This reminds me to the first lesson of this subject. The summer had just finished, another year began (last year in the university). It was the beginning of the end. That moment seems so near and jet so far to me. We started that class in a similar way that some people begin their daily life, with a song. A song with a strong and deep message. This melody has sound in my mind during these last weeks (like a mantra) and has given and gives me strength to work hard every day.  It was a fantastic idea to present the subject with that song that gave us so much important ideas in just 3 minutes.

Can you remember that moment? Surely, this video refreshes your memory.

At first sight, through that song, we could deduce that along the subject we were going to have fun while learning new important contents. Secondly, and as a consequence of the first idea, we could have an approach about what the subject was going to deal with, that is children literature elements such as songs, poetry, theatre… Sometimes, the best way to introduce new contents is not based on talk about it, but to show examples.

And I feel alright, and we’ll feel alright 
Cause we’ll work it out, yeah we’ll work it out 

Furthermore, the song transmitted us, that we should work hard, but the teacher was going to be with us, during the whole learning process, that we should not feel alone. There would be someone who wanted to encourage and to support us. This idea can be applied  also to these last years. Surely, all of us have a special person who supported him during the best and worst moments.

I’ll be your light, your match, your burning sun 
I’ll be the bright, in black, that’s making you run
I’ll be your ghost, your game, your stadium
I’ll be your fifty thousand clapping like one 

Finally, we, as future teachers, should understand the song message as a philosophy of education. Apart from the best methodologies, resources, materials… we need something much more important, vocation. We should work really hard on this till the love runs out.

I’ll be doing this, if you ever doubt
Till the love runs out, ’til the love runs out

“Love Runs Out” Lyrics

As you can see, this song it quite significant for me. I would love to know your opinion in this topic: Did you feel the same in that lesson? Are there other important songs about your learning experience? Which ones? Which would be your BSO of this moment/subject/term/degree?

The more, the better

I suppose that when you were a child, you used to listen the music that your parents or old brothers or sisters listened to, don´t you? And then you singed aloud at home without understand almost any word that you were saying. In my case, my father is a big fan of Joan Manuel Serrat, so I grow up singing lyrics like Mediterraneo or Caminante no hay camino, as you can see, there are difficult lyrics that a little child cannot understand. However when I was a teenager and I was studying literature at high school, I realized that those lyrics I had interiorize some years ago there were poems. Then I found some others music bands that use well known poems to make it songs like Marea with Ciudad de los gitanos by Federico García Lorca or Tierra Santa with Canción del Pirata by José de Espronceda. Even there are some CDs composed by poems of an author and singed by different artists, I have found one of Antonio Machado and another one of Pablo Neruda.

So… I was wondering if this will happen with the English poets too. Because of that I started to look for information (difficult task because I don´t know lots of the names that appear in my research and I didn´t know if there are famous English poets or not). And… as we can expect, the most of the song I have found are about Shakespeare poem, but there are others too like: Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda or Federico García Lorca have songs in English too! Now we are going to go one by one. I´m going to show you some works of each author.

William Shakespeare: About him there is an album which is a compilation of some of his sonnets performed by famous actors and musicians. It is called When love speaks. Here I give you one of them.

Live with me and be my love by Annie Lenox

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBxOsITRPeU

Edgar Allan Poe has a poem, Annabel Lee which it have been versioned by different musicians, here you have the one who did Tiger Army, but there are some other versions by Radio Futura and by an Israeli singer, Shlomo Artzi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZScUxZbe-AQ

Emily Dickinson has a lyric album with her poems too, singed by Aaron Copland and Enrico Maria Polimanti.

Federico García Lorca has a poem Pequeño Valls Vienés that belongs to the book Poeta en Nueva York which Leonard Cohen versioned with a song called Take this Waltz. Have a look, personally I love it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8nWVWE4sjk

Pablo Neruda has a whole album too with some of his sonnets recorded by musicians. The album is called Neruda.

I´d like to go deeper and explain you a little bit more about each writer and author but that is going to take me a lot of time, so if you are interested on it please don´t dude and look for information about it, ask me for help if you need it.

To conclude I have to say that I´ve learnt a lot preparing this post and I hope you will learn and enjoy as I have done.