Heard this song before?  It’s one of my all time favorites: hard, passionate, rockin’, beautiful; it hits me to the core every time I hear it bringing me back to a time when guitar solos ruled the radio.  It had no less of an effect on me the other day when it came on in the car.

As I reached to turn up the volume, I turned my head back to my two kids in the back seat and quickly explained, “Mommy loves this song, I need to turn this up!”  They both had nothing to say (nor could I hear them anyway), and they both looked on in wonder as their mother sang, screeched, drummed and head-banged all the way to our destination.

Sebastian Bach of Skid Row

Sebastian Bach of Skid Row

Near the end of the song, I tilted my rear view mirror to see their faces.  I wondered what they were doing…  My 3-year-old daughter was watching me – awestruck.  My 4-year-old son had a smirk on his face and as he watched my mouth open wide with every lyric, his did too.  We locked eyes and I smiled at him with my eyes (since my mouth and hands were busy) and he nodded back.  We were all sharing a moment, united by music….  (so corny and I love it!)

When the song ended, after a long melisma of hairy screaming, a final riff of electric guitar and mellowed out acoustic arpeggios, I turned around in my seat (our car was parked by this time as we had reached our destination), put out my hands for high fives and exclaimed, “That was rockin’!”

And then the most beautiful thing happened, making this hair band loving mother so very proud.  My son looked at me with all sincerity and said, “Thank you.”

I looked at his sweet face and asked, “What for?”

“Mommy, that was fun.  I was singing with you.”

“I saw that.  You really were, weren’t you!”

“Yep.”

And as he and his sister climbed out of the car, I gave them each a hug and realized that was the first time they had ever really seen me rock out with such passion.  Wow!  They were really (positively) affected by it.  It made my heart dance!

Those moments of passion, true enjoyment – why don’t I share those with my kids more often?  Sure, we dance and play but that’s mostly me having fun with them.  It’s important for them to have fun with me too, doing things I enjoy!

A couple of months back I wrote a post about teacher talents and how we need to share our talents with our students.  This is along the same lines.  My students really get something out of witnessing me enjoy the things I love: music, dance, science, poetry.  It’s almost like, (here’s the tie in…) I need to Remember ME and not be afraid to share ME with my students.

I guess my bottom line is this:

We teachers need to remember to share ourselves more with our students – passionately: like a crazed, guitar lovin’, head bangin’, hard rockin’ fan.

It’s contagious.

EMP

... And We Receive ...
Master Learner