Nostalgia. A mood boost. Cultural identity. Expression of faith. Indicator of age. Hint at personality. Connection to friends and family. Workout motivation.
What if I told you there was one secret ingredient that could provide all these services and more? Impossible, right? You’d pay the big bucks if you could have it, right? What if I told you this thing can actually be found in your pocket right now?
Okay, okay—I’ll cut the corny salesperson schtick. The secret ingredient is music, and it’s the topic of this month’s issue. Whether you’ve been singing in the church choir since grade school or you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, it’s likely that music plays an important role in your life. We pick songs for big things like getting married or buried, professing our faith, or dedicating a child. We pick songs for smaller things like road trips, kitchen dance parties, or post-breakup wallow fests.
We also pick songs for our schools. A peppy pop beat can add energy to a sleepy class. A 1930s playlist can transport history scholars to a different era. Playing five seconds of a Taylor Swift song will elicit immediate cheers from half your students and eye rolls from the rest. Lyrics can be studied as poetry. A powerful worship song while the lights are dimmed can create an atmosphere where students are open to new ideas about God. And of course, some of us are tasked with teaching students how to create their own music.
In this issue, you’ll find stories about and strategies for incorporating music into your practice as a Christian teacher. How can we use music performances to further God’s kingdom? Can music really help us learn to read? What role can scripture’s music—the psalms—play in our twenty-first century classrooms?
So queue up your favorite playlist and dive into this issue full of strategies, personal reflections, and some really good songs. I’ll start you off with a selection of five songs I often use in my high school creative writing class. I play a song at the beginning of each period, projecting the lyrics on the board and asking students to free write for the length of the song. What lyrics stick out? What instruments do they hear? Where would they choose to play this song? How does the song make them feel? What if the song is about God?
Abby’s Creative Writing Playlist
- “Call Me Al” by Paul Simon
- “Godspeed” by Frank Ocean
- “Dreams” by The Cranberries
- “Rise” by Eddie Vedder
- “Cool About It” by boygenius