Jackson was a difficult student.

He was exceptionally bright and, in many cases, knew more than I did as his fourth grade teacher.  When we had discussions about latest events in different parts of the world, Jackson always had new information and new stories to tell.  He seemed to draw directly from his daily adventures with social media well before social media was the presence we know today.

The problem was that Jackson knew he was brighter than most and lorded that over the other students in the class.  And sometimes he was right but sometimes he was wrong.  The other students accepted the times he was right, but teased him when he was wrong, adding the moniker “doubtful Jackson” to the recess vocabulary.  Jackson took the criticism in stride, but I knew the words hurt him.

The student criticism of Jackson reached a crescendo when Jackson relayed “100% accurate information” that the government had lied about a situation.  Even though Jackson was proven to be correct, the way he handled the information did not endear him to the other students.  They were “idiots” for believing everything the government said and Jackson was very direct in his opinions.  The daily criticisms of Jackson took on a greater presence.

As classroom teacher, I now had a situation to address.  But I wanted to be careful because Jackson’s  problems were his own cross to bear and the class was full of students who had challenges of their own.  I had to think long and hard about Success then.

So, we wrote a song…..

(I wrote this summary several years ago and the focus then was more on the class than on Jackson.  In retrospect, I clearly had Jackson in my mind.)

Giving to Other People

In the mid 1980’s, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson wrote the song, “We Are the World” to highlight the poverty crisis going on in Africa.  The pair convinced Quincy Jones to produce the song and a slew of music celebrities performed the song, pro bono.  The resulting piece of music earned a Grammy award for Song of the Year in 1985 and generated over $50 million in relief funds for the continent.   In 1985, it was all the buzz in the school and in our classroom. 

“Well, if they can do it, why can’t we?” was the question asked by my fourth grader, Michelle, in the ensuing October and it was a question that kept coming back to the surface as we approached Thanksgiving and the Holiday season.  As their teacher, I found myself, against my best instincts, giving in to the logic.   “Why not us?” was soon to become our mantra as I sat down to plot out a fundraising project involving music- a field in which I had little knowledge and less talent.  

So how does one go about raising $50 million for charity…all right, I would settle for $50! 

Thus, one day in early November, we began by talking about worthy causes.  The students were surprisingly well informed.  They talked about soup kitchens, about homelessness, about abused children, about foster homes for pets, and about cancer wards.   We had surprisingly long discussions about legal funds, about international relief organizations, about poverty and about the root causes of homelessness.  I did not have all the answers but in the next few days, we began generating a list of worthy causes and started to research and narrow down our choices. 

The energy in the class was electric!  Students went home each day determined to speak with their parents about options of good causes.  They entered the classroom each day excited to share new ideas: help the local family whose house caught on fire, buy baseball uniforms for the Little League team that could not afford them, donate to children who struggle in school, give to teachers who want to purchase materials for their classrooms, purchase books for a needy school in Africa.  By the end of the week, our list was extensive, and recess had transformed from a rough, winner takes all collection of soccer games and social dilemmas to an ongoing conversation of best causes to give to.  Acts of Generosity bring out the best in people and the weeks ahead were transformed by Generosity into weeks of focus and commitment.

We had narrowed our choices down to generating financial support for a soup kitchen (along with volunteering hours), giving an outright donation to a “schools for Africa” cause, and supporting the local SPCA.  There were very strong and very vocal fans for each of the causes, at which point, trusty Michelle whose idea had spurred the initial task, stepped forward with the statement, “Let’s make our cause Giving to Other People” ……and thus was born the title of our song. 

Over the next week, we worked together to write a song.  We had just finished a unit on poetry, so I gave the students a homework assignment to write two to four line, rhyming couplets about “Giving to Other People”.  The next day, we had a collection of lines that would serve as the basis for our song.  Using the couplets, we hammered out five verses and a chorus.  A twelfth grader had recently performed on his guitar for the entire school assembly, so we asked him to play around with three musical structures for a song.  At the beginning of the next week, he came into class and performed his three guitar riffs for the students.  The class unanimously voted on the one with the most rock-like sound and soon we had our song of Generosity. 

Now, we simply had to perform the song, record it, and sell it.  In my initial thoughts, we would perform it in the classroom using whatever tape recorder microphones we could find in the school building.  However, as the energy in the class increased, simple, easy steps no longer became the default.  I called up a local recording studio and not knowing anything about recording, asked them if we could rent the studio.  Yes, we could rent it for an hour and yes, the person I spoke to would become our recording engineer.

So, in January, one year after “We Are the World”, our fourth graders (and one twelfth grader) went to a recording studio to sing the lyrics and record the song “Giving to Other People”.  Suffice it to say that I had no idea how complicated the three hours of recording would be, but I will note that our recording engineer was generous with his time, and he was truly gifted.  Individual students with reasonably good voices stood up to the microphones and belted out each verse with pride.  Our twelfth-grade guitarist was outstanding, and the engineer deftly added drums, piano and even a set of horns. When all of the students stood up together to sing the chorus….

Giving to other people

It doesn’t take much time

You and me- that’s all it takes

Come join us in our climb.

there was a group passion– the kind that inhabits young voices on a mission—that  filled the studio. 

At the end of the recording session, we were handed a copy of the original song with 50 cassette tape recordings.  The next week, we performed the song for the entire Assembly of school students.   We sold the fifty cassettes (mostly to parents!) and after paying off the studio rental fee, we were able to donate $250 to the local SPCA (several weeks of ardent, conflicted discussion dissolved when a parent brought in a foster puppy from the local bureau!). 

The point of this two-month project was less about what happened in the classroom than what happened outside the classroom.  Generosity became the calling card for our class.  There was a sense that these students were now a model for others and the students acted accordingly.  They owned the project and treated their daily learning with responsible respect.  The children spoke with their parents every night about the project; they acted with a greater sense of their responsibilities to look out for others; classroom discussions became deeper and more meaningful; mornings became thought centers for new ideas.

Generosity, reaching out to others, does this to people.  When the primary focus of people- students or adults- become something other than yourself, the energy gets elevated.  Children understand this very quickly and very naturally.  A part of our jobs as educators has to be to reconnect our students to the joys of selflessness.  In doing so, we elevate them as well. 

I never directly addressed Jackson’s issues, but they were resolved nonetheless.  Jackson had taken a leadership role with the project and the other students became more focused on the value Jackson brought to the table.  I have no question that Jackson’s success as a student was rooted in his ultimate generosity.

Does that mean that generosity  needs to be at the center of everyone’s success?  No, but the opposite of generosity- self-centeredness and meanness- has no value in determining success.

We welcome you to the conversation.  Please let us know that you care by liking comments, forwarding posts, or joining in our dialogue at johnzurn.com.

Coming Next- The Story of Corey Weissman

 From our first posting:

“As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children – not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor.  We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.”

 #charactereducation #successtraits #parentingtips #homeschooling #teachertips