When I was first interviewed at The Harbour School in early 2014, I remember Ms. Greenberg telling me that the school was in the middle of something called “Arts Interim Week.” She explained to me that the students were all involved in different arts courses in a number of mediums. I thought it sounded intriguing, but didn’t completely grasp what was taking place. Probably since I’d never heard of such a thing, neither in my own education nor in other schools I’ve worked at.
Even as Arts Interim Week came closer and closer on the school calendar, and I knew that I’d need to play a big part as the school’s music teacher, I still wasn’t quite sure what it would be like. “So wait…students from different grades will head to the same classroom every afternoon for two hours, three hours on Wednesday? Isn’t that a rather long time to work on the same thing, especially for really young kids?” Once PreK co-teacher Pete Harrison and I got started with our “Musical Animation Adventures” course however, boredom was nowhere to be found. Never have I seen so many PreK-Grade 3 students so excited about their work. The reason? Project-based learning.
In “Musical Animation Adventures” the students wrote a song (about the one thing we all have in common—The Harbour School), recorded that song and produced a stop-motion animated video to accompany the song. Mr. Harrison and I gave advice here and there (“Hmm, not quite sure if Minecraft will fit in our verse about the Black Dolphin”) but for the most part, the kids took the reins. Even the chorus of the song was composed by Hugo, a first grader who understood that the catchiest songs need just the right amount of repetition!
By the time all the stop-motion photos were strung together and all the recorded vocals were adjusted to the right volume, the result was a sight to behold. And by result, I don’t mean the video itself but the looks on the students faces as we showed them what they’d made. In fact, during our last lesson, we had to show the finished video several times due to popular demand and the fact that the “That’s my robot!” comments drowned out a bit of the singing during the first showing.
As a songwriter and composer myself, I know first-hand that there is nothing comparable to being halfway through writing a song and desperately wanting to finish it in the best way possible. What I learned this month, however, is that this drive and motivation is present even in the youngest of children at THS. During arts interim week, the students taught me just as much as I taught them. It’s an old cliché, but it’s never been more accurate for me during my year at THS.
The word “interim” basically means temporary, but in this case, our fifteen students have made something that will last for a long, long time. And by that, I mean that once you’ve heard the song, it is seriously difficult to get it out of your head!
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