Over the years, I’ve written quite a few songs to use with students, from silly to serious. I’d like to share two that have become part of our school traditions, and you are welcome to use them for your own purposes!
I wrote the first, “Go in Peace,” to be sung at the end of our Lower School Meeting for Worship. Our school is a Friends school, and Meeting for Worship--we retain the name from Quakerism, but it is not presented as a religious practice--is an important time of holding the silence and students speaking up as they feel led to respond to that week’s query. When I started teaching at CFS, we then asked the students to leave the gathering room in silence so we didn’t go straight from peace to chaos. Our children mostly do a wonderful job respecting the silence during Meeting, but once they pop up they are ready to make some noise! I was asked to find a song, but none of them seemed to quite fit our school—they were either too silly, too complicated, or too religous. Writing my own was the natural solution! Here are the words to my “Go in Peace,” and the sheet music is below.
Go in peace, go in peace
With this blessing in your heart
May your light shine brightly wherever you are.
Go in peace, go in peace
May this silence teach us grace
To help each other make the world a better place.
A lifelong Quaker friend and colleague has taught this song at Quaker conferences and in meetinghouses around the country, and I have heard that this song is now being used in multiple Friends schools!
Another song I wrote early in my career at CFS is a Thanksgiving round. I really wanted to have something to teach the kids to sing for Thanksgiving, but in this case all the songs were either about turkey, religion, or told a whitewashed story about pilgrims. Here’s my simple round, sheet music also included below:
For the blessings of the earth
For the gifts of love and friendship
For the beauty of life
We give thanks, we give thanks
No comments:
Post a Comment