It's Not Just Music-It's Sound! with Hayes Greenfield
Hayes Greenfield is a jazz musician, composer, and teaching artist. In this episode he shares the importance of not just music-but sound and how teaching students about sound can enhance social emotional learning and student attention. Join us for this informative conversation that is about so much more than just music and listening.
Links from the episode
Hayes Greenfield’s website
Creative Sound Play website
Creative Sound Play for Young Learners book publisher website
The Door youth development program
Friends of the Children youth program
Stephen Shames website (mentioned in episode)
Roy Lichtenstein page from Smithsonian Institution
Hettie Jones page from the Academy of American Poets
Clancy Blair page from NYU Steinhardt College of Education
Lenox Hill Neighborhood House website mentioned in episode
Adele Diamond page from University of British Columbia
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions and SEL Resource. I am Scott Lee.
As summer is upon us and we end the spring semester of The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast until September, I would like to share a conversation I had with Hayes Greenfield. Hayes is a working jazz musician and composer who has released 10 albums and scored dozens of films, documentaries, and commercials. But he is also a teaching artist in public and private K-12 schools. He created and implemented curricula for K-12 students, and professional development workshops for special needs District 75 teachers in New York City. He created a Pre-K program for PNC Bank’s “Grow Up Great Initiative,” developed sound-based programming at the Lenox Hill Early Childhood Center’s Head Start program, and consulted at Bank Street Head Start.
He is the founder of Creative Sound Play a sound-based, generative learning system for Pre-K students and the companion book Creating Sound Play for Young Learners which we will discuss, but first we talk about his music career and how he became a teaching artist.
Welcome to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast, Hayes.
Hays Greenfield: Well, Scott, it's really wonderful to be here and it's a thank you for the wonderful opportunity to speak with you.
Scott Lee: So first off, you a working musician? Do I have that correct?
Hays Greenfield: you are.
Yes. I, I'm, I'm a working musician. I'm a working composer. I'm a teaching artist. and uh, an educator and I've been doing this stuff for many years. To survive as a musician, you really have to do a lot of different things. You know, I've been a sound designer, which for like commercials, I've done that and that's very interesting. It's kind of like I did that in the, in the nineties. I've been an electronic musician. I've worked with an amazing machine called the Synclavier, which was like the state of the art digital audio workstation.
I'm still an electronic musician, or an acoustic, electro acoustic musician, because I put my saxophone through a whole lot of guitar effects pedals, and I use loopers, and I do it in surround sound, I put, I put it in quad, and, and. in four speakers in a room and the audience within them. And I, every loop I'd make, I can have it go around the room different ways. So, all of a sudden it puts a lot of air in the room. And I did some work with a 3d filmmaker who's been around the world with, with these made the Aurora Borealis in 3d. And We have a, we had an hour long, eight pieces where he edited his videos in real time and could mess them around. And I would play my pieces in real time. And I would be listening, he'd be watching or both, whatever. And so, it was all about like, you know, mixing the the audio, I mean the visual.
Yeah,
Scott Lee: That's really interesting, and to, and to do that live as well, mixing and editing all at once.
Hays Greenfield: It was amazing, and so that, so you're looking at the glasses and the glasses in 3d and playing like this and it's like, and then, and the sounds going around your head, so you're hearing something interact behind you and then all of a sudden, it's in front of you interacting with something else.
Scott Lee: So how does a working musician start working with kids in schools?
Hays Greenfield: Well, I started working back in 93, 92, at an afterschool program called “the Door.” And, it worked with kids 13 to 20 I started to run the music program there. And then I wrote a song called “For the Children” and it was about the problems kids were dealing with, with violence and abuse. And I got Richie Havens, I don't know if you know Richie, he's a folk singer. Oh
Scott Lee: yeah, well I don't know him personally, but oh yes, I definitely know Richie Havens.
Hays Greenfield: So, I wrote this song with him in mind, and he actually performed it for me.
And it was, I called him up one day. And I said, Richie, I have a song that I wrote with you in mind. He says, okay, go sing it. I said, I started to sing it and I got like halfway through and I said, I'm not, I can't sing this to you. You're Richie Havens. He said, I'll do it. You know, and he was beautiful. I didn't know him. That was the first time I met him. And he was amazing. And then I did some gigs with him. And, I stopped playing for a while and made the video of where I worked with four different community programs in New York City to write and shoot and help to develop a, a film that was called for the children that actually went on to win an award and was, was distributed through the educational media network to high schools because it was dealing with programs.
That we're working with, adult intervention and community programs for solving a lot of the issues of teen violence, abuse, in pregnancy, all of these things that communities, if they come together, we all know that, that if we provide opportunity for young people. Opportunity for young people to challenge themselves, take risks, learn things. And with people that are caring and loving it, it crosses many divides. And so, I did that. And then, I met this guy named Steve Shames, cause I know that you're interested in Friends of the Children, and Steve had been, in the end of the 80s, he had been documenting kids in poverty, and he had a book called Outside the Dream, and then he switched and, he did the next level of it, which was do a book that was called Pursuing the Dream, which he went around the country and documented all of these amazing programs, like parenting programs, for example, a parent they don't realize that if they just took a sock and sew it on a button or two, that it's not, it's not the expensive toy that makes a difference. It's the communication and the love between the child and the parent to have this, to bond.
Scott Lee: Sure.
Hays Greenfield: So, their programs and at the time, in the early nineties, it was coming off of the crack epidemic epidemic and kids were getting killed for their Nikes and, I mean, it was like in New York, it was every other day that you were reading about somebody getting shot for their sneakers, so, Steve did this book called Pursuing the Dream. And. It was part of where I was kind of going with kids and young people. And I wanted to make a movie about his work. And, he documented this program in Portland, Oregon, called, Friends of the Children, which looked for the most, the kids who had the most troubled past, who were adolescents, and paired them with a mentor, a paid mentor who makes a commitment to be with a kid for 10 years.
And The ramifications of that, not only were for the kids who had now somebody that they could trust and develop a bond with, but it helped the parents, where parents who, who didn't know how to read, started to learn to read. Or the story that's in the film about this gang member, and this mentor goes up to him and says, “this kid is mine now. I'm, I'm here him as mentor.”
And the gang member goes like, “It's cool.” He's, he's looking at this kid. This kid's going to survive. He's going to get out of this, because he's got this mentor possibly. And it's like, so the gang member says, “you got it.”
So, it's, it was a very amazing program. So then during that time, I'm a film composer and Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist, was my saxophone. I had done a movie on him, a documentary and the director of the film said, “hey, would it help to meet” Roy and get some ideas?
I said, “sure, let's go have lunch.” So, we had lunch with Roy and Roy and I became good friends. Roy used to, like, come with me to the door where I, where I would teach and play with the kids with the saxophone when he got to a certain level. And at some point he'd sit in with me on some gigs because he was very serious.
He was very, like, he practiced all the time and really was. And, I had made a CD called Jazzmatazz. I had actually an idea for a CD of taking all traditional children's tunes and jazz them up. And Roy loved the idea. And so. He said, “I'd love to produce this.” And I said, “okay, do you want to do that?” And he and his wife, Dorothy, produced this CD and, he was going to play on it, but unfortunately, he had passed away. And one of the students from The Door who knew Roy, because they used to talk alto to each other when they were learning, it was great. He ended up playing for, for Roy and, the CD came out and won five awards.
It got Publishers Weekly, Child, Child Magazine, a whole bunch of stuff, and the jazz community, unfortunately, kids at that point were not cool, right, right, that started switching around 2002, 2003, but this was 98, so it was very frustrating to me because the jazz community wouldn't even. So anyway, so I started doing, assembly programs and because I've been teaching in schools and doing different things. I had, I had mentored kids who'd been incarcerated at Rikers. I had been, working in a leadership program and had just doing all different kinds of stuff.
So, I started doing some, some stuff with pre-K. Which at the time I thought was too exhausting. I get, I was exhausted from these kids, you know?
Scott Lee: Oh yes.
Hays Greenfield: And then I started doing a bunch of stuff with, young audiences, New York started to represent me in the school, in the school system. They had a grant, a big grant for special needs schools that are always left out. It's, it's so sad. It is so sad. And, they just had tons of work and special needs because one of the, somebody there who had left the program had put in this grant and they got the grant.
And I loved doing it. So, they said, I did tons of special needs schools. And I was doing, and it was the tri-state area in New York. A bunch of stuff in New Jersey, and all over the place. And, this woman asked me to do a music program she wanted me to do a residency with her special needs high school students. I said, sure. And we discussed it the kids, their hand eye coordination or their physical dexterity makes it very difficult for challenging for them to be able to play a note and play like, what we consider a tune and whatnot.
Scott Lee: Right.
Hays Greenfield: And, and I said, well, why don't we just do a sound workshop with them and do a 10 day and do it where I come every day. So, they really have time with me. And we learned about pitch, volume, and duration. Whether it's high, like a squeaky note, or low, long, or short, or loud, and we did. And it was remarkable how these kids all just jumped on it and they would, would play silence. It's like if you give children, the opportunity, one of the things to make sound, it's like magic, right?
And if you give them the opportunity to make sound and then say, well, how about making that sound go from very quiet to very loud and then very quiet again, they love to do it.
Scott Lee: Mm hmm.
Hays Greenfield: Because, you're challenging them, right? Because, children love to be challenged. That's a matter of their special needs or not special needs or what any, none of it matters.
Scott Lee: Right. And, and what you're doing is essentially, just like a tool. You're building something with sound.
Hays Greenfield: Well, you're, you're totally plugging in. So as soon as you start to listen and actively listening, you're developing your inhibitory control. Because you're not speaking, you're listening, you're actively listening. You're thinking about, you're hearing what those sounds are, you're differentiating them, you'd be upset.
Whoa. Okay. You're developing your working memory because you're hearing different sounds, do different things. And then when you get a chance to do different kinds of sounds, you're developing your cognitive flexibility. And these are the three main attributes of executive function skills.
Scott Lee: Sure. So.
Hays Greenfield: Right. So, so as you develop that stuff and, I think about when we're talking about this, like what you were talking about, that knowing about the technical or the, the intellectual, I don't, I don't even know the properties as to why this stuff is right.
Scott Lee: Right.
Hays Greenfield: Because, you know, I'm a, I'm an intuitive. I'm a very intuitive thinker and musician. But when I started to learn about executive function skills, it really kind of put me into, another zone to make sure that what this is about, I don't want to even say what I'm doing. I'm probably sounding confused now.
Scott Lee: No. One of the things that I've noticed when I'm having conversations with teaching artists, which, which I do a lot, whether they're using the terms or not, it is so much about the executive functioning and using and music is such a good way to motivate kids, especially younger kids, because it is something that we're wired to control.
Hays Greenfield: Okay. But Scott, you can't say the word music, it's not music we're talking about, we're talking about sound. And for everybody who's listening, there's a reason why I'm saying this. It is about music and I'm saying this because I'm a musician, but I can also tell you that it has nothing to do with music.
It's about sound. And it's, and the reason why is because my biggest challenge is with adults who say when they hear the word sound, everybody says 99.9 percent of the time, they say, you mean music. And what happens with a pre-K teacher, what happens with a teacher who's not schooled in music, who doesn't know anything about music, who loves music. Music is the closest thing to magic. That we know it is the closest thing to magic that it will overwhelm a teacher and it will shut them down because especially pre-K teachers who they don't do it for the money, the pre-K teachers. They are my heroes. They do it strictly for the calling and they won't do it because they want to help a young child.
Scott Lee: Yes.
Hays Greenfield: And because 99 percent of them don't play an instrument, have never studied music, they feel when they hear the word sound and they, they put it together as music, they freak out.
They say, “I can't do this.” And why should they, why should anybody expect a pre-K teacher to walk into a classroom and teach their kids music? That's the farthest thing from what I'm doing, and I'm a serious musician and a studied musician, and I have my own problems with music.
I'm dyslexic. And as a dyslexic person, the type of challenges I've had is dealing with the mechanics of English of any language and the mechanics of the language of music, which maybe is the reason why I was able to figure this stuff out. And when I was working with some special needs kids, they helped me. They like guided me into the importance of sound, just the importance and the elements of sound. So, for you teachers out there, it's about pitch. Is it high like a bird tweet, tweet. We can all make a tweetie sound, or is it low like a lion, or go in between, right? You can do anything you want, or is it loud?
Hey, why? Hey, we all can do that long or short. That's it. Pitch, volume, and duration. It has nothing to do, with music. It's only sound. And as I said to you earlier, I was working with the Synclaviar here, right? Sound design, sound design. Is all about orchestration and it's orchestrating sounds. I had to do a sound of where somebody said, clean up aisle five. It was a toy Toys R Us had this commercial “clean up aisle five.” And I did this sound that was about like, it had a bowling ball. It had pins driving. Every sound had many sounds because it's about psychoacoustics. It's about like, if you hear.
Wind makes you feel cold. If you hear sizzling bacon, you think, ah, so, what are the sounds have to do? And this is for anybody again, who's listening to this, because this is strictly about sound. It has nothing to do with music. And I am the person who can tell you that because I am a musician and a sound artist.
Scott Lee: Right. And the other thing that I found interesting, and I'm going to skip kind of into your book, when you were discussing sound, you had an entire chapter, I believe on quiet or lack of sound,
Hays Greenfield: silence,
Scott Lee: silence. Yes, it was silence. The importance of silence. Where does that fit in as well?
Hays Greenfield: Silence is just as important as sound. Kids love to play silent. Kids love to play a big silence. I have had this live interactive children's jazz show that came out of Jazz in the Jazz. And I was doing this, on a bandstand, this is one of the times I really learned about this.
And, Hetti Jones, who's part of the beat generation of poets. lived around the corner from me. I was doing this thing at the Bowery Poetry Club, and she brought a poem, and I got her up and I had had these little hand, like party instrument, party sounds, right?
You go to the, like, the squeeze, and a shaker, and a different kinds of hand instruments, little kids, anybody can make, get party, party instruments, get the little horns. And so, I had these kids, like, they were all like three, four and five up on the bandstand and Hetti trying to recite this poem and the kids were just, just jamming, they couldn't stop.
And I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” And I stopped it. Cause Hetti was getting frustrated. And I looked at these kids. I said, so listen, here it is. When you play your sound, then you have to go ahead and play silence. Silence. And then you can play another sound, but you have to play silence in between. So, all of a sudden, the kids started going, whatever the thing was, whatever the sound was, which gave space. And it gave a time to breathe and a pause, so that Hetti had room to say her poem. And all of a sudden, it was like this magical day, magical moment. And I looked at the parents and I said, just tell them to play silence. Because for a kid, silence-it can be just as active.
And silence, silence builds tension. You don't know what somebody is going to say. You really want to make your point. Remember that commercial, you know, EF Hutton,
Scott Lee: right,
Hays Greenfield: right. It's, it's a relief from sound. When you have a lot of sound, that silence is a pause. It's great. And when there's too much sun, it's deafening. So, you have to make sound. So it becomes this incredibly important, but sound provides is opportunities. Yeah. It provides opportunities to plug into the one thing that every child absolutely adores doing. They do it alone. It's collaborative in nature. And it provides these opportunities to play, make mistakes, do it again.
It's all play based. I mean, that's the beauty about being a musician. Cause when I go to a gig, I say, I go to play,
Scott Lee: right.
Hays Greenfield: I'm playing music and it's, and it's like, so this is the same thing. It's sound. You're playing with it, it's not stressful. And it plugs into whatever children can just be their lovable selves. They don't have to learn anything new. They don't have to learn any kind of new techniques. They don't have to become anything. All they have to do is be their wonderful selves. And as you start to work with sound, and as you start to guide a little bit of the sound and, and children love to do it and they take agency, they take agency immediately and then they can share with how they feel about the sound.
You know, sounds can be scary. Sounds can be soothing. Sounds can be incredibly irritating. Right. Right.
Scott Lee: Right.
Hays Greenfield: Try try taking your blood pressure while the guy is outside with a, with a leaf blower. Yes. And see where you, see where you, I, I've done that and it's, and it's, my blood pressure's been high.
Really? I'm serious. Sound is a, is an amazing, untapped resource. Because it plugs into what children just do naturally.
Scott Lee: It's so interesting that you, that you talk about it in those terms and the silence. One of the things that I learned and that I try to teach educators about is, especially when you're dealing with a kid who is acting in a difficult way.
Is ask a question as quietly as you can, but where they can still hear and then don't say anything else. And take back ownership of whatever the situation that's happening, uh, because that silence, will sooner or later become uncomfortable.
Hays Greenfield: and we'll make them reflect
Scott Lee: That's so interesting that, that you use it in, in a similar, in a very different way. So, yeah, the silence, I found was very interesting in the book. So, tell us more specifically about, Creative Sound Play.
Hays Greenfield: So Creative Sound Play it's something that I've spent a long time, It's about providing children with opportunities and license to be able to express themselves with sound and communicate with each other and when we talk about silence, like something that's very important is just actively listening, sitting and listening to a room or if you're on the playground, listening to the sounds around you.
And then discussing them. If you're listening, if you're in the classroom and you spend a moment to listen and there's sounds outside in the hallway, what are they, are they people talking? Is it, what kind of people are they? Little people? Are they adults? Are they men? Are they women? Are they girls?
Are they boys? What, what are they? Teenagers? What are the, what are the sounds you're hearing? And it's about discussion. It's about giving children. It's very analog, right? It's like really plugging in. One of the things that teachers tell me all the time is it they're so rushed and it's like old school in the sense of let's just listen.
Let's be mindful and listen to what's going on in the room and through those opportunities. You're talking about somebody being disciplined, right? I forget what term you use. So, this is what happened when a teacher that I've been working with finally got really familiar with sound. That she had a student that had a jigsaw puzzle and couldn't get that last piece in was started to slam it down on the table really loud and instead of her being punitive and saying stop you can't do that instead because she was listening to the sound listening to him she slammed her hand down on the table that is attention as well and then he did it again and she got a little softer And then he got softer and then another teacher who walked by knew what was going on and threw in a clap.
And all of a sudden, yeah, exactly all of a sudden, and they have this, and he gets any self regulates. He has this conversation. It's with sound, it moves from being, aggressive to now having fun and it's a whole different level and not one word.
Scott Lee: And I was just about to say, nobody said a word, did they?
Hays Greenfield: No, and it's, which, which opens up a whole other level. Like, for example, I do this course on the, the, the National Head Start Association's website. We do it twice a year and I do a live interactive coaching sessions. And I was doing it with coaches. So, she has her teachers that she taught to.
And, I do this thing. What's called a quick focus warmup. Okay. It goes zip,
It could be anything. Zip Z, right?
Scott Lee: Mm-Hmm.
Hays Greenfield: and blah, blah, blah, blah. Lot of funny sounds that you, that you're making with your voice. And what happens with that is that she discovered , remember, about opportunity and license because she's giving them opportunity and license to do this.
Her kids that had language delays who were frustrated because they couldn't think they're trying to figure out what the words are. They're trying to say what they need and they can't they're frustrated and they they're then being aggressive and hitting out and punching when they want to get attention or communicate now that her children are have these alternate ways to make sound all of a sudden the communicating with fun, with joy and there's no more aggressive stuff. They're not reaching out and hitting and grabbing or any of that stuff. And all it is, is providing opportunity and license to be able to work with sound and sound is something we're all sound asleep. Everybody is sound asleep when it comes to sound.
It's ubiquitous. But sound is so, it's so vibrant. It's so alive. It's so readily available and it helps teachers teach because all of a sudden, a teacher, when you start working with sound, transition times They are the Achilles heel. They're the challenge of everybody.
Scott Lee: Yes, absolutely.
Hays Greenfield: Right. And teachers think they have to have a whole like arsenal of stuff, a whole tool chest filled transition times are the most amazing gems. They are such a gift to education because they happen regularly throughout the whole day. And all of transition is, is you're getting your kids focused.
It'd be five seconds or five minutes. You're getting the focus to move from the tables to this to the rug. To get up from the rug to put on their coats to go outside. All you need is like four different. kind of approaches to how you want to work with sound. So, you ask, what is Creative Sound Play?
It starts with transitions and it focuses, on making different kinds of transitions work that become fun. They transform transitions in these short learning bursts. You can have the thing just with like, here's one for everybody. This is another one that's just, here's a freebie for y'all. If you're hearing me and you want to surprise your kids. So it's all it is is just messing around with volume. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3.
That's all it is. And every teacher out there, if you're listening, go do this and you don't even have to say count with me, just start counting, surprise them. And you'll see, they're going to look at you like really funny. And then eventually they're going to start counting in with you. And as you change your volume,, they're going to, you're going to see how well their active listening skills are.
Scott Lee: And
Hays Greenfield: then they'll come down when you get down. And then when you go back up, they'll go, I really have to come down now. Right. There is just a transition, right? Whenever that takes 10 seconds, 15 seconds, you got everybody going to move to the, move to the tables and back. Right. 45 minutes later, you have another transition.
Work on it again. 45 minutes. Another one. Have one of the kids lead it. Start to become a facilitator. You're not, you don't have to lead everything. You can be a facilitator. That's where the agency and the kids start saying, Oh, “I want to do it this way.” And then they put in their own spin.
It works with any curriculum. Sound works with everything. And it's just a remarkable, like Adele Diamond, and this is where I started before and I backed up. So, when I started, when I started really digging deep into this, I went to a developmental neuroscientist, Clancy Blair. I had been doing this stuff at the PNC Bank, Grow Up Great Initiative. Do you remember that in the 2000s? Oh yeah, yeah. It was great. They, I mean, they spent a fortune and they really like figured some stuff out. Anyway, I had done a pilot for them and it wasn't really, it was, it wasn't done the way I really wanted to.
So I, I, I heard Clancy talking about “Tools of the Mind, another really great program. I called him up. He was at NYU and not far from my house. I just thought, well, you know, let me check him out. So, I call up Clancy and finally we hooked up. It took about six months to get a really good meeting with him. And I showed him what I was doing. And I said, “it's driving me nuts. Here is my stuff. I have this vision for this stuff.”
And he goes, “this is really great. What do you really need to, to develop this?”
And I said, “I need a pre-K program that's got teachers, I don't want to work with students right away. I want to work with the teachers.” They said, “we could put you in a really great place called the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, which is a Head Start program.” It's a one of the university settlements in New York City.
And I didn't have a paid job. I went there on my own to really work with the teachers and the students to really be able to codify this method. And I was there for five years. So, it gave me tremendous insight to how to do it. And, during that period of time I started to write a book, which ended up becoming a, Video curriculum, which is on my website, which is, is available for streaming, with students and teachers from Lennox Hill and me teaching this stuff.
So, you can actually see it in action, which is really very rare when it comes to learning online these days with learning management systems, right? That you can actually watch video and their kids in it. So, it's, it's really amazing. So. I, I started writing the book, and I heard Adele Diamond on the radio, I met Clancy was he was on the radio, and then two years later I was doing this thing and Adele's on the radio.
And she was on Krista Tippett, and Krista Tippett said to her at the end of it, said, “What do you want to leave your audience with?” And she says, “Well, there are a lot of people out there who don't have any degrees or any fancy job titles doing really good work that we need to be listening too.” So, I said I was dyslexic, right?
I didn't go to college. When I, I went to a very intense high school, and after that it was a very traumatic time for me. And I'm not putting myself, I got into Carnegie Mellon, I got into some other schools, I went another direction.
Scott Lee: Right.
Hays Greenfield: So I went and really and found musicians that I could work with even though I did go to Berklee College of Music for a year and a half, but that was really to study with this one cat named Joe Viola, a great saxophone teacher. And he wouldn't take you on unless you were a student. So I wasn't even in a credited program. I just wanted to get to Joe. I started to write the book and Adele's work is all about executive function skills and I don't want to go down a rabbit's hole and I want to make sure that what I'm doing is of value I'm an intuitive thought person and I know it isn't for me and I see it in the special needs and I've seen it with the early kids and actually could be even great with corporate executives. But, I was talking to Adele because I heard her on the radio, say we should be listening to them.
I called her up. She's my people. I mean, it's like, “hello, I don't have a degree, And I started writing my book” and I sent it to her. And I got this very kind of cryptic message from her and I called her up and I said, what do you mean about your email about the book? She goes, “well, why are you, why are you just focusing on EF?”
And I'm thinking about it and that's executive function skills. And it's her data that has shown over the last 35 years that if you enhance children's abilities with executive function skills, they enjoy learning, do better in school and go on to finish college. And it's a much better determinant than IQ. If you can develop, enhance, and develop your executive function skills, and your social emotional learning, so, I said, “well, what do you mean?” I said, “isn't what I do EF?” She goes, “Hayes.” And this is, I, I got a little uptight. She got, she sensed the thing, and she got very calm.
She goes, “yes, what you're doing is EF, and I love what you do. But why are you limiting yourself to just EF? When what you do is so much more.” And this is like a dyslexics, the shadow, the long tail when coming up in the 60s, nobody knew. I'm 60, almost 67, right? So, in the 60s and 70s, nobody knew anything about dyslexia.
And when you're dyslexic, you often put into a category of being stupid, being lazy, being, all of the negatives and I've only come to terms with this really like this year because I met another dyslexic who I'm working, who I was working with, who runs a fantastic pre-K program in, in Darien, Connecticut.
And. It's, it's mind boggling. And, and so what Adele offered me was, she said, “Hayes, why are you limiting yourself?” And it was like license and opportunity. It was like, “why don't I embrace my intuitive, smarts, intuitive intelligence?” And that's what Creative Sound Play is all about. If a teacher starts with it, they get the grasp of the quick start guide because it's, it's written in a way. So you have the quick start guide, right? Which is like the first three months or four months of the school year, September, October, November, December. And then once you start really getting a handle on that, it opens up to the, to the next bit, in January, you open up to incorporating all different kinds of hand percussion instruments, which then make all different kinds of textures of sounds that you can play with, that your kids can play with.
For example, so you can hear that, right? As opposed to that. Yeah.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Yeah.
Hays Greenfield: So, two different ways of clapping, cupping your
Scott Lee: hands, cupping your hands, and flat, flat clap. And, and I'm saying, I'm saying that because people can't see it.
Hays Greenfield: Right.
So that's, but that's, that's a different kind of sound. So that's becoming aware of the different types of texture, texture, like the, like our clothes.
Scott Lee: Right.
Hays Greenfield: When we go into store, into a clothing store, the first thing I always do, and everybody else does, is feel the material.
Scott Lee: Sure.
Hays Greenfield: Right, am I interested in that material? So we have now the, these, this texture of all these different, kinds of sounds and then there's ways to use children's be a roadmap for how they want it to sound or any kind of narrative you want to work with. It's all, it's all available. You can make a radio show, like, like the radio shows of the thirties and the forties when people are making the sound effects, and then the last part is about building sound sculptures where you're actually building. It's project based, your, your kids are learning and they've learned and they, they can take some of these transition times and any of the stuff that you've worked with and put it in a thoughtful and intentional way, a deliberate and intentional way of making sound.
And it becomes a beautiful culminating event for performance for parents and kids, families, and throughout this whole process, they've been developing their executive function skills, their social emotional learning, their mindfulness, their raising their self-esteem, their hand eye coordination, their empathy for each other.
They're taking agency and taking leadership. They're also being kids when kids lead, they're developing their, their leadership roles, but it's also very important to be a a good responder and a good part of the part of the community., So kids are developing that, they're making good choices.
Scott Lee: Yeah, and one of the things in our current big picture is people complain that not enough people are listening to each other. And these are the adults.
Hays Greenfield: Which is why I'm, I'm also a proponent of saying Creative Sound Play for corporate executives. Cause it's all about that. It's about getting rid of the ego. It's about spending the moment listening. Coming together to say, well, what's the, what are we, what are we doing together? We're making a thing together.
Scott Lee: So where can folks find out more about Creative Sound Play?
Hays Greenfield: Well, Creative Sound Play has a wonderful website now and I offer coaching sessions. I also offer where teachers can take the quick start guide and get a certificate. You gotta, watch the videos and just answer some questions.
It's pretty intuitive. It's pretty, like, makes a lot of sense. It's, it's not hard. And, the book is coming out. It's published by Routledge. It's part of their ION education series, their books. And it's going to be available on June 6th at a bookstore near you or from Routledge.
Scott Lee: And we'll have links to both of those on our website. Yes.
Hays Greenfield: And I hope you have a website for me for Creative Sound Play. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. I would love to make this possible for school systems, to really kind of begin to think about how to immediately start working with the quick start guide.
And in the book, there's also a whole thing about like, there's a macro, a micro, and a granular approach to how to learn. The different elements of sound, and it's not that you have to learn a whole lot. It's like, you just have to, whatever you do learn, you just be thorough about it.
So if you're going 1, 2, 3, 4, the next time you go 1, 2, 3, 4. So you just change it up and when, when teachers start doing with that with their kids and the kids the kids want to like one up each other. I mean, I there's so many stories. That it's just it's just beautiful.
Scott Lee: Yhank you so much. Hayes. We've enjoyed having you on today.
Hays Greenfield: Well Scott, I have to say it's been my pleasure. It's been an absolute treat. I was listening to some of your podcasts and they are so wonderful. So holistic. So natural. I'm so honored to be on your show.
Scott Lee: Oh, well thank you. I'm honored to have you as a guest.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 7 of the 2024 season we will return for our fall semester portion of the season in September-check our website for updates. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer, a member of the PodNooga Network. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guest pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
