Music in the classroom

Following up on my earlier post about music, ironically the next day I had a long chat with my class about music. We were all outside taking a break when a few of my students and I began a great discussion about how your mood can truly affect the music you listen to and the same can be said about music affecting your mood. My students asked me if I would post a song of the day every day on the board and I agreed, deciding this would be a fun way for all of us to start class, and for the students to learn about me. I remember when I was a high school student the idea of teachers being "normal people" was such a distant concept, that it made it hard to relate to them. I think it's important to show your students snippets of who you are, whether it's music, interests, or passions, because they will look at you more like a human being and less like the person who merely marks down whether or not they are absent. I also believe that if you show your students personal investment you will have a much better day to day interaction with them. In fact, I recommended a band called "The Middle East" to a student in my class and they rushed into class early first thing to show me that they went home and downloaded the entire album off itunes. It made me smile.

What I've agreed to is at the start of each class period I will write a few lyrics to a song that is stuck in my head, fits my mood, or just something I've been jamming to lately on the board. The first student to guess the song gets a treat! I have a bag of lollies (sweets) in my desk and I bring one piece in a day for the person who guesses the song correctly. To be fair, they can either guess the name of the song or the artist. I have an erratic taste of music, so at some point everyone will have a chance to guess the song. I'm not going to lie one bit, some days I'm in an extremely corny mood and I wouldn't put it past me to post a throwback NSYNC song.

My inspiration for my first "song of the day" did not come from the original artist, however their version is mindblowing and deserves all the credit in the world and then some.

"Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart." 


Those were the lyrics I wrote on the board and within seconds somebody guessed correctly that the song was "The Scientist" by Coldplay.

I said the initial reason this song was stuck in my head all day had nothing to do with the actual band Coldplay, although I do respect and love the original version of the song. I was hypnotized by his cover, and most of his other covers as well. If you get the chance check him out on youtube --He is truly talented and you can tell that he puts passion into what he does. It also just so happens that he's Australian, which fits quite nicely with the theme of this blog. Here is the cover to his version of The Scientist, which thanks to him, was my first, very successful, song of the day with my year 9 class.

Enjoy.