Joy in the Congo

One of the things I like best about my job is that it is flexible and can take me in so many different directions.  Today was a good example.

My seventh graders had to create a lesson to teach to the rest of the class.  Today we finished this up by listening to Rhianna share "the greatest power point ever created" (this was actually in her narration).  She loves music, wants to produce music for her career.  Her power point was about how music affects us, especially our moods.  After her lesson, we had some time left over, and though I had planned to use that time to play a game, I remembered this story that I had watched on 60 Minutes last month.  It seemed to me a perfect connection.

The story is about a man who started with absolutely nothing and created an orchestra in Kinshasa, the capitol city of Congo.  The part I liked best about the story was the way the people had used music to bring a different reality to their lives.  They had very little material wealth and no hope of travel or entertainment.  Music is their way to "take a trip to a different place;" they have "left the planet."

Can't you see the joy?

And so as I shared this story in all the rest of my classes.  We got to discuss how people in the United States also find ways to escape reality...movies, XBox, exercise.

In my last class I had enough time left to also talk about the dream of the man who started the orchestra, and how he didn't let anything deter him from making the dream happen.  I was able to connect them to the experiences I had this past weekend at the Storyline Conference.  The main theme of the conference was that we ought to live lives that tell better stories.  Certainly the man in this story had done that.  So this became my challenge to my students:

Tell a good story with your life.

It was a good thought to finish up a wonderful school year.  I love my students, and hope they have an adventurous summer.  I'm planning already to have a good story to tell them when I return in the fall.