Who are your "Smileys"?
Today is Miley Cyrus' birthday. She turns 23 today. Interestingly, her birth certificate reads Destiny Hope Cyrus, with "Miley" coming from her dad calling her "Smiley" because she smiled a lot as a little 'un. Dolly Parton is her Godmother! As she grew up, she attended Heritage Elementary School, in Williamson County, Tennessee, USA. I took a moment to look up their website and find out a little more about the Heritage Elementary School.
As a third grader at Heritage Elementary School, Miley had a music teacher who had a variety of standards he/she was compelled to lead her through. They included the following two...
3.MU.1.1.3 Sing a melody with accurate rhythm, pitch (solfege and/or lyrics), dynamics and tempo.
3.MU.7.2.3 Demonstrate appropriate audience behaviour in a formal performance setting (live or recorded)
If you were up late for the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards (or awake for the following week or two), then you would appreciate that maybe there should have been a standard in the third grade curriculum relating to appropriate behaviour of performers!
Regardless, like we all have/had, there is a "Miley Cyrus' Dad" (that's him in the photo, playing guitar with Miley). He just happens to be another somewhat familiar name - Billy Ray Cyrus - famous for his 1992 hit "Achy Breaky Heart", for his mullet hairstyle and for the worldwide uptake of line dancing. Yes even Australia noticed, and in 1994 I taught my class of third graders to line dance - (an episode of my teaching career I would rather forget!)
But as a dad, he probably received a report card for his daughter, from the teachers of 3rd grade at Heritage Elementary School, about his daughter. I wonder what the music teacher wrote? How was that parent-teacher conference? I wonder what the music teacher shares about that time now?
And if you are a teacher, who will we be telling stories about in 15 years’ time? And for what? Will they be singers lighting up the stage, doctors discovering a cure for something, or businessmen or women successfully businessing? Will they win a golfing major or conduct a philharmonic orchestra or write a Nobel prize for literature-winning novel or take a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph?
We don't know, just like the third-grade teacher of Heritage Elementary School didn't know when he/she pondered the report card of MS Cyrus, wavering between a "Meeting" or "Exceeding" when grading “singing with accurate pitch”.
We do know, however, that today we have an opportunity to inspire our students to become any of those things I have listed above. So take a moment today to do that!
The encouragement we give students, the compliments, the high expectations, our belief in them, our support of them, our smiles, our laughter, our trust in their efforts - it all adds up!