Perussion.

I love the title of the Paul Hirsch article - "Percussive Editing." In the interview, Hirsch explains his background as a high school percussionist, and goes on to relate percussion to his job as a film editor. "The way percussion is related to editing is that it's all about time, dealing with different portions of time, dividing time into very small bits, or different bits, that relate to each other in different ways," (p. 194). Can't we build an "imaginative bridge" here, reflecting on the musical and cinematic rhythms of our classroom instruction and tasks? Take an hour, the day, perhaps the week, the month, the semester or the school year? How do these bits of time relate? How does today's instruction tie into tomorrow's lesson? Is the form, or structure of a lesson plan, well-established? Is there a steady meter or pace to the delivery, the tasks and the experience? Our time spent in the classroom should have a percussive curve to it much like that of music and film. A curve with a steady pace at times, then drama or accents, tempo changes, crescendos, then decrescendos, balance, dynamic, and resolve. It's not unlike the "meter" of a compelling film.

Film. Music. Classroom.