Dreams Matter

I was reminded this past school year how dreams matter. I love to tell students that because they don't hear it enough. When I say it, they listen and it's like watering a garden. Life starts cropping up.

I try to be realistic when I talk about dreams. They don't all come true exactly like we envisioned they would be. Part of the beauty of it is how that initial dream takes shape over time.

When I was young I wanted to make movies. In my late teens I started wanting to have a band. I dreamed of writing songs and recording. I envisioned doing both on a huge scale, being famous for it.

Instead I ended up as a tech coordinator in a small, rural school district. But all those years of playing around with instruments, songs and videos have paid off. I had a great time this year helping teachers and students in Music and Communications. The Music class was at our lower elementary and Communications was at the high school.

I loved how seriously everyone took their job and no one ever asked me how it would affect their grade.

What I've learned is the dream isn't about me. As a teen, I didn't consider that. Now I see the dream was planted then, but ultimately it was meant to inspire the people I'd meet over two decades later.

When I started working with the elementary students I got an idea for a project about dreams. I asked my daughter, age 16, to write a short chorus about following dreams. She wants to be a songwriter.

After she wrote some lyrics, I fleshed it out and taught it to the students.

They loved it. I had them draw some pictures of their dreams and we made this music video.