It’s 12:35 p.m. I’m picking up my sixth-grade class from the cafeteria. You can cut the heat with a knife. The kids are sizzling. We walk upstairs. I’m waiting for something to happen. Two boys start shoving each other and refuse to “stay hit.” Two girls curse out their respective mothers, fathers, and grandfathers. We stop on the fourth floor. We’re out of emotional breath. Thoughts of getting back to work again are repugnant to everyone—including the teacher.

We finally get to the room. We’re still boiling. In desperation, I reach into my desk drawer and take out a cassette tape of an old Billy Joel album, then put it into the jukeboxx.”

“Get your heads down on the desk and listen!” I bellow. The lights are shut. Shades drawn. “Sit back and relax,” I tell them in a calmer voice. “Don’t think about work or anything. Forget the world for a little while.”

The tape ran for 15 minutes. We came out of our dreams, and I asked the class: “How did you feel while listening to the music? What happened inside yourself?” The children spoke freely:

• “I thought I was flying.”
• “I wanted to throw up.”
• “My head was heavy.”
• “Everything was like a dream.”
  

Exit Bad Vibes City, alias the cafeteria, and enter the new world of contemplation.

Listening to music continued on a daily basis. Weeks later, I asked them to express their experiences on paper. I told the class: “Tell it like it is. There are no right or wrong answers.” 

The contents—feelings, thoughts, ideas, images, memories, reflections, fantasies, dreams, daydreams, conflicts, flashbacks, and poetry—became discussion subjects following the music periods. Some fragments from the students’ works are:

• “I imagined being a window, and the children threw rocks at me.”
• “Sometimes, I don’t know whether I’m in a dream or in real life.”
• “I don’t want to contemplate.”
• “I am a loser. I try and try, but I always lose.”
  

I read the writings anonymously because the contents were personal. At first, I read the pieces  aloud and went directly into the next lesson. But the writings were so fascinating that I felt more could be gotten from them. For each piece—or “contemplation”—as I later called it—I made up questions asking about: the images conveyed, feelings created by the images, and thoughts  triggered, plus the main idea.

After breaking-the-ice, the kids responded to, analyzed, and discussed their classmates’  experiences via my probing questions. These sessions were serious, intense, and still fun because of our strong communication—a cross-fertilization of ideas coming from a shared experience. I took our dialogue a step further: “How do you find and see what happens inside? What process is used to get to the events?”

I illustrated the contemplation process on the board: “There’s an inner eye—sometimes called the mind’s eye—that searches for images, feelings, and thoughts of the experience. This inner eye is like a spotlight illuminating the inside world. When you discover memories, dreams, fantasies, and realities you might want to write about, let the light of the imaginary eye shine on the event.”

“At that moment, carefully study, observe or contemplate the experience before writing. Focus all concentration on your inside world and see what’s happening. Find your life as it floats or rushes by the inner eye. Remember that a word, picture, feeling, thought, or an idea might trigger creative thinking and writing.”

A brave new world arrives. Your students will change. And so will you! Classroom tension decreases. The class will become up-toned, cerebral, empathetic, compassionate, and inspired.

Contemplation Music Writing motivates kids to read because the skills derived from the project are also needed for this subject. Thinking, feeling, visualization, reflection, experiencing, creativity, concentration, and communication transfer to reading to make it more enjoyable, meaningful, and understandable. 

At the end of the school year, I returned the writings to students for re-reading, reviewing, and self-assessments about their involvement through “The Contemplation Questionnaire.” Some responses to the questions were:

• “Contemplation helped me by taking the ‘I am scared’ out of reading.”
• “Contemplation helped me concentrate.”
• “I like to write about fantasies because they are fun to read. I enjoy fantasies because they are like a book you read.”
• “I enjoy these periods because I could (sic) read about the good and bad in my life and solve the problems.”
  

I am only touching the tip of the iceberg of this program. Contemplation Music Writing was the foundation for teaching social-and-emotional learning skills, character education, emotional intelligence, and revision. I realized that children like to correct personal writing. A simple “sound-and-sense” approach taught them how to revise their work individually and collaboratively.

To generate greater inner-sight to their experiences, I fed them quotations for interpretation.  Each saying expanded into unknown avenues that brought  new ideas and perceptions for living and dealing with others.

In a second assessment, I measured their progress in emotional intelligence with “Contemplation Comprehension.” Similar to reading comprehension, they analyzed classmates’ contemplations with questions like those used during our discussions.

Contemplation Music Writing blossomed into “Experiences, Reflections, and Insights.” This project added practical applications of the foundation curriculum, for example, “Reflection Writing” (describing and analyzing past events), “Here-and-Now Writing” (narratives about present-moment events), and “Experimental” contemplations featuring specific themes.

My approach and techniques would affect you, as it would your students, by helping you become more spontaneous, a better listener, and a discussion leader. You will draw knowledge out of your students instead of pounding it into them. Improving communication, creativity, and artistic skills will bring down walls between you and your class because everyone will stop and see eachother.