What really troubles me isn’t when they don’t get the material, but when they resist it.  If they’re trying, then they’ll get it eventually, but when they resist it, they will always miss the beauty.

That’s what is really tragic to her: When they miss the beauty.

And we’ve all been there, right? The hashing of parts, the correction of chromatics, the clapping of rhythms, etc.  We know, it’s boring.  It’s boring for them and it’s boring for us.

But it’s okay because we have one-liners to quell their frustration, right? “You can’t access the music if notes and rhythms are in the way,” or “actors can’t make magic on the stage if they’ve still got their heads in their lines.”

Not that I pretend to have any answers, but the older I get, the further I’m distancing myself from those common reasons.  I may find my way back, but this notion of “missing the beauty” has been with me for a few weeks.  I don’t make music for the notes/rhythms, I do it for the beauty.  So I’ve been asking myself how do I make sure they don’t miss the beauty?

That’s been the theme of this month.  Now what does that look like in the classroom?

It’s taken a lot of reflection and, for me, the beauty of a line is usually in its shape.  For non-musicians, that means the rise and fall of volume in a musical phrase.  What really gets me going is when the lines, volume, and intensity all move together.  To be said another way, the musician does what the music demands.

So, even in sightreading (even in technically difficult sightreading), I’ve always made sure that we got to rehearse shape once per rehearsal.  Even if it’s only eight bars, or four bars, or two bars, shape must be prevalent every time.

As it turns out, the kids are really driven by shape too.  Granted, kids are usually motivated and excited by the things that do so for their teacher - it was tuning/pitch for me in high school – but this seems to really connect my kids to the emotional feeling of the music and it does so quickly.  Mr. Cooper from Music Ed blog Cooper’s Divertimento sums it up well:

It can be what Peter Boonshaft calls a “pearl”. It’s one thing per rehearsal that you really work to perfect so that the kids can experience something truly amazing in band that day. A crescendo, perhaps, or a single chord played beautifully. When a kid is part of making something like that happen, when it happens, they feel it somewhere deep down. Remember that feeling? It’s that feeling you get when something sounds so amazing that you just get pumped, or otherwise filled with excitement. If a kid doesn’t care, it’s probably because they either haven’t had that experience, or they haven’t had it regularly, or have been too long without it.

Going back to band camp, I made it my mission to find this feeling in our brass and percussion sectional.  Going into that rehearsal, I really had to fight my “band teaching” toolbelt, to go outside my comfort zone and try something new.  Teach them the thing(s) that make you love making music.  Pick one thing and do it.

Shape.  Shape.  Shape.

I didn’t focus too much on basics because, strangely, they fixed themselves on their own.  As they grew through the phrase, some player’s bad tone got better with more air.  Any wrong notes and rhythms were corrected either by their ears or their classmates and they didn’t need to me to tell them.  When it sounds wrong, they know, and they want to fix it

We were rehearsing Brian Balmage’s Whale Warriors and there was one moment where the melody was in three different one-bar statements in the low brass.  Where’s the story? Find it and tell it with shape.  Now teach them that.

- Crescendo for three beats, then descrescendo on beat four. (if each bar is like a sentence, give the sentence some inflection)

- The shape of the notation is very similar in each bar, so let’s find a way to make them different.

- Now, make each bar slightly louder than the last one.  (take each sentence somewhere… or ‘when in doubt, move forward’)

And there it was.  The basics corrected themselves and the music happened.  The story was told and they knew it.  It was a great feeling in the room.  It was only four bars, but it was awesome.

I’ve been doing it for a month and I really like it.  I feel like I have a little pearl every day.  Granted, the pace of learning the notation is slower, but the ecstacy of playing the music is more present.  For me, that’s a good trade-off

Have any great pearls? Or great stories about these moments? Leave them in the comments section!

Until next time,
Kenley

Since then, I’ve beaten 4, 5, 6, 7, and 13 (which I just finished tonight).

Also, I’m not beating 11 because it’s online.  I know, not really a good reason…

Anyway, I was scared that some of the games wouldn’t hold up to my childhood memory, kind of like the way that Thundercats doesn’t anymore.  But, strangely, the opposite has mostly been true.  Here is my current rundown:

Final Fantasy IV (DS version)

General:
SUCH A GOOD GAME!

Pros:
The characters, the plot, the trip to the moon, the new localization… YES! I remembered a lot of the game, so I was tentative to try it again.  I played for a while, then stopped for some reason, then picked it up again.  Oh right, I saved inside the giant and couldn’t get out.  Then I did, bought some items and level grinded (ground?) for a while and then was hooked until the end.  The scoring of the OST was really nice too.

Cons:
The DS version is painfully unbalanced.  I would trounce the enemies for 20 random battles in a row, then die on a usually-useless enemy.  That’s a common criticism, so I’m not too beat up on it.  Oh, and how does Yang come back in the end? And Palom and Porom? It appears that I overlooked some plot holes in my youth…

Final Fantasy V (GBA version)

General:
Exceedingly better than I remember.

Pros:
I first played FFV when I was in high school, but it hadn’t been released in North America yet, so I was playing it on ZSNES with a fan translation patch on my sketchy HP.  The battles were choppy, there was a click delay between the game and keyboard… oh, and I was playing it WASD and I really wasn’t interested.  I got to the Big Bridge and stopped.  When I picked it up on GBA about 10 years later, it was a wonderful experience.  Great localization, some very under-represented music (in the franchise, I mean), iconic moments, the introduction of Gilgamesh.  Oh, and a KILLER update on the job system from FFIII.  The versatility built into the party was amazing.  I really enjoyed the experience.  Also, the Phantom Village was really creepy… like, really creepy, especially when you encounter it in the Void in the end AFTER seeing it trapped in time during the second world.

Cons:
Other than Galuf, I wasn’t terribly interested in any of the characters.  I mean, I wanted Lenna to find her dad and all, but the game really became about getting Exdeath in the end and less about the characters.  I also didn’t really like Exdeath very much as a villain (though, I did like how he came from a tree).  There was something quite unconvincing about him.   They did a better job of him in Dissidia than in the actual game.

Final Fantasy VI (GBA Version)

General:
It’s my favourite game of all-time and it still holds up.

Pros:
I was scared that this game would just be my youth again and it might actually be terrible when I tackled it in my late-20s.  Thankfully, I was wrong.  I could pick this up and play it again today.  The storytelling, the characters, the sequences, the battle mechanics, the Espers, the magic, the customization… and, of course, the music.  While I don’t like the music in the GBA version as much as the original, the structure of the OST (as in “all of the songs working together as a unit”) is remarkably strong.  I care about all of the characters, their stories, their struggles, their backgrounds… It is almost the perfect game (second only to Super Metroid, which is a perfect game).

Cons:
Critics over the years have slammed the customization in the game because it’s so easy to make your characters god-like.  Level them up, give them all Ultima, equip them with the myriad of amazing weapons/armour/accessories in the game and… it’s over? Actually, there’s some truth to that.  I found that I got too strong too quickly and the challenge of the game was compromised.  Granted, it was still a wonderful experience, but it’s nice to die once in a while

Final Fantasy VII (PSP port)

General:
Strangely, better than I remember.

Pros:
Yeah, it was great.  While I don’t love this game as much as VI, it still has a place in my heart.  What I really noticed this time around was how fast the battles actually are.  I mean, the earlier games are engaging, but VII’s battle system moves so quickly that I really had to stay on it all the time.  The music is classic and hearing it all in context again – well, most of it.  The story actually made more sense this time too, which is always nice.

Cons:
While I’m very patient with graphics, this pill was a bit tough to swallow.  Great 2D will trump bad 3D anytime (does anyone remember Earthbound 64 before it became Mother 3?) and FFVII hasn’t aged very well.  Graphics aren’t nearly as important to me as they are to the rest of the world, but it’s worth saying.  Also, “One-Winged Angel” has been played, arranged, orchestrated, remixed and performed to death, so it was an anti-climactic final battle.  I know that it’s a crowd pleaser, but there is so much other amazing music in that game, like the Main Theme, J-E-N-O-V-A and all of Red XIII’s music.  Work those more, please!

Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)

General:
Mixed, but generally good.

Pros:
After playing VII and VIII (scratched Disc 3, so we’re on a break), XIII is an incredibly beautiful game visually.  The voice acting is beautiful, Masashi Hamauzu did a lovely job with the music, the battles are fast… it’s quite good.  I beat the game tonight and I really enjoyed it.  I cared about the characters too: I loved Lightning and Fang, I enjoyed Sazh and Snow and Fang, and I grew to love Hope and Vanille.  I loved both the worlds of Cocoon and Gran Pulse too!

Cons:
The unravelling of the story was terribly awkward.  I didn’t get what was going on through the first half, though I eventually put it together just before I got to Pulse.  The Datalog was handy for that, but I shouldn’t have had to check it, just write the game better! Also, the positioning of the villain was poor – who am I fighting against anyway? Dysley? Orphan? The Cavalry? Raines? I felt like I just wanted to beat the clock before my brand turned us into l’Cie.  Also, Final Fantasy, you need to stop invented so many goddamn words: l’Cie, fal’Cie, Primarch, Crystarium, Cie’th… Seriously, too damn much.

Also, your locations are SO beautiful, why not introduce them organically.  I’m walking and then, all of a sudden, I’m in this beautiful place for no reason, or Taejin’s Tower, or whatever.  Can a character just say “We’re almost at Oerba, but if we have to go this way, we’ll have to go through Taejin’s Tower.  Legend has it that *yadda yadda yadda*”  That way, the audience at least knows that it’s coming and that it’s a normal part of the environment!

(I still did get emotional in the end, so it’s okay.)

Next stop, beating Final Fantasy VIII! I’m on the 3rd disc, but it’s too scratched to continue, so I’m off on an adventure of my own now…

Until next time!
Kenley

I love moments like these.  For those who have never played Chrono Cross, this is the scene where we fight Miguel and it’s a fight that you don’t really want to have.  These are like the moments of war with a soaring choir overtop of bloodshed, or a slow motion sword fight with a slow and lilting orchestra behind it.  They’re scenes where the music and visuals shouldn’t match, yet they do…

… Or they don’t, and their juxtaposition makes something new in the process.

I don’t want to give any plot lines away, but the story and music make this battle so gut-wrenching that it’s almost difficult to get through.  It’s a bit analogous to the last fight in Mother 3, where you’ve finally put all of the pieces together in the story and you have to go in for one last fight and Lucas knows he has to do it, but you (as the player) don’t want to.

That’s not it for me, though.  What really captures me about this piece is its focus on balancing melody and texture.  Even though the samples are synthesized, a video game is finally using an instrument’s range to sort its colour.  Granted, Chrono Cross does this a lot with its use of ethnic instruments (because range and colour are idiosyncratic ways of using them), but hearing the difference between the low strings in the first 8 measures, then afterward the high strings take the melody an octave higher and it changes your whole perception of the theme.

This is important because, with the exception of timpani, bass drum, suspended cymbal and one bar of harp, the strings are the only instruments playing for the entire piece.  Part of the draw of classic video game music is the colour that can be found between instruments of different genres.  Take “Terra” from Final Fantasy VI: Irish whistle, French horn, strings, electric bass, mandolin and drum kit.  There are three converging genres there, and that’s what helps make that characteristic sound.

Not so in “People Imprisoned by Destiny.”  Instead, Mitsuda explores colour and harmony with, not only just one genre, but one instrument group within one genre.  It’s one of those rare times in classic VGM that simplicity counts for more juxtaposition and, as a result, it is one of the strongest pieces in an already strong OST.

And even more so, the strings are the most homogenous section in the orchestra, meaning that the different ranges of the instruments sound the most consistent with one another.  To really differentiate colour, you have to evoke the voice in each of the different ranges of the instruments while still keeping some order and structure to the writing.  In our case, Mitsuda keeps the bass and tenor voices pretty simple, the alto voice takes the melody off of the hop and then harmonizes with the soprano when it takes over the line.

Sometimes, there really is more in less.

Enjoy!
Kenley

It’s called The Curse of the Good Girl and it’s by Rachel Simmons.  I’ve had it on my book shelf for about three years – I bought it in the same shopping trip as The Purity Myth, which also blew my mind.  Clearly, this was a good day at the bookstore.

The Curse of the Good Girl is primarily about teaching adults about the internal struggle that girls, particularly teenage ones, face while trying to balance being “good” and being themselves.  From there, adults can better communicate with their daughters/co-workers/students with a context of how they’re actually doing internally.  In fairness, this is also true for guys, but in the spirit of the book, I’ll stick with girls.

I gave some excerpts to my Grade 12s and there was a strong censensus of “yep, that’s how it is,” which is difficult because we work really hard to teach living an authentic life in all of our Music classes.  In the excerpt, some of the girls in the book were asked make a list of what constitutes a “good girl” and some descriptors included: quiet, good grades, no opinions on things, follower, well rounded, tons of friends, generous, boyfriend, conservative, doesn’t show skin, people pleaser, has to do every right, doesn’t get mad, skinny, organized…

… and the list goes on.  First off, does that list strike anyone as even remotely possible? Yet, that’s the expectation.  Before you even try, culture has already shown young girls that they can’t win.  That’s the theme of this post: You can’t win.

(Also, it breaks my heart to see “no opinions on things” is considered a desirable quality… ugh)

After the girls from the book made that list, they made a list of what constitutes a “bad girl” and that looks like this: speaks her mind, loud, proud, rule breaker, doesn’t care about her body, doesn’t care what people think, parties, piercings, rebel, slut, center of attention… and the list goes on.

So, according to them, speaking your mind, not caring what people think, or being proud and loud are not socially-acceptable attributes.  Most adults get out of this (though I can certainly think of ones that haven’t), but kids are still stuck in this web.

When I showed this to the Grade 12 girls, some of them had grown out of this way of thinking, but they affirmed that that mindset was real when they were younger.  But worse than the acknowledgement of both sets of lists is that the adults in their lives are trying to tell them to do something else.  We’re telling them to be themselves, not to care what other people think, to speak their mind, to be well-rounded and others.  We’re really picking from both lists because the lists don’t exist to us.  However, they do exist to them.

Now the student has to be good to their peers while still trying to be good for the adults.  They are now caught in a double bind that they can’t win.

Do you remember that feeling?

This double bind is perfectly, but differently, depicted when it comes to Chapter 3 of the book, which is about the politics of female fighting.  Simmons writes: “Some girls told me that denial was the only safe alternative, because they felt punished by peers when they tried to be honest and when they tried to avoid confrontation altogether.  Rebekah, a junior, articulated a troubling double bind of truth-telling among girls:

“If you’re honest, you get the reputation of being a bitch, because you’re just, like, PMS-y all the time, so you don’t confront people, and [then] you’re a bitch because you’re hiding your feelings… So it’s just easier to, like, lie and completely forget about it.  Either way you’re going to be considered an angry bitch because you don’t about it or an angry bitch because you brought it up.”

Again, either way, you can’t win.  To be said another way, Simmons writes this:

“[Girls] sort of make it a battle instead of just, like, a conversation,” fourteen year old Sarah said.  “It’s, like, who can play their cards the best, instead of how can we figure this out together.”

What’s interesting about fourteen-year-old-Sarah’s statement is that she demonstrates understanding of how it should be handled.  From that perspective, she has an interesting internal struggle between what she and everyone else is doing versus what she should be doing.  And in this position in that age, you guessed it, you can’t win.

Can you imagine anything more infuriating than playing a game for years and years that you can’t win? I’ll bet you can because you probably did.  I probably did too.  Maybe you grew up and stopped playing, or maybe you grew up and didn’t and are still playing the same games at work or with your family.

This is where our book from the last post, The Art of Possibility, begins.  Why play a game you can’t win? Then, it does something interesting: It presents you with a possibility that you may not have considered: you can stop playing, then it tells you how

I really recommend both The Curse of the Good Girl and The Art of Possibility, whether you’re a parent or a teacher or a kid.  Allow yourself to be challenged, don’t give up, and consciously think about the material.  Even if you don’t agree.  Especially if you don’t agree.

Homework:

Get reading

- Kenley

Isn’t that a lovely story? While originally by Loren Eisley, I read it in Ben and Rosamund Zander’s The Art of Possibility, which we’re doing as a trial run for the Fundamentals III novel study. It’s a wonderfully powerful read and challenges us from following the path of others in the world of measurement to our own path in the universe of possibility. In the words of a former student of mine, it challenges the reader to “stop stopping their lives and start starting them.”

Ben Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, so many of his anecdotes and stories are musically-based, which resonates with both myself and my students. This chapter focuses on “Being a Contribution,” rather than being caught in the engine of competition. What if I stopped measuring my achievements and accomplishments against those of others and, instead, focused on just giving the world what I had to give? What if I’m just fine where I am? What if it’s okay to give what I have, and not worry about giving what I don’t?

When someone starts thinking like that, the focus immediately switches from seeing the obstacles (“needing to give what you don’t have”) to seeing the progress (“it’s okay to give what I have”).

Ben Zander follows this story with this:

From our earliest days, we understand that there are tasks ahead of us to accomplish and landmarks to achieve. Life often looks like an obstacle course. In order to maximize success, we spend a good deal of time discussion what stands in the way of it. The man in the story sees only obstacles when he speaks of the countless starfish. He warns the young woman that her gestures are futile. Too many starfish, not enough time, not enough staff or resources, results too difficult to track…

The story told, however, reveals nothing about the “success” or “failure” of the rescue mission, or what proportion of the starfish survived or perished. It does not describe the past, nor foretell the future. All we hear is that the young woman was smiling and serene, and that she moved in the pattern of a dance. Absent are the familiar measurements of progress. Instead, life is revealed as a place to contribute and we as contributors. Not because we have done a measurable amount of good, but because that is the story we tell.

You just can’t measure all of the good, can you? Yet we try, especially in education. We need to assign a number to your progress. I don’t love it, but that is the institution where I’ve made my decision to contribute because I get to work with the most kids.

If I lived in the world of measurement, I may be saying “How can I make a difference in the world? I only see 120 kids a year? 120 out of millions! How can I impact the world when see so few kids?”

But now, if I live in a world of possibility, I could reframe that statement with something like: “I get to work with many individuals and some really need the help of teachers. Isn’t amazing that we get to be there and be positively present in their life?”

To be said another way: You don’t have to change the world to make a difference in it.

Assignment:

- Pick up this book and read it slowly, chapter by chapter. When you’ve finished one chapter, think about it throughout the day and see where you can change your perception to reflect the ideas in the book. You might not take everything from it, but you might take something, and that’s a great start.

I didn’t have all the answers that day because no one ever does.  You will just never, ever have all of the answers.  As soon as you resign yourself to that, you can start making progress.

So no, I didn’t get all the answers, but I got a few.  I got enough to get started.  Even moreso, I got enough to get me even more curious.

I started talking to other teachers around the school about the PD and it was largely well-received.  One teacher in particular (and who I have tremendous respect for) said she’d been interested in pragmatic character education for a while and had just finished a thought-provoking book about it.  It was called How Children Succeed: How Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough and she very kindly lent it to me.

I started reading it, but got overwhelmed at work and life and put it away for a while.  It wasn’t until two weeks ago that I really started digging into it again and I’m so glad I did.  It’s challenged me a lot while still giving me some tools to teach character education more effectively.

Several sections stuck out to me, but I’ve been thinking about the upcoming section quite a bit over the past few days.  It involves a low-income middle school in the US called IS-318 and their exceptional chess program.   In an email exchange between the author and a Scottish chessmaster named Jonathan Rowson, the master writes about the difference between wanting something for yourself and choosing it:

When it comes to ambition… it is crucial to distinguish wanting something and choosing it.  Decide that you want to become a world champion… and you will inevitably fail to put in the necessary hard work.  You will not only not become world champion but also have the unpleasant experience of falling short of  desired goal, with all of the attendant disappointment and regret.  If, however, you choose to become world champion (as Kasparov did at a young age), then you will “reveal your choice through your behaviour and your determination.  Every action says ‘this is who I am.’”

Isn’t that fabulous? Much of the context around this chapter involves practicing chess for hours a day (three as the minimum example, twelve-to-fourteen with the book’s most extreme one), but the notion still stands.  If you’re going to do it, then do it.  If you’re going to use your passion as your label, then you better do your passion.

Sometimes, I wrestle with this as a composer.  During school start up, I rarely compose as much as I want/need to.  If I do write through September and October for a deadline, I usually crash hard at the end of November and all the way through until Winter holidays.  But in the interim, there’s that nagging feeling of “you should be doing something creative right now…” and you just don’t have it in you.

That “nagging feeling” also means that you’ve made that choice, and you’ve probably made it because you like it, or it gives you some sort of enjoyment or meaning.  Here’s another section from the How Children Succeed about that:

During one conversation I had with [the chess teacher] whether she ever felt that her students were sacrificing too much to succeed at chess.  She looked at me like I was crazy.  ”What’s missing from that idea is that playing chess is, like, wonderful.”

If you love it and love doing it, then do more of it.  ”You are revealing your choice through behaviour and determination” and every action says “this is who you are.”  I love that.  Even when I’m not writing and I’m exhausted and the last thing in the world I want to do is compose, I know that I still love it and that brings me back to the piano.

Sometimes it’s this…

And sometimes, it’s this…

But that’s what it takes if you want to be this…

The same applies to teachers as it does to students: Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you can’t do it.

If you are a student (or former student) reading this, what do you choose to be? Whatever it is you choose, know that you can do it.  You can do it.

You can do it.

… but it’s not going to be easy and it’s not going to do itself .  There are never any substitutes for hard work, but there are a multitude of rewards.  Whether it’s seeing positive reinforcement on a paper you wrote, someone crediting your ideas, have a finished piece of art in front of your eyes, or seeing your work affect someone emotionally, the reason why it’s that good is because you put that much work into it.  But even moreso, all of your actions are a result of who you choose to be.

Think back to when you were a kid and an adult asked you what you wanted to be when you grow up? Reframe that situation and that wording: “Little one, what do you choose to be when you grow up?”

Let’s have a great week,
Kenley

PS: For more positive results, see last week’s post.

You (as Mario) are standing on a platform with a particularly treacherous jump.  There are hammer brothers and a smattering of koopa troopas that pass juuuuuuust at the time you need to jump.  Your heart races.  Your getting warm and your face is flushed.  Your breathing accelerates and one thought cuts into your consciousness:

I don’t know if I can make it and I only have three lives.

Then you jump… and you don’t make it.

You wasted one of your lives because you made a mistake, now you only have two lives left! You can’t get that life back!

However, you need to try again… and you die.  One life left.

In a last ditch effort to beat the level and continue forward to the game’s conclusion.  You attempt the terrifying jump… and you die.

Then you see it, what you’ve been dreading all along: GAME OVER.

Life message: You tried and you just weren’t good enough.

Let me present another scenario.  You see an amazing power-up at the top of the screen in an underwater level, but it’s being patrolled by cheep-cheeps and those squidy guys.  You mull it over in your head for a while, then remember that you only have three lives and you can’t risk it.

Life message: The best things in life have risk attached and, if you want to get to the end, it’s best not to go for them.

Now, I’m no educational psychologist or sociologist, but those sound like pretty bad messages to send to kids.   I know that there are no game designers laughing maniacally in some Japanese lab, trying to crush the dreams of schoolchildren, but the messages stand.  This is the plight of older console games, especially the ones at the nexus of limited lives and extreme difficulty.

Strangely, that nexus resonated with one of the game designers of Super Meat Boy.  In Indie Game: The Movie, Tommy Refenes talks about his love of hard games, especially older console games.  I say “strangely” because there is one real difference between Super Meat Boy and platformers across all gaming generations:

The player has unlimited lives.  It’s not even a cheat code, it’s a legitimate part of the game design.

The game is also punishingly difficult, and notoriously so.  And, as a player, it’s okay that the game is hard because I get an unlimited number of lives in order to achieve my goal.

Life message #1: You can always try again.

Furthermore, every level has an ending that’s really achievable and many people have done it.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not hard, it means that success is possible for every player and, as said above, you can always try again.

Life message #2: It’s hard, but you can do it.

Life message #3: You can achieve the success that other people have also achieved.  They are not special or better than you, they just put in the work and time it takes to be successful.

Because you have infinite lives, the player isn’t afraid to take risks because you can always try again.  There are no consequences for failure.  In fact, the respawn time after you die is almost immediate.  Imagine if, every time you failed, you immediately picked yourself up and tried something new?

Life message #4: In order to succeed, two of the most important qualities you must develop are persistency and resiliency.

The game requires you to take risks in order to find the solution because it’s often not where you expect, or it demands a certain level of ability.  If you have it, you’ll beat the level and continue to one more difficult; if you don’t, then you’ll die a whole bunch of times until you finally achieve the dexterity and finesse you need to win.

Life message #5: Practice makes perfect.

Life message #6: No risk, no return.

The amazing thing about Super Meat Boy is that it not only demands risk, it also demands failure.  You need to fall down sometimes.  You may jump into a wall full of needles when practicing your jump timing.  Then you die and respawn immediately, before you get the chance to wallow in your own failure.  In fact, it often achieves the opposite effect: You get inspired to win.  By the time you’ve actually realized that you died, you’re already back at the start, ready to start again.

Life message #7: Allow failure to be motivating, instead of demoralizing.  If you don’t find it motivating, see Life messages 1-6.

Beating a level in Super Meat Boy is so rewarding because it’s just so damn hard.  Before we move on, let’s address how awesome that feels.

Life message #8: If you want a feeling of genuine success, find a genuine challenge and overcome it by being persistent and resilient.

It feels amazing because of a wonderful combination of personal risk, failure, persistance, resiliency, and finally victory.  After you beat the level, the designers put in a replay where you get to watch every round that you played on that level at the same time.  So you watch your ten or twenty or thirty or forty Meat Boys at the same time jumping, racing, running and dying.

All except one.  That Meat Boy makes it to the end and succeeds.  That’s you

There is no consequence for dying; in fact, it’s celebrated.

Watch an example of the bone-crushing difficulty of Super Meat Boy, at least from the opening to 4:15.  The re-run happens at 4:00, but it’s important to watch this player fail for four minutes straight.  He must fail thirty times.  Then watch him get back up and try something new.  Watch him keep going.  Watch him being resilient.  Watch him being persistent.

Now imagine if we all did that in our own lives.  Imagine if we picked ourselves up every time we fell down.  Imagine if we didn’t internalize failure and just treated it as something that happens whenever we start something new.  Imagine that failure was not only expected, but celebrated as risk taking.  Imagine taking a risk that was meaningful to you.  Imagine going all in on everything important to you.

What if we failed, got up, and tried something different every time?

What if you learned that at 16 years old?

Imagine how different your life could be.  If that makes you emotional, let it.  If you are a teenager/young adult, take that to heart and go for it.  If you’re older than that, it’s not too late.  It’s never too late.

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the next best time is now.

Cheers,
Kenley

Organizationally, my life is pretty good and I’m grateful for that.

Sometimes, I forget and I take on new commitments, work extra late at school, and take on new composing projects.  And some times are just busier than others, right? That’s real life.  I often feel like that’s my whole life, then I have to remind myself of this post’s first paragraph.

Yesterday, I had some contract work that I had to finish.  I had been working on it for ten weeks and I was at the end of my rope.  It had to get done that day.  No more extensions, no more self-deceptions, no more excuses.

Buckle down and get it done, Kenley.

After about three hours, I finished it and was quite happy with it, but I was so resentful that I had to do it on my Sunday (even though I’ve had plenty of other Sundays to get it done).  I puttered around and cleaned the house, still miserable.  Finally, I made a bagel, frustrated that it wasn’t cut all the way through, I held it in my left hand and hacked into it…

… and through it…

… and into my pinkie.

Let’s start with honesty: Blood everywhere.  Kitchen floor, hallway, up the stairs, into the bathroom… everywhere.  I didn’t know that a hand had that much blood in it (but the more that I thought about it, it’s full of capillaries, what else did I think would be in there?).  Off to the emergency room and, three hours later, I had four stitches in my hand.  Something like this…

Something like that, but bloodier and on my pinkie.  That’s not my finger, it’s someone else’s.

As I got home, I was still bored and grumpy and just went to bed, but my wife had the laptop so I couldn’t watch a show as I fell asleep.  I grabbed my phone and, for some reason, listened to my inner Michael Brandon and tried to meditate via Meditation Oasis.  As I listened to the string loops and soothing voice of Mary Maddox, I realized that my mind was racing.  It’s thoughts like those that often prompt a meta-voice that thinks over your storm of thoughts, usually with something along the lines of “what the hell are you so worked up about?“

Then, somewhere between those two voices, there’s the distance where you actual have a bit of clarity and you get to work through some problems.

It is the space between thoughts.

It’s the space where you cut your finger because you acted emotionally, rather than rationally and with a measured reason.  You worked at a coffee shop, Kenley.  You know how to cut a bagel.  When you act emotionally, you do stupid things. 

Oh, right.

As you stand above your thoughts (figuratively, of course), you get a chance to look down and see what’s actually kicking around inside your head.  There were some troubling facebook statuses that you were thinking about, hoping the people were okay.  There was your hand, and how dumb you felt after you realized that you could have avoided it had you actually thought like a reasonable human being.  There was getting your oil changed, which you still haven’t done.  There was the chord changes in the music behind Mary Maddox, and if that extension was a 9th, or just the fifth of the V chord held as a pedal above the other chords.  There were the cadences that you hoped your students remembered after the weekend in Fundamentals of Music.  And, among many other thoughts, will you actually teach the isorhythmic motet in Music History, or will you just teach it as a precursor to metre in common practice music?

As you look back up to that meta-voice in your head, it answers with its common refrain: Do you really need to think about all of those things right now? Did you really need to have ALL of those thoughts kicking around your head all weekend?

And my common answer: No, not really.

The problem is that we (myself included) get so busy that we rarely listen to that voice, or even take the time to look down at our thoughts and see what we even have kicking around our head.  As a student, how many times has your teacher walked in and looked like hell, yelled disproportionately in class and left in a worse mood than they did when they walked in (which was pretty bad to begin with)?

Teachers, how many times have you done that?

Kenley, how many times have you done that?

Oh right, I’ve got it pretty good.  Sometimes I forget that.  When I’ve had teachers, students, or fellow workers (at any job) like that, I remember thinking: “Whatever’s going on with you, don’t take that out on me.  Sort yourself out and we’ll talk later.”

Whoever is reading this – teachers, friends, students, compatriates – this week’s homework is to actually look down at your thoughts and see what you’re carrying around in there.  Find the space between.  What needs to stay? What needs to go? You can’t get out of your mortgage or car payments, but you can probably stop stressing about things you can’t do anything about until tomorrow.  Your marking won’t get done if you’re lying in bed and you can’t rehearse your band while you’re out for drinks with the guys.  Let it go.

Before I wrote this, I was in a disproportionately frustrated mood.  Not for any reason, but a measured and rational bit of writing did me good and I feel a lot better than I did an hour ago.  I invite you to do the same.  Meditation Oasis is also pretty great

Until then,
Kenley

PS: Thanks to Sarah for kicking my butt into getting back on these.  Even teachers need a kick sometimes…

PPS: The stitches pic came from here.

PPPS: This week is the one year anniversary of my radio play, The Constant.  Feel free to check it out!

I’ve always felt reasonably impacted by Remembrance Day.  Maybe it was because my grandpa fought in World War 2, or that my Afi (Icelandic grandfather) was supposed to, but had a very fortunate bout of pneumonia that kept him sidelined.  Maybe it’s because my dad is still still very interested in the World Wars and we’ve talked at length about Midway, Juno Beach, and Normandy, among other things.  Maybe because I played in the military band and got to see Remembrance Day from inside the ranks of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles.

Even while in high school, standing for O Canada during a Remembrance Day service felt different than doing it at 8:55am every other week day.

But, it didn’t really affect me until I started writing Ghosts of Vimy.

It started in June 2010, when the Performing Arts department was having its planning meeting for 2010-11.  When Remembrance Day came up, we really wanted to collaborate Band, Choir, and Drama in a way that was meaningful and authentic, not just each doing different things for the service.

We are all very motivated by storytelling and Kris, our drama teacher, took the lead on the idea of writing about people, and separating the lives of the soldiers with the statistics of war.  That idea really resonated with me and I wanted to write something for Band and Choir, while Kris made a positively visceral slideshow and led her kids’ dramatic performance.

I knew that the work was going to be big and I got to work right away, but I made sure to start researching long before I set pencil to paper.

The content really needed to reflect the price of human life and the human cost of war.  That’s why we remember, isn’t it? I found a painting by William Longstaff called “The Ghosts of Vimy,” where ghosts of soldiers were scaling the hill at the Vimy Memorial.  It’s a powerful juxtaposition of a symbol of Canadian victory and unity, with those who paid for it with their lives.  They were the choir.  They needed to be the ones telling the story.  And with that, the first seeds of “Ghosts of Vimy” were planted.

When I was growing up, there was an initiative on Canadian TV to run 1-minute slots of Canadian history stories, called “Heritage Minutes,” and I started with those, especially the military ones.

Even watching them as I write, I feel my throat close and eyes water.  There is a consistent resonance there – an intense emotional response every time I watch them.  They’re about people and their stories, their loved ones, their comrades, and their families.

As I did more research about Canadian involvement in World War I, there were three angles that really stuck out to me: Saying goodbye, doing what’s right, and (surprisingly) the thrill of adventure.  The last one struck me as incredibly out of place, but the more stories and letters I read, the more that I understood that the young kids who were going off to fight had no idea what they were getting themselves into.  I tried to imagine myself graduating from high school and going to fight for my country and be a hero, only to find No Man’s Land, machine gun fire, and mustard gas.

But what about the more mature angles? What if you had a family and you had to say goodbye, knowing full well that you may never see them again? How do you tell your child? What do you say? And what do they say to you? I knew that was the first story:

The first story (1:56) was saying goodbye.  It was heart-wrenching to compose, but that’s because it must have been heart-wrenching to go through.

The second story (3:13) needed to be about saying goodbye as well, not only to another person, but to an age of innocence and youth.  This section is about two lovers parting ways.  They’re young and don’t have a family yet, but they have each other.  She implores him not to go, but in young arrogance (an emotional with which I’m quite familiar), he needs to prove himself to her, himself and his country.

The third story (4:56) is of two friends who leave for adventure to become heroes – a surprisingly common sentiment among Allied youth during World War I.  They had no context of war, the experience, the battlefield or the enemy.  “To war, to war, and heroes we will be.  Adventure lies before and rewards for victory.”  During the third story, they dispatch with a tenor calling “Ready, men! 3-2-1…” and then into a section of unexpected darkness.

Then, like the beginning, the ghosts complete the story.  “This must be the last great fall, the last great war to end them all.”  And, of course as history notes, it wasn’t and the next one was even worse.  We try and learn from past mistakes, but those who don’t learn from history…

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While I am hardly an advocate for war or military force, I understand the irony that sometimes peace needs to be fought for, though it took me a long time to wrap my head around.  Two years from now will be the 100th anniversary of World War I’s beginning.  That’s a long time ago.  It was fought across the Atlantic Ocean from where I lived in small town Canada.  That’s a very long way from my home in Gimli, MB.  But even as I kid (and moreso as an adult now), I understood to weight of my ancestors going to a far away land to fight for my freedom.

Watching 1100 kids at my school’s Remembrance Day service be quiet and respectful reminds me that the impact is still there.  Seeing students act, speak, sing, and perform about the cost of war touches my heart very deeply and it reminds me that, as the adage goes, the kids are alright.

Remember not to forget and don’t forget to remember,
Kenley

What a wild start up.  For teachers and/or students reading this, I hope it’s been grand and the machine is running full steam ahead!

We had a wonderful PD session on Friday.  Actually, “wonderful” doesn’t quite cut it – it was earth-shattering.  I barely slept all weekend because I couldn’t keep my mind out of it.

The speaker’s name is Debbie Silver and she came to Winnipeg for a six-hour PD session.  She spoke about many things, including effort, teaching the whole kid, self-efficacy and addressing “failure.”  I put the last one in quotation marks because she means it in a way differently than the way that we often use it in our classroom.  She used many examples to illustrate, but one stuck out to me.

She told a story of a girl who loved to rollerskate.  While I don’t remember it exactly, I’ll retell it the best I can.

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Once upon a time, there was a girl who loved to rollerskate.  After she got home from elementary school, she would tear off her bookbag, throw off her shoes and slap on her rollerskates.  She would often skate around her street from the time she got home until after the sun went down. 

To her surprise and delight, her teacher announced that her class would be having a rollerskating party just before the long weekend.  She couldn’t have been more excited.

When the day finally came, she got to the rink and ran to the cement pad as fast she could.  She saw her friends on the bench getting into their skates, as well as her teacher on the bleachers.  Other kids were already skating in circles near the sides and she couldn’t wait to join them.

The group of girls all got onto the pad at the same time and started skating.  They immediately saw how comfortable the rollerskating girl was on her skates, gliding with such grace and ease, as though she had practiced for 1000 hours.  They told her that she was so good that she should try a spin, and she did.  As she spun, her foot caught the concrete and she fell to the ground.  Her friends laughed and pulled her up.  She thought about how to jump higher and spin sooner so that she could complete the move then tried again.  She did better, but fell again.  She thought about it some more, tweaked some of the details and tried again.  

This time she did it.  Her friends cheered and the girl felt very satisfied.

This process continued a few more times with figure-eights and extra high leaps, among other things.  While she never completed a move on the first time, she always had it mastered by the third and by the end of the day, she had learned five more moves! All while the other kids just skated around in a boring old circle.

She couldn’t wait to tell her teacher, so at the end of the day, she took off her skates and ran up to her teacher on the bleachers. 

“Did you see me?” she said. “All those other kids were just skating around in a boring old circle and I learned five new moves! Did you see me? Did you see how good I was?”

The teacher looked at her quizzically.  “How good you were? My dear, you fell down more than any other kid!”

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And we do that sometimes, don’t we? We always teach to performance.  We punish mistakes and reward perfection.  We talk about “the journey is the destination” and then we give them a test.

It breaks my heart hearing it and it breaks my heart thinking of when I’ve done it in the past.  I’ve never quite had my educational foundation shaken as much as I had this weekend.  Debbie Silver summarized the story so appropriately:

They didn’t fail, they fell!

That’s it! We need to let them fall and we can’t punish them for doing so.  Falling is not failing.

There is so much extra baggage that comes with the word “failure.”  We’ve (adults, but not necessarily only teachers) somehow enabled this behaviour where failure doesn’t become a result, it becomes an identity, and that is profoundly detrimental, especially when it becomes cumulative and the failures stack on top of one another.  We now have a situation where the kid has such a burden and weight of “failure” that they just can’t get back up.  It becomes an identity, instead of a result.

I have the urge to say “but that’s not real, they aren’t a failure!” but it goes so much deeper than that.  To that person, it is real and they have to face it every day.  Somewhere down the path of their life, they have learned that they’re a failure, regardless of whether it’s true or not, and that’s a damn shame.  As teachers, maybe we have the power to stop it.

We need to teach kids how to take risks in their life (within reason, of course).  If they succeed, amazing; if they fall, then we need to teach them how to get back up.  I haven’t thought nearly enough about this, but I know that I’ll be writing about it for weeks to come.  The blog is really a means of keeping the moving parts clean and the knife edge sharp when it comes to teaching.  I need to keep reflecting, evaluating and exploring new ways to be a better teacher and journalling about it (via my website) is an effective means.  And, of course, commentary is always welcome.

Even through crazy exhaustion this month, I can’t think of a time where I’ve been more motivated to be a teacher

Homework:
When have you taken a risk in your life where you’ve succeeded? How did that feel? What did you learn?
When have you taken a risk in your life where you’ve fallen down (figuratively)? How did that feel? What did you learn?

Until next time,
Kenley

PS: A sneak peek into next week’s post…