I love Jazz. Every time I hear a jazz band play, the sound penetrates straight to my soul. My breathing slows, my pulse picks up the beat, and for a while I am consumed by the raw vibrancy that courses through the horns, intertwines itself in the strings, and dances across the keys. Still, until recently, my enjoyment was purely visceral.
Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis changed that. Over the weekend, I watched the first episode in the documentary series "Ken Burns' Jazz." It's really hard to explain the effect that it had on me. All I can really say is that before I was even ten minutes in, I knew this documentary was going to significantly effect my world view. I was not disappointed.
Completely by coincidence, my decision to screen "Jazz" came the day after my colleagues and I had a very in depth conversation about the kind of classroom and school culture we want to create for our program. I had a lot to contribute during this discussion, but I did not feel like much of it was very productive. My thoughts just would not crystallize, would not flow and integrate the way I needed them to. It was very upsetting to me, because I have thought a lot about classroom culture and what I would like my classroom to look like. I just could not verbalize it.
As is usually the case, the verbal artistry of a far wiser individual became my catalyst to clarity. Something about Wyton Marsalis' description of jazz tripped a switch on my internal circuit board, and all the lights started flashing at once...
I want my classroom to be like Jazz!
Jazz music relies on collaboration to synchronize the beautiful and unique sounds of many individual musical themes. It is simultaneously the ultimate form of self expression and the ultimate example of cooperation.
Jazz intelligently challenges convention. It is constantly trying new things and pushing the limits of what is acceptable. It never apologizes for itself, but it is very reflective. Jazz musicians learn, adapt, and evolve both by reflecting on and refining their own craft and by critically analyzing the work of their predecessors and contemporaries.
Most importantly, jazz takes on societies' proudest and most shameful moments with equal vigor. It startles the ugliness in humanity without ever losing its sense of humor. Often, jazz sounds likes its biking up a PAM covered hill, but it recognizes the beauty in that struggle. In fact, I would argue that it recognizes the beauty, the vibrancy, and the current of joy flowing through every aspect of life.
And that sums it up. That is what I desperately want my classroom to embody. I could go on forever about all the parallels, but they are pretty direct and transparent. I want my students to see collaboration as the best way to both showcase their individual talents, and as an opportunity to create something more meaningful and relevant than they ever could have working in isolation. My hope is that they can be unapologetic in their academic risk taking while still maintaining an evolutionary attitude. There is something to be learned from every success and failure and a way to grow from every experience.
I guarantee that my classes will very critically examine what is most atrocious and most impressive about the world and the people living in it. However, my goal is to guide them through this process in a way that recognizes the beauty that exists in every struggle.
I want learning in my room to bounce off the page and foxtrot across the classroom in a whirlwind- often chaotic, but never without purpose.
My dream is that learning can be for my students what jazz is for me: A force that penetrates them to the very core. I want them to get so excited by the very prospect of exploring something new that their breathing slows, their pulse picks up a brand new beat, and they enter a world that they never before realized was available to explore.
