Yesterday was our Leader in Me time during our homeroom period. My kids were grumpy because we didn’t go outside, but such is life. We’d not had a homeroom time in a while and the videos we watched were pretty cool. Our lesson focused around thinking with a win-win mentality, where my success breeds your success. We figure out ways where we can both find what we need and be able to “win”. Not a bad idea for middle schoolers who always see things in black and white!

#truedat

Anyway, we watched two videos about the Landfill Harmonic. Now, if you’ve never seen this group, they are amazing for several reasons. They are a group from Paraguay

who play instruments made out of recycled things from the landfill. The items they’ve found are turned from trash to treasure, which by itself is pretty awesome. But there’s more!

#dotell

It started as a way to get instruments into the hands of kids who are passionate about music but morphed into something much bigger. They end up playing with the music group Megadeath as their lead singer and one of the kids started to interact through email. They played with Metallica as they were touring in South America and spent some time touring through the US and Canada.

I bring this up because the passion of a few created this awesome experience for a number kids who were able to do things they’d never thought possible. One of the girls interviewed said something to the effect that she “wanted to be a professional musician.” She “couldn’t imagine a life where this did happen.”

#damn

Exactly. So in class today, I showed the Rockin’ 1000 and their first performance of the Foo Fighters’ Learning to Fly. Honestly, I’m slightly obsessed with this video because there’s SO MUCH happening. But, that’s not the point. This group was formed to get the attention of the Foo Fighters, so they’d come to their city in Italy and play! 250 bass players, guitar players, percussionists, and singers came and killed their rendition of the song. Dave Grohl was quick to post on YouTube, saying that they’d come to play.

This reason I bring both of these up, they started with a small group of passionate people, so much so that they willed the creation of groups that eventually benefited a larger community. There was no “Plan B”, the plan they had was one they wanted to be successful, and they made it so. We talked about finding that passion ourselves for getting to school, getting to practice, or where ever. Some smartass said something to the affect of “my mom gets me to school,” to which I asked what would happen if she stopped? We talked about how the external piece (your mom) might go away, so we needed to be internally motivated to make sure that it’s always

#Iknowright

I love to go to school because it’s never the same thing twice. Different kids, different homes, different attitudes! I can’t do a job where I’d be doing the same thing over and over again. I love the fact that my job is never the same two days in a row. I told my students this, and I could see light bulbs go off.

What’s your passion? What gets you up and going each morning? I love to hear your thoughts in the comments! 🙂