One of the best parts of having responsibilities that extend to all of our campuses is that I get to see every age of student from Grade 12s to Pre School. When I do see the students “in action” it is almost always outside of the classroom and there were three vignettes in the past 24 hours that made me smile.

At the “Memories to Music” concert last night, I saw 21 of our senior HS students perform a song that they had composed for their senior partner from the Alzheimer’s Society. Of those students who sang, there were at least five who have never been singing on stage before…but 99% of the audience wouldn’t have known it from how they performed! This morning, I saw three girls from the Intermediate Division at a hydration station. One of them was filling up her “Astra” bottle (from last week’s Fashion Show) and as she opened it she told her friends in a musical voice, “I am awesome at unscrewing water bottles!” Later in the morning, I was lucky enough to be the bus driver for the junior kindergarten trip to the library. After visiting the library and the ducks on the Credit River, they had me smiling as they searched for robins on the trip back to school and sang out “I found a robin!” when they did.

Whether it is coming from a wonder-filled 4-year-old, an excitable 10-year-old or a nervous 18-year-old, there is music all around us. When Alzheimer’s patient Irene lost her husband a year ago, she stopped playing the piano. The interview sessions that she did with her junior partners at Mentor rekindled her memories of music and her daughter wrote a nice note to the students saying that her Mom has started playing again!

Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind… in the air… in the light. It’s all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do… is listen. – opening voice-over in August Rush (2007)

Chris Starkey
Administrative Principal
Mentor College / TEAM School