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I often begin my Monday master class at Walnut Hill with a topic that has only tangential relationship to music. It is a way of getting the students to think of their lives in a wider context than the daily routine of practice, classes, and occasional performances. As a teacher I have an enormous opportunity to create possibility in every conversation. One class launched into a fascinating discussion about risk, danger, and breaking through barriers. Because I was going to NASA to give a leadership talk the next day, it occurred to me to ask the students to write about the similarities between the NASA program and their life with music. They know by now that what I mean is, "Talk about the dreams and aspirations in common, talk about spirit, talk about being." But I wasn't altogether prepared for the mastery with which they spoke of both music and the space program as possibility. Here are some of the spontaneous expressions they jotted down in class, addressed to the people I was about to meet at NASA.
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In the same way NASA uses mathematics and machinery, we musicians must use sound. Sound can explore the soul, coax out dreams and possibilities that before were lost in inky blackness. A beautiful sonata escapes gravity. We are not very different, you and I. Our minute individual persons are small, but our life-journeys can span galaxies. NASA is granted billions of dollars and, for the insistence of possibility it bestows on the world, it is worth every penny.
Amanda Burr, age 16
You are the diplomats, the representatives of the world over here. You are going into the nowhere to search and to be intrigued at the smallest inkling of discovery. You are representing us to discover, explore, and find the possibility to escape the box known as earth, and go as far as possible. You have the responsibility to push thinking and ideas beyond limits, into the ethers, through the nothing into the something. . . . Music is similar to space, it is an exploration, a responsibility to push through the confines of pages of music, to go as far and as fast as the mind will work. . . .
Dave Lanstein, age 16
The world counts on you to open up new possibilities and discover what we humans can do. ... The only time when music or space have boundaries is when humans create them. Thank you for keeping the possibilities alive.
Ashley Liberty, age 14
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When I came to give my talk to the NASA employees at the Robert Goddard Space Center, I walked on stage, looked out over the sea effaces, and saw there the very people described in the letters I held in my hand. During my presentation I told the NASA audience about the young people at the Walnut Hill School, read the letters, and left the originals with them. Not long after, I received a communication from the project manager. He said that the presentation had had a big impact and had helped reenergize and refocus many in the audience who had forgotten why they had come to work for NASA in the first place. And then he went on:
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NASA was ... incredibly moved by the talented young students who wrote their wonderful "letters to NASA." The letters captured a simple beauty as to why NASA exists. The students communicated in a way that those of us who work here have never been able to express. As you know, each person asked for a copy of the letters and was overwhelmed by the power of the message and the talent of your students.
Our people were so moved that they decided to write letters to your class. Their enclosed letters are a personal "thank you" and reveal a side of NASA not typically seen-a warm, emotional side that gets to the core of why we do what we do.
Please let your students know that when we showed the letters to one of our Space Station senior managers, the decision was made to include them on future space missions. The letters will be placed on a CD-ROM being prepared for the initial builders and inhabitants of the Space Station. Your students' words will continue to inspire our explorers, especially during the long and isolated times when they will face their greatest challenges in space.
On behalf of all of us at NASA, please give our heartfelt thanks to your students for their inspiration.
Sincerely yours,
Ed Hoffman
Program Manager, Program/Project Management Initiative
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Headquarters
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NASA did send a CD-ROM with the letters from the students at Walnut Hill School into space. Their words and aspirations are now circling the earth on the International Space Station.
And here are a few of the many letters the people at NASA sent to the young people at the Walnut Hill School:
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