music

The last two days I've turned on seeqpod.com and listened to some of my old playlists, playlists that I made last year and listened to in the classroom.

And it makes me a little nostalgic for my old classroom in Atlanta. I'm there, with the winter sun pouring in the windows, the music playing softly from the back of the room, and we're discussing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I love music, and I like playing it softly in my classroom. Often it'd be playing when the students came in, and I'd leave it as long as they could handle it and stay focused. I remember my students last year enjoying Yael Naim and Cat Stevens.

Which reminds me of all the music I shared with my students over the years. The first year, there was a Billy Joel connection. One of my students like bj and at the end of the year, the kids really dug "We Didn't Start the Fire." But there were other songs that they got into, and one of them even made a cd of "eighth grade tunes" -- it included B Dylan and songs from the Garden State soundtrack that I played a lot.

The next year there was a lot of Dylan. One of my students was a huge Dylan fan, and that was a lot of fun. I think I played Hem and Sufjan in the classroom too sometimes.

I don't remember what I played the third year. But the fourth year I got into seeqpod.com and made a Cat Stevens playlist that was perfect for working with. So that was played a lot, and my students for some reason attached themselves to the "Longer Boats" song, which was at the end of the playlist, so they'd convince me not to turn it off till then...