Waiting for Superman

One of my friends, a musician with the Canadian Forces Reserves, tends to watch documentaries online about various things. He posted about one in particular that caught my eye, called "Waiting for Superman" about the public school system in the United States. I may not live in the United States, but this film was well worth watching, even though it was in eight parts on Youtube with annoying subtitles. Canada may rank approximately 5th out of the 30 countries surveyed, but that does not mean that we do not have a number of similar problems, especially in our inner city/downtown public schools. I am forever grateful that I had the opportunity to attend a private, Christian junior high and high school, particularly when I look at the way that the majority of my elementary school class has turned out. Fewer than half have gone on to college or university, a number of them are out drinking a lot of the time...you get the picture. To be out right honest, the few who are doing well were the ones I was closest to during those early years! One of them is, in fact, a colleague of mine at the Faculty of Music (he's a voice major). And of my closest two childhood friends, both are currently entering into their fourth year of university, one majoring in engineering with a minor in business, and the other in art history (she always was great at designing clothes for our paper dolls...hey, I'm mostly remembering things from when we were eleven or younger!).

For whatever reason, I've recently been thinking back a lot to my education as a child and teenager. I remember a parent-teacher-student conference when I was in grade six, so when I was eleven. I was still young enough and small enough and shy enough that I was sitting on either my mom or dad's lap for part of it, I don't remember which though, although I remember what I was wearing with some degree of certainty (it was either the blue fleece top or the purple flowered one-identical in form). The reason this particular parent-teacher-student conference is relevant is that I remember talking about how I wanted to be a teacher. My grade six teachers (there were two main ones) paused and said that it took someone special to be a teacher, but that I had shown the right characteristics and that if I kept working like I did, that I could be come one. Well, that's becoming true. I may not be training to be a school teacher, but I am becoming a teacher, with an important role in these young people's lives. Some may say that music is 'extra' and 'not necessary', but I beg to differ. Music, art, drama, sports...who are we without these aspects of our culture? Who are we without ways to express ourselves? That is one of the reasons that I think music is so important.

My grade six teacher has since retired-I know because she and her husband own a horse ranch and it was in the paper some years ago, but to be honest, I'd like to do a google search about the ranch, and see if I can't find a way to send a little letter...saying that I have indeed become a teacher, and thanking her for her role in that.