The twilight's last gleaming.

Today I woke up and didn't have a voice, so I didn't teach fourth hour. My day was spent listening with one half of my brain to the lessons Lizzy taught, and looking through octavos and writing up resource sheets on them with the other half of my brain. The day went by really quickly.

Lizzy took over for me in first hour as well, which was actually great because I got to see how she started melodic dictation with them. She started where I left off on Friday, having them dictate rhythms on their whiteboards and then hold them up. They were super into it: children will learn anything if you turn it into a game.

Next she sang through four beats using only "sol" and "mi," the two syllables they'd used in warm-ups. She wrote them out as: s| m| (except the stems were longer, obviously), with s| a decent ways above m|.

This blew my mind. "THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!" I wanted to scream with glee. I had planned on having them draw a staff and notate the pitches that way, but then they'd have had trouble erasing just the pitches, and it would have taken much longer.

They worked with those two syllables in different rhythms (with some rests thrown in there), and finally she added "do." At the end she sang "sol fa mi re do" on the syllable [bi] and asked them to write down just the syllables with no rhythm. A few students got it right away, and a few more got it after about 15 seconds. She then went through her process for dictating that.

- What did it start on? (sol)

- What did it end on? (do)

- Did it move in steps or skips? (steps)

- Therefore, it must be "sol fa mi re do."

A collective "Ohhhhhhhhhhh," went up from the room.

Also, it was nice to see the main "trouble" student of the class participating, and when he got things right, Lizzy made sure he knew and that the class knew. She even patted him on the back. He didn't try and distract the class or show an attitude after that. It was incredibly relieving.

For the first half of every class, Lizzy talked about Whitney Houston's career and her death. She talked about how Houston was a pioneer and a groundbreaker, and how there would be no Mariah Carey or Christina Aguilera without her. She played some of Houston's music and the classes were duly impressed; they'd really only seen her as a washed-up addict (keep in mind they were born between 1999 and 2002).

Lizzy gave what she called a "mom talk" to each of her classes about drug use. The key point was that "Whitney never thought, 'When I grow up, I'm gonna be a drug addict.'" She also noted that even though Houston said, "crack is wack," it didn't take crack to kill her.

She played a few different songs for each class, but for every class she played the recording of Houston singing the National Anthem at SuperBowl XXV. When the boys asked who played that SuperBowl, she replied with, "No one remembers, and no one really cares. The only thing anyone really remembers about that game is Whitney singing the National Anthem. And that was twenty years ago. No one remembers who sang the National Anthem five years ago, but everyone remembers Whitney. That's how beautiful it was." I don't have to prattle on about how important it was, because you can read that pretty much anywhere on the internet.

I had never heard her rendition before this morning, when at least two radio stations were playing it on my way to school. It brought me to tears more than once. Especially after I found out from Lizzy what the context was. The USA had just sent troops over to Kuwait and entered the Gulf War, the first time troops had really done any fighting from the US since Vietnam. Patriotism was for the first time in decades at an all time high, and the whole atmosphere could be compared to what it was around 9/11.

Hearing that version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," seeing her emotion when performing it (even though she was lip-syncing, which is perfectly acceptable when singing in a stadium, especially since it was actually her voice), and knowing the history surrounding that moment, I can understand why the crowd went absolutely nuts. I mean insane. And why that was the only recording of the National Anthem to be in the Top 20 in the US.

I hope she's remembered for that, and not for the horrid path she took at such a young age. I mean, I was hardly even conscious in 1991, but for me that moment in the car this morning will stay in my memory forever.