Peace Begins With You

I was lucky enough this week to experience one of those special moments that makes you walk away wondering how that just happened. I was sitting on a stool strumming my guitar as my class packed up to go home. As they finished packing up they came to the floor in front of me to see what we would do with the last five minutes of our day.
"We don't know that song Mr. H," Patton said, looking up at me.
I explained to him that this was because I was just messing around. Playing random chords.
"I've been thinking we should write another song," I said. "Maybe one about how we are thinking about making a difference in our community and trying to promote peace."
I started strumming a new chord combination (Bm - G)and out of nowhere Atira sang out "We all work together."
"Holy cow, Atira! That was awesome," I said. "That fits perfectly. Let's all sing that together."
"We all work together," we sang.
Suddenly someone else (was it Roman?)sang out "We help one another."
"Holy Cow! Another perfect line," I said.
Within seconds yet another person sang out "To make the world much better." I couldn't believe it. In just a few minutes they had written the chorus for a song of peace and social action.
I went home and played around with their three lines and changed them a bit to make them sound "better." I brought this back in to them the next day and sang it for them and they all stared at me like I had a second head.
"Mr. Hass, I like it better our way," Reese said. A chorus of Yeahs filled the room. I looked at my revisions and then back at their original lines and realized that they were absolutely right. Their version was much better.
Over the next two days we continued with our social action projects. The final fifteen minutes of each day was spent with me sitting on my stool playing our chords over and over again in a constant loop and humming the melody for the song. The kids worked at their tables to write words, lines, and verses for the song. As they finished each one they brought it up to me and we sang it together. It many cases it fit beautifully. In other cases they needed to add or delete a few syllables and went back to their tables to work it out.
What I wound up with was twenty-two pages of writing to patch together into a song. I took it all home and worked hard to make take these pieces and make them a whole. Harper and Muluken took turns singing each draft with me to see if it worked. Finally, I was able to use common lines from many of the kids' writing (thankfully there was some overlap!) to put together our first verse. I took this back in to the kids the next day and asked them, after hearing and singing that first verse, to write yet more lines for me. They were so excited to write more. I told them they needed to save some of these verses and make their own songs. There was SO much songwriting going on!
Again, I took their writing home and worked to patch it together to finish the song. The result was a song with 23 different lines. Thirteen of these lines came directly from the kids - with no changes. Three of them were lines that I slightly altered to make fit. And, finally, there were seven lines that I wrote to help the flow of the song. I'm very proud of how I was able to honor their words and their work because, honestly, the ideas they came up with were just spectacular. My only regret is that there are a lot of lines I had to leave out to avoid a song that would rival a full-length Grateful Dead jam in length.
And here is the final result. I only wish you could all hear it!

Peace Begins With You
By Mr. H’s Second Grade Classroom
October 2009

Peace begins with you
It’s in the little things, the little things you do
It isn’t hard to do
Follow your heart it will help you through – so you may know

Just what to do
And that it doesn’t matter who is who
And you watch what you say
Because it hurts so many people – in so many

W - - - - a - - - - a- - - - a - - - -ays

(chorus) We all work together
We all work together
We help one another
To make the world much better

And all this could be
Become something of a reality – you could go
To a nursing home
Offer up your friendship and a song
Collect money in a jar
Donate dog biscuits, they are full of carbs – that is the

W - - - - a - - - - a- - - - a - - - -ay

(chorus) We all work together
We all work together
We help one another
To make the world much better

We are singing this song of peace
Knowing it is up to you and me
We can all be free
We just have to learn – learn to

Agree ---- e ---- e ---- e ----e

(chorus) We all work together
We all work together
We help one another
To make the world much better
To make the world much better
We can love each other
To make the world much better

Childish Adult (Dad)