Fanfare for the Common Teacher

Editor's note: The following editorial appeared in the Thursdat, April 21 edition of the Echoes-Sentinel.

Aaron Copland’s iconic piece, “Fanfare for the Common Man,” all French horns, trumpets, tubas,  trombones, timpanis, gongs and base drums, sounds like it should be emanating from the morning fog of Arlington Cemetery, or at sunset over the cornfields of Iowa, or at the change of shifts at the mills of Woonsocket and Lowell, and the factories of Detroit and Cleveland.
Let’s imagine a previously unheard Copland composition, “Fanfare for the Common Teacher,” was just found in some time capsule. It would be just as heroic, just as stoic, and just as grounded in what it means to be the builder of the great American dream.
Let’s play it with children’s toy pianos, primary tambourines and Suzuki violins, Saturday afternoon piano lessons, and Sunday-go-to-Grandma’s car radio sessions with sons and daughters, listening to Dad tell about the late great Duane Allman playing slide guitar and guitar genius Eric Clapton “bending strings” on “Layla,” turning the family van into Carnegie Hall.
Fast forward from that kernel of learning to sophomore high school instrumental music class. It is long about April, and the teacher has had a year-long obsession to reach beyond a student’s malaise to tap into a creativity she, herself,  has witnessed everywhere else but the music room, and in other ways. Maybe it was on the way to and from class, on a class trip, in the cafeteria, even in town when she’d see him at a church event or in the Little League parade years earlier. Anyway, that learning project just got through. Something clicked. Maybe it was a stray comment about bent strings and ‘Layla,” and the student says, “You know Layla? You know about bent strings? I know about bent strings, too. Want to hear? I’ll bring in my guitar.”
Fast forward to the high school Hall of Fame induction ceremony for that student who had since gone onto a career as a church organist emeritus, bringing a dynamic sound to a church in the inner city and leading student trips all over the world in search of international and cultural variations of bent strings.
That music teacher never won a Teacher of the Year award. But, boy could she teach. She had a thirst for learning and an even bigger thirst for teaching, and she lived for that moment with not just this one student, but scores of students taught over years in the classroom. Yes, she had been able to see them learn, and at her retirement, she would say she had had “the honor and the privilege to witness” learning moment kernels grow into national monuments, fields of dreams, hard-working American factories, immigrant-supported mills, and family learning vans.
Last Saturday afternoon, at the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony at Watchung Hills Regional High School, nine former students, now leaders in their fields and chosen areas of expertise, got up and remembered classroom teachers of all kinds and from all subject areas at Watchung Hills, and in their Warren, Watchung and Long Hill elementary and middle schools.
They remembered how they found ways to germinate kernels of learning that flowered into successful careers for them, their families, and their communities. They remembered and thanked these teachers by name, along with their classmates, their coaches, their guidance counselors, their school nurses, and their families.
Meanwhile, sitting in the audience, it didn’t take much to imagine variations of Aaron Copland coming  whispering down the hallways from the classrooms, the gyms, the cafeterias, the libraries, the student lockers. There were French horns, trumpets, tubas,  trombones, timpanis, gongs and base drums, sure, but there was also guitar licks from Duane Allman and Eric Clapton, and a half-dozen first-graders on toy pianos, primary tambourines and Suzuki violins, too. They were serenading their teachers.
They were honoring all those teachers who were never picked as teachers of the year who nevertheless will be the ones remembered decades from now at their own Hall of Fame inductions. And the ensemble played, Fanfare for the Common Teacher.
Say thanks for the teacher that made a difference in your life by voting on school election day, next Wednesday, April 27.
For Essays And Editorials
Denis J. Kelly
May 5, 2011