Meet Me at Morning Sing

Teaching Pre K-8, Oct 2004 by Rodia, Becky

Music starts the day at a preK-3 school that's in tune with the community

About our school visits: The teachers we honor this month, and those we honor every month, are symbolic of good teachers everywhere. By honoring them, we mean also to honor you.

The teachers and schools we visit are selected randomly, and our visits are almost always on very short notice, or with no notice at all. Our goal for these "drop-in " visits has been to demonstrate that good teachers are indeed everywhere, no matter where one goes in the United States. We have not been disappointed.

The Friday morning on which we arrived at Mount Lebanon School in West Lebanon, NH was filled with anticipation. Parent volunteers set up folding chairs around the perimeter of the gym/auditorium, leaving most of the room empty and inviting as a dance floor waiting for the tapping of happy feet.

More parents - as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and younger siblings of Mount Lebanon students - arrived. Families staked out seating areas with a good view of the stage. Friends and neighbors called greetings to each other across the spacious room. Toddlers ran to the cleared center of the room to enjoy the wide-open expanse that was perfect for running, skipping or just gleefully waving their arms. Kids were being kids and families were being families on this Friday morning at Mount Lebanon School.

At 8:20 a.m., the students began filing into the room. Within the span of a few minutes, the previously empty expanse of the gym floor was filled with the entire student and staff population of this preK-3 school.

A small group of teachers stood beside the stage, tuning guitars and warming up. One teacher even had a banjo. Another teacher sat down at the piano.

And then, the students and families of Mount Lebanon School did the extraordinary, community-affirming thing they do every Friday morning before turning to the business of the school and work day; they began to sing.

Move your feet to the beat. Mount Lebanon School's weekly Morning Sing went on for the next half hour, led by a small knot of teachers at the front of the room. second grade teacher Connie Mackey played the piano, while first grade teacher Mary Skiffington played guitar and emceed the event, introducing the next songs and interspersing a call-and-response management technique ("Are you ready-ready?" "Yes, we're ready-ready!") sung to simple musical phrases to keep everybody focused.

In addition to rollicking renditions of patriotic and folk songs, we enjoyed a solo by a girl who sang in Korean and a tune sung by a trio of boys. And we couldn't help jumping to our feet when P.E. teacher Kathy Erickson got on stage to conduct "Miss Kathy's Orchestra," a movement activity in which Kathy cued groups of people in various parts of the room to stomp their feet, wiggle their hips or wave their arms to the accompaniment of Rossini's "William Tell" overture.

When Morning Sing had ended and the Mount Lebanon students were back in their classrooms, a few families who had young children stayed behind so the kids could play some games with Kathy.

"These children are going to be Mount Lebanon students in a year or two," said principal Marti Hunt. "It's great that their parents bring them to Morning Sing. They're becoming familiar with the school building, and with Kathy and some of the other teachers."

Elements of a community. Mount Lebanon calls itself a school community, and that community has a strong showing in every aspect of school life, beginning with the way the building is laid out. To get almost anywhere in Mount Lebanon School, you have to walk right past the library, which stretches the length of one hallway, with no walls or doors to separate it from anybody who might want to wander through.

And the students do wander through. On the day we visited, students from all grades were visiting the library to sign a congratulatory banner for librarian Ann Smith, who'd just won the Paraprofessional of the Year award from the New Hampshire Educational Media Association. Kindergarten and first grade classes have scheduled times at which they visit the library, but all students are free to check out a book any time they're passing by. Even Mount Lebanon parents are invited to check resources out of the library.

We witnessed quite a bit of community-building in Ethel Weinberger's kindergarten room, where Pat Howe's third graders were interviewing her kindergartners.

"Our third grade and kindergarten partnerships will become trios in a few months, when we go to a farm and meet our pen pals, who are fifth graders from New York," Ethel explained.

The interviews the third graders were conducting on the day of our visit would be written up as autobiographies of the kindergartners, which would be sent to the fifth graders in New York, so the students could get to know each other before meeting at the farm.

"The farm trip is the culmination of our students' involvement with the Heifer Project, a program that we joined to help raise money to purchase a farm animal for a needy family," Ethel said.