, for that matter. That's right: the tiny humans who are building their fine and gross motor skills at a rapid pace play these hand drums like they were born with instruments in their hands.
It's what you do.