It’s the Little Thing
By Dr. Marci D
March 6, 2025
Recently our school celebrated Music In Our School Week and we dressed up each day just to show our musical spirits. One of the days we dressed to represent various genres of music, so some people (staff and students) represented pop, hip hop, classical, country and I of course represented reggae music. During my class, I decided to use the idea as a Social Emotional Learning activity and included questions like “What’s your favorite type of music and why? Why do you listen to music? I was surprised to hear students respond that they didn’t listen to music. I went on to explain that music is a way of life and can relieve stress as listening to music can put us in a better mood. It can also help to put us in a better mood. We had a healthy discussion about the benefits of listening to music and the positive impact it can have on our brain depending on the type of music we listen to. 
Another thing that we did was that we discussed the quote from Bob Marley’s “Trench Town Rock” – “One good thing about music when it hits you, you feel no pain.” I told them that Bob Marley was from Jamaica and that I was representing reggae music genre of music. I even played the Trench Town Rock song for them. This set the mood for our class for the day. As we got into our lesson and the project that we were working on, one of the students who is from Peru and an English Language Learner came to me with his chromebook in his hand. I thought he was coming to clarify the assignment he was working on. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when he came to show me that he had done a Google translate statement which read “mi papa es muy fan de Bob Marley y le puso a mi hermana Marley por el”. Which was translated as, “My dad is a big Bob Marley fan and named my sister Marley after him.” I grinned as if I had just won a lump sum of money. I was so excited that I had connected with him just because of my discussion of the genre of music that I was representing. I felt proud and so did he. In fact, he too was grinning! I knew that we had both struck gold for the day. Soon three other students were saying that their mom, aunt, and uncle loved to listen to Bob Marley’s music. It was also a game changer for the day.
A day later, a student bought me a snack from the cafeteria because he said that I looked sad and needed cheering up and his way of cheering me up was to treat me with a snack! I am grateful that another “little thing” came into my space to encourage me and let me know that I am still valuable as a teacher and a person. I will not take any of it for granted. It is simply the little things that can make a big difference. With so many issues that I may face during a school day, what are some of the little things that have helped to make the day bearable or even to put a smile on my face? I must count it as joy when they come.