Last night while watching the three-hour time waste of the season finale of Survivor, I created all of the lesson templates I need for the rest of the school year. Not the lessons themselves, but that’s okay. At this point the things I still have to teach are so limited and repetitive that creating the template with my iPad app is half the work. After I had the list completed, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the whole set of them fit on one screen without any scrolling. The last day will be upon us sooner than anyone will expect.
One tradition I have at the end of the year, or on any school work day which doesn’t involve students, is to put together a playlist in iTunes I can download to one of my iPods and listen to throughout the day. It’s never simple though, and especially not for the end of the school year. There always needs to be some kind of a theme.
Usually it’s a collection of the kind of bittersweet album endings that are meant to close off whatever narrative the artist tried to communicate through that particular collection of songs — these are the songs that would appear over the closing credits of hit movies back in the 1980s, back when hit movies included songs that were worth being played on the radio throughout the summer. Happy songs, but also kind of sad because they signal something significant coming to an end, and perhaps an end that isn’t happily anticipated. This year? Maybe a little of that.
I’ve also had playlists that are purely celebratory, the kind of musical victory laps that demand to be taken when a particularly trying school year finally ends. The Alice Cooper “School’s Out” or Huey Lewis and the News “Couple Days Off” playlists. Music to kick off the summer because there’s either something great to look forward to or something that is wonderful to leave behind. Those aren’t just happy songs. Those are the concert-opening, fist-pumping, turn-up-the-volume-in-anticipation-before-the-first-note songs. This year? Maybe a little of that, too.
Some years I’m just happy to be done with the year and ready to move on and have a few dozen days off to fall off the face of the Earth and relax. That requires something quieter and calm, not so much a celebration, but a winding down. You know those early Sunday morning radio shows some stations used to play, back when the world paid attention to radio? The Sunday Sunrise or whatever, with all the mellow songs that normally didn’t get played much but came together in a perfect way to set a mood? That’s what those playlists were like.
This year I think I’m going to try something different from all of my usual plans. I saw something online a few weeks ago about a guy who did some kind of experiment on himself, where he was trying to fight off his encroaching depression by playing nothing but happy songs whenever he listened to music. Now, for the record, I’m not saying that I’m wading through overwhelming anxiety or depression or anything as the school year comes to an end. However, reading that made me wonder exactly how much difference it could make to play nothing but songs that are undeniably happy.
What kind of a send off could that be? Goodbye to the kids, two blessed work days instead of one, and then see y’all in late August? All of it with a happy soundtrack?
It usually takes me at least a week to put together my playlists. I might give this a shot, just to see what happens.
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