Nothing is sweeter to me than the rhythm of the academic year. A new syllabus, a stack of new books, and a blank notebook all symbolize an ideal: a fresh start with unlimited possibilities.
As part of our celebrating that “fresh start,” we’ve put everything in our store on sale: 25% off and free shipping using the code NEWYEAR2018. We hope that will help you as you integrate the arts and cultural history into your teaching plans.
As a professor, I never got tired of making up new syllabuses and transferring the new roster of names into my spiral-bound grade book (sounds old-fashioned, doesn’t it?). I still have some of the grade books from my tenure at SMU. Every once in a while I look through them, picturing the faces assembled in the big corner “music history” room on the second floor of our Meadows’ School of the Arts. Those former students are now in their thirties, forties, even fifties, but that doesn’t affect my ability to see them as they were: fresh-faced 18 to 22-year olds, at the cusp of their adult lives.
My semester goals were always unrealistic. With each course, we were going to conquer the world. I confess to overdoing on each reading or listening list I ever typed, copied, and distributed. I’m . . . sorry.
Wait, I’m not sorry! Not sorry at all.
I marvel at what those over-burdened students tell me today. No matter how it seemed at the time, they have valued that knowledge. And one way or another, they got through the lists, or at least took kernels of those compositions and readings with them into their adult lives. Whether they went on to become professional musicians (as many did), stay-at-home parents, software developers, restaurateurs, or dozens of other choices, they were shaped by the intense, hard work they poured into those, and other, classes.
We all moan and groan as students. I know I did, making my grumbling into an art form at times. But the fact is, following a rigorous path to learning gratifies us. A young person is rewarded when challenged. It might be years before the rewards show themselves, but they will. The memory work, the painstakingly drilled details of grammar, the careful drawing of maps and birds and Classical Greek columns, the math songs sung over and over—they do find their target and bear fruit. Or, at least, most of them do. At the very least, these studies build a basis of knowledge and a pattern discipline from which the child, as an adult, will function and continue to learn.
But all that lies in the future. And it’s a lot to ask a 4th-grader to understand or appreciate. Instead, as we enter into the new Spring semester, let us take whatever sense of renewal we were able to garner over the holidays and turn a fresh page. It is, after all, still the Christmas season, not yet Epiphany, and a time of rejoicing. Why not rejoice at the opportunities to teach and to learn!
Use the discount code NEWYEAR2018 for 25% savings on everything in our store, plus free shipping. Offer expires January 31, 2018. Applies to hard copy items and online course subscriptions.
