The Great Canadian Road Trip….Song #73/250: Jackpot by Jocelyn Alice

As I type these words today, another school year is coming to an end here in Canada. The end of the school year is a funny time for all whose lives revolve around bells and timetables. Slightly over a decade ago I attempted to put into words the mixture of emotions that teachers feel as the final days of such an intense personal and collective journey draw to their conclusion. Way back in my days on Blogger, I wrote these words. Please give them a quick read. 

June and July

It is the day after the last day of school.

I am sitting at my desk in my classroom. Except for me, the room is empty. It is very quiet.

As I look out at the room, it seems hard to believe that, a mere 24 hours ago, this space was filled with the energy, words and body heat of my students. Yesterday, this space was a beehive of activity and excitement and anxiety as the kids shared their last social moments together before heading off on their separate ways for the summer break. Today, there is no one here who requires my counsel, my knowledge or my sense of calm to take the edge off their own amped up sensibilities. Today, I am left alone with my thoughts. My time is my own.

I tidy the papers on my desk for the final time.

Before me sit the remnants of a frenetic last month of activity: results from school-level and area track and field meets (I coached the running events), a programme from the closing awards ceremony (where I presented eight awards), the agenda from our last staff meeting (where we discussed teaching assignments for next year, extra-curricular responsibilities, school-wide academic goals and so on), my class list for next year, as well as the class lists that contain the names of my students from this year, all neatly divided up and sorted into what are, hopefully, workable pairings/groups based on ability, social compatibility and gender, my copy of the consumable order (pencils, pens, paper, notebooks, etc.) which has already arrived, been inventoried and stored away in freshly dusted cupboards, and a sheaf of permission forms for the students to travel to the end of the year school picnic that I helped to organize down at the park by the waterfront.

Most importantly, I have my final academic report cards to sign and file. That truly closes out the year. Our shared journey together ends with my assessment of their accomplishments (or lack thereof) and, in doing so, my own assessment of how successful my year as their teacher has been. In neat, organized little boxes sit paragraphs of pronouncements on the state of each child’s personal evolution and, at the end, the letters of reaction from their parents once the report cards had gone home. Meetings of concern or complaint have, by now, been held and dealt with as best suited each situation. Discussions have been held, strategies mapped out and arrangements made for those students who require extra support for the coming year. I have notes from students asking, privately and nervously, who their teacher will be for the coming year, will they be in the same class as their friends, what is the state of their marks? I have assuaged their anxiety as best I could, but now, all of the unknowns are known and the residue of their relieved or bitter responses blanket my mind and my heart.

It always comes down to this. 

A school year, whose foundation is built upon personal trust between teachers and students, culminates in a crescendo of emotions ranging from gratitude to anger to indifference on behalf of those whose world you were the center of mere days ago. The evidence of this human interaction lays in piles of papers on my dusty desk, awaiting their time to be filed and stored in a secure location. In a year or two, I will stumble upon these track and field results and wonder why I bothered to keep them, but, for now, they are evidence of my purpose as an educator and my relationship with the students whose lives I am purported to have touched.

So, in the solitude of my room, I file and tidy until my desktop is bare.

The bulletin boards have been stripped during the past few weeks. The students’ desks have been emptied and stacked neatly in one corner of the room, revealing an always surprisingly large amount of floor space. The bookshelves have been dusted, book bins sorted and wiped. Art supplies, cleaned and kept, or else discarded, depending on their state. Science equipment, put back from whence it came behind cupboard doors. The floor swept. Curtains drawn. Computers powered down. Whiteboards erased. Everything is done.  Nothing remains here for me to do.  

I am no one’s teacher any longer. It is time for Mr. MacInnes to go home.

The school year always begins with an empty classroom, a teacher and groups of young boys and girls. And, so it ends, with a teacher and the ghosts of those relationships.

I take one last look around the classroom that has been home to so much activity and marvel at how peaceful and serene it all appears to me now. It is so, so quiet. And empty.

There is nothing left to do.

I gather up the dusty family photos that sat atop my desk all year, wipe them clean and pack them for home.

I close the door. 

Exit the building. 

Walk into the warm sunshine of summer.

Alone.

Silently. 

This is always how it begins. This thing we call Summer.

                                                       June and July  by Tom MacInnes, 2014.

As much as I always found the annual summertime transition from classroom teacher to regular Joe to be somewhat disorienting, it is nothing compared to what my eldest daughter Leah is about to experience. A few days from now, she will graduate from high school. As milestones go in life, this is one of the bigger ones along the way. The end of highschool marks the symbolic end of childhood. The acceptance of that graduation diploma represents the proverbial cutting of strings from the mittens of each person who began their school career as a child wearing rubber boots and a backpack covered in cartoon characters, wanting nothing more from life than to read a good book, have fun with their friends and maybe enjoy a cold chocolate milk along the way. Now, when that walk across the graduation stage is over and the applause has subsided and the photos have been snapped, what awaits is the world of adulthood. The responsibility that comes with accepting that graduation diploma is nothing less than the awesome task of saving the planet from overheating and our species from becoming extinct. For my daughter, I would be equally happy if she simply lived a happy, healthy life and got to experience how love feels when it finds your heart.

Needless to say, as graduation draws near, we are all filled with the mixed emotions that arise when faced with change. We have always been a family that functions best on organization and routine. We take comfort in predictability. For that reason, it is not surprising that we have all been engaging in doses of wistful nostalgia lately. Our lives together as a family have been good so far. Our memories are mainly happy ones. It is because of those trips down memory lane that we arrive at today’s latest pit stop on the Great Canadian Road Trip, a small but special place known to us as the Merwin Greer woods.

As new parents, you are faced with an avalanche of life-altering decisions with regard to the health and happiness of your newborn child. Some of those decisions can be researched and arrived at with a fair degree of confidence that the choice you have made for your child is a good one. However, some other choices are made in a more random fashion with the hope that it will all somehow work out for the best in the end. This is sorta, kinda what happened when it came time for our eldest daughter to start her school career. I know that some parents “shop” for schools that they feel will give their child some sort of competitive advantage in life. For us, we basically had a simple choice between two schools. One school had a population of over 800 students and offered French Immersion programming. The other school was a small community school that was actually the one within the neighbourhood boundary in which we lived. That school has never had much more than 100 students the whole time we have lived in our home. It also did not offer French Immersion programming. After some consideration of the pros and cons of each school, we opted for the smaller community school experience. While our daughter bemoans not having a level of fluency in French that would have come with enrolment at the larger school, we, as her parents, have never regretted our decision. The small community school experience was wonderful for both of our girls. We loved the staff at the girls’ school. We loved getting to know the other families who made up that school community. We also liked that both of our daughters established good relationships with their classmates and also with their teachers. All things considered, the memories of elementary school that both girls possess are warm ones. This brings us to today’s song, “Jackpot”, by Jocelyn Alice.  

Jocelyn Alice is a Calgary born singer who has had one Top 40 hit in her career, and “Jackpot” is that song. She originally gained fame as a contestant on a pre-American Idol style talent show called Popstars, finishing in the runner-up spot the year she competed. Alice decided to give a career in singing a go and formed a band with a friend of hers that they called Jocelyn and Lisa. That partnership failed to make it in the world of music, so Jocelyn Alice opted to try out a solo career. On her debut album released in 2016 was a song called “Jackpot”. It cracked the Top 40 in Canada and the U.S. and earned her an invitation to sing the Canadian national anthem at the 2017 Major League Baseball All-Star game in Miami. Unfortunately, Alice botched the anthem by giggling throughout it. She received much criticism and has yet to be heard from again on a national scale. If “Jackpot” remains as the only song of hers to earn airplay, then it will have been worth it for no other reason than that this song has meaning for my eldest daughter. It is meaning that is coming into play as her graduation date draws near.

One of the things that Leah associates with her time at her tiny elementary school is safety. I don’t use that word in terms of a fear of dangerous things happening. That school was a bucolic setting if there ever was one. There was nothing to worry about in terms of violence or bullying. Instead, when I mention the word safety, I am talking about the emotional warmth that comes from spending time with good people who care about your wellbeing. That is the key attribute that helped make our children’s elementary school experience so valuable. They spent their formative days in an environment where everyone knew everybody else, and there was always someone there who cared about you and how you were feeling. As part of her time there, Leah has fond memories of the role music played in establishing that sense of community. Music was played at assemblies, during Christmas concerts put on for the school community, during celebrations for birthdays and the birth of new babies, as well as when fundraising rallies were held for a teacher who had developed cancer. Songs such as “Brave” by Sara Bareilles, “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten, “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang, all became songs that formed the soundtrack to those formative years. The staff and teachers at that tiny school knew that music helps create emotions and that as part of their deliberate plan to create a caring atmosphere for children like ours, there would be music played that had meaning for the kids. I wrote a previous post about how the song “That Power” by will i am featuring Justin Beiber was used at school that you can read here.

And so it was this past weekend that my two daughters came upstairs at one point  muttering and mumbling about a song called “Jackpot”, asking me if I knew it. Leah said that the song was stuck in her head. She insisted that I would recognize the tune if I heard it. So I immediately took her up on that challenge and called the song up on YouTube. She was right. I recognized it immediately, as will you if you choose to give it a listen. “Jackpot” may be Jocelyn Alice’s only hit song, but it was one of those ubiquitous songs of the summer that seem to pop up year after year, and, as such, it is a song that I am sure we will be hearing on the radio at random times for many years to come.  

As for Leah, “Jackpot” was also one of those soundtrack songs from her elementary school career. It is a song that she associates with feelings of warmth and security at a time when a huge life change approaches. As we all know, the one constant in life is change. We all go through periods of transition at various times in our lives. Some of those transitions are familiar, such as the end of the school year was for me. That didn’t make those changes in routine any less jarring as I went through them year after year. But, guess what? I survived them all and have lived to tell the tale in blog posts such as this one. However, other changes are less familiar. They are giant leaps into the unknown. That is more like what Leah is facing as she prepares to walk across that graduation stage in a few days. She has had a safe and happy childhood to this point. We know it, but more importantly, she knows it, too. A period of life that was filled with warm fuzzies concludes with a handshake from her principal, a round of applause from the audience and a series of photos from those who love her most. Then, she walks off that stage and the next phase of life begins. As parents, we are confident that Leah will do well in whatever path she chooses to follow. Leah is not so confident. Straying from the familiar can be scary. The one thing that she needs to remember is how it feels to be loved and to know you are safe and cared for. Part of what will help her to remember those feelings are songs such as “Jackpot” by Jocelyn Alice. We all need songs in our lives that remind us of the good times.  “Jackpot” and “Celebration” and “Brave” and “That Power” all do for Leah. I am eternally grateful to the staff at Merwin Greer Public School for giving my daughter the gift of music and linking it with such positive memories that she can take forward with her into adulthood. 

On the very same day that Leah walks across that graduation stage, those teachers at Merwin Greer P.S. will be spending their last day with the students in their own classrooms. It will be a day of parties and assemblies and cupcakes and freezies and, of course, of music. And then, the noise will subside, the students will pack up for the final time, the parents will offer their thank yous as they come to collect their children and then, suddenly, the world will grow still and quiet. Those same teachers will return to their classrooms and tidy them one final time…in solitude. It will seem surreal. Then they will pack up as well and go home to places where no one calls them Mrs. or Mr., simply mom or dad or Honey. Leah and several hundred other students like her will take their bows, pose for photos, be the centre of their own family celebrations, and then their world will still, too. Childhood will be over. The grand adventure that is adulthood awaits. The world will be theirs to enjoy and experience. And, of course, there will be music. 

The link to the video for the song “Jackpot” by Jocelyn Alice can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here. 

The link to the official website for Jocelyn Alice can be found here.

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