Sitting on my porch (it was warm today!) and contemplating a placid sunset over an urban tableaux, I got a chuckle thinking about the time I made my American History class a music class. Don’t get me wrong, I used multimedia in my courses to the extent I could over there but this one class was special. They were 11th graders in a highly advanced hard science/bilingual English profile (track) and were just an odd bunch. A mix of oddballs, stoners, very smart and very clever kids who had clearly come to a compact of how they would conduct themselves as a class, they were my most difficult during my first year at the Hungarian school.

At one point that year I cursed at them in the class, which got me a small reprobation among the staff but marked the beginning of a general change in attitude. Since this happened when they were 10th graders, the following year I was to teach them American History, which, by the way, was my favorite course that I taught over there, if the most difficult. So, they were a great class and we did American History.

I wanted to get up to the Reagan revolution but didn’t make it that far, so we were going to have to end amidst the counterculture. We had watched “Berkeley in the 60’s” and sniggered a bit at some of the antics, but overall it was much appreciated. I figured we’d go out in a bang, and it seemed that a big group sing along would be the perfect way to do so.

As was the difficulty with teaching such a course, it was tough to select just the right few songs. The play list was: Buffalo Springfield – “For What It’s Worth,” Janis Joplin – “Me and Bobby McGee,” Jefferson Airplane – “White Rabbit,” and closing out the set, two from Peter, Paul and Mary – “This Land is Your Land” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I cleared out my new language lab and set it up as best as I could as amphitheatre so we could sit without desks (something that is rarely done within Romanian schools.) Our resident guitarists had a hard time keeping up, but we got into some full fledged singing.

I think that’s part of what they find amusing about us Americans; the passion with which we approach certain things in life are not valued as a priority in their traditional culture. So as we sang about that magic dragon, the one who is known by all of a certain tradition, I felt as if we had come far and benefited one another. To sing with gusto is to live.