The Oboe Goes BOOM BOOM BOOM– Colleen AF Venable (Greenwillow / Harper Collins)
As the school year is (allegedly) getting ready to start, parents around the world are discussing washing protocols, social distancing, and issues that no teacher learned in school (at least not in my two Masters programs!). After talking amongst themselves (and fretting with their spouses and families behind closed doors), many are throwing their support behind the homeroom teachers, encouraging them to strike, even if it means less classroom time for their children and (Gasp!) more time at home!
Amidst all of this, many hard-working educators (in fact, some of the hardest working) are being left behind. Unfortunately, some of them are used to this.
In an education world that focuses on test results over actually learning and that has schools spending millions on consultants (many of whom have never taught) rather than on the tools they know will work, some of the most abused teachers are those who bring the most joy (and, many studies show, the most social and brain development) to the students.
I am talking, of course, about those who support their students in their life-long journeys through the arts.
Fortunately, this cleverly-designed book offers an encouraging and enriching argument for the idea that the teachers who have to cart massive instruments around and maintain order when the purpose is improvisation are some of if not the best qualified to provide classroom management and classroom success.
As the daughter of a notable musician and music educator – percussionist Tom Venable (who, along with other musical mavens like Sidney Bechet, Valadia Snow, Carol Jantsch, Emmanuel “Rico” Rodriguez, and even Ian Anderson, are all lovingly worked into the book by Lian Cho in the form of students and their band director, “Mr. V.”), Colleeen Venable has apparently eschewed the drums her heroine Felicity loves so much that she interrupts her beloved teacher every time he tries to introduce another instrument and taken up the pen as her instrument. In so doing, she brings the musician’s and the writer’s ears together to make a believable and hysterical world in which music is the medium, the message, and the means to happiness.
Let us all take a moment to thank our Mr. (and Mrs.) Vs and to be sure that, when we stick up for teachers, we stick up for ALL teachers!
- Matt Robinson
