2001-10-25
All That You Have Is Your Soul, posted at 3:32 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Just had an interesting experience.My 7th period Freshmen (who I love or hate, depending on the day) had an assembly all hour, so I didn't prepare a lesson. We were told to bring them down at the beginning of the period and that it would last the whole period. Well, school ends at 3:15 and we were dismissed at 2:50 from the auditorium back to our rooms.
My kids were pretty bad down in the assembly to begin with, and it was tough to get them calmed back down once we got back to my room. They were loud and anxious, and complaining about how boring the previous hour had been. So how did I calm them down?
Well, I had prepared already for Friday the second song of my personal soundtrack for "To Kill a Mockingbird," an assignment that all the kids are doing, due on Nov. 1. Yesterday, I presented the lyrics to "What It's Like" by Everlast, played the song, and then showed them on an overhead my written argument as to why I had included that song in my soundtrack - how the themes of the song and the novel were very similar. I decided to present my second song in the twenty minutes we had left.
The song I chose was "All That You Have is Your Soul" by Tracy Chapman. The lyrics are here. I introduced Tracy, who has long been one of my favorite performers (her last album didn't do that much for me, though, so she's not on my top five list in my profile). A few kids knew who she was, which is surprising because it wasn't that long ago that "Give Me One Reason" went #1. But oh well. Every time I try to bring something out of my culture, it reminds me how old 24 really is compared to these 14-year olds. Anyhow, I talked about how she blazed onto the music scene in 1988, being one of the only (and still one of the only) Black women performers to play acoustic guitar, about how she sold ten million copies of her first wonderful album and won a bunch of Grammies, about how she still puts out great music and had a huge hit song a few years back. One girl knew "Fast Car," which was nice, while a couple other ones recognized "Give Me One Reason" as I spoke the lyrics.
Anyhow, "All That You Have Is Your Soul" is a great song, but I didn't know how much it would catch on with the kids. I had written up over half a page describing why the song fits the themes of "To Kill a Mockingbird," but wanted them to hear the song first. I put the lyrics up and started playing it. In the second verse, a girl started singing along. Usually I would shush it, but I didn't. By the end of the verse, nearly half the class was singing it. It was loud and I worried I was going to get into trouble, but I let it be. They were engaged. And they sounded beautiful.
After playing it, I showed them my argument as to why the song should be included in the soundtrack. I compared Tracy singing, "Hunger only for a taste of justice / Hunger only for a world of truth" to Atticus defending Tom Robinson. I compared Tracy's mama's lesson to "not give or sell your soul away / Because all that you have is your soul" to Atticus's lessons to Jem and Scout. It worked great. They raised their hands and came up with a few other connections I hadn't thought of.
Afterwards, they begged me to play the song again. Since they were antsy and there were only five minutes left, I did so. Nearly everyone in the class sang the whole thing. They were really getting into it. It was a live version of the song, so it was solo acoustic, yet the kids really got into it. It was great to see and hear.
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I have decided to go on the camping trip in the Appallachians. I think I spelled the mountain range wrong, but I'm still going. Five days away... it'll be wonderful. I hope my roommates take care of Holden okay, though. I hope the substitute does well in my room. That worries me. I'm writing very detailed plans, though.