Music at Work

Each school morning, before school starts, I setup speakers for the morning announcements. This is my third year doing morning duty. Why do I enjoy this task? Each Morning starts with a song or piece of music. Each teacher or staff has a choice of what music is played for their week of doing morning announcements. Morning announcements include The Pledge of Allegiance, 30 Seconds of Silence, Lunch Menu and any announcements.
Some will give me music to play, some will have a request, but most leave the choices up to me. I keep a portion of my digital music on an older iPhone, which I use mostly as an iPod. The reason I was chosen to do the setup for announcements is because of my collection of music. Although my collection is heavy with ‘80s, I have a wide range of albums and songs, including a lot of kid friendly songs. Sometimes after a concert or theatrical show, I will buy their music and add it to my collection.
I grew up enjoying all kinds of music. As a kid, I might listen to Top-40 during the day and fall asleep to the Big Bands. I enjoyed the movie “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, and had to go out and get the soundtrack on cassette. It wasn’t actually the soundtrack, but the Beatles Album of the same name. MTV was an influence, along with local channel 21 and Night Tracks, all who played music videos.
In the 90s, I attended a class at the community college called “History of Rock Music.” The class started with the origins of Rock, then into the early 50s, late 50s/early 60s, British Revolution, and then the 70s and 80s. This expanded my interest in music in general.
I also started attending live theater and collecting soundtracks. At this point, my music collection had grown to a large size, and being able to turn much of it into digital musc, made my collection more portable.
About two and a half years ago, the staff member who was doing the morning announcements/music was returning to the classroom to teach kindergarten, and could no longer do the music. He knew how mixed my music collection was, and recommended me to take over. Not only would I get to be outside each morning and could see the students, and keep up with daily announcements, I could play different themes each week. This would allow me to expose the students to a wide range of music. I do get the occasional break when someone does bring their own music, but I have heard comments that my music is often missed, and that I’m frequently complimented on my choices.


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