Heavenly Chords

I was on the brink of a meltdown this morning. My 8th grade choir class was absolutely pushing my patience. The lazy, chatty, unfocused behavior of some students was quickly eroding whatever protective coating my nerves generally possess. I was another slumped-posture away from storming out the door, resigning my job, and heading to the Bahamas for an indefinite period of time. A bit dramatic, but you feel my pain, do you not?

Thankfully, for those times when middle-school orneriness gets the better of me, I have learned that the best cure is to stop what I'm doing, sit the kids down, and have a heart-to-heart with them. These days, I'm rocking the heart-to-hearts. They seem to be needed often.

The soul searching I made those 8th graders do for the last few minutes of class today at least calmed them down. More importantly, it calmed me down. As they poured out of the class, I felt I had regained my composure and was ready to dive into my next class.

The next couple of classes passed uneventfully. Enter my 7th-grade choir class. This adolescent montage of 46 students has been one of the most trying experiences of my teaching career. The students themselves are wonderful (for the most part). However, they are almost all extroverted, interactive types who exude more energy than I can easily channel. They zoom to my class from lunch, high on sugar and gossip, and focusing their buzzing brains is often like herding cats.

Yet, today was magnificent. Truly. When teaching a choir class, I sometimes get swept up in a flow of brainstorms about how to create the sound I want. As I was working today, I decided to have the students sing an open-fifth chord (Part III on the bottom root, Part II on the fifth, and Part I on the root an octave above Part III, for anyone who's curious). When such a chord is sung in perfect tune, the room will fill with overtones, tones that are not being sung but can be heard above the chord. It's an awesome, chilling occurance that is all but absent in middle-school singing, at least in my experience.

Announcement: Overtones were heard in a middle school today. My 7th graders were suddenly singing pure tones, almost perfectly tuned. Sure, those overtone moments were only seconds long, but they happened, and it was glorious. Thank you, 7th-grade voices. Nothing can match a pristine early-adolescent voice. It is simply angelic.

Perhaps my 8th graders frustrated me today. Yet, my 7th graders more than made up for whatever agitation I felt earlier. It has taken three months, but those crazy bundles of energy made beautiful music today. And that is what makes my job unbelievably awesome.

God knows what I need in a day. He knows how to send rays of sunshine in days that are otherwise hard. Heavenly chords brought such much-craved sunshine into my life today.