Intense emotion often produces powerful musical melodies. Anxious to make an appointment, a nervous friend might say to her spouse, "Al, we have to go. We have to go now! We have to go now or we're going to be late." Dramatic examples of repetition often arise from simple events where speakers feel deep emotions. Using the following opening school address, written and delivered by Alliance, Ohio, high school mathematics teacher William Carli, have students identify qualities of music. This activity might be done with a small group or individually.

          Our students, like children of previous generations, have to be connected to the human experience. They have to be connected to the first people who used tools, planted crops, and rode horses. They have to be connected to Greek geometry, the Chinese abacus, and the African algebra. They have to be connected to the gentle wisdom of Confucius, the glorious genius of Mozart, and the expressive passion of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

          They have to be connected to the excitement of sport and solemnity of ritual, to the joy of art and the sorrow of the blues, to the value of work and the emptiness of hatred, and to the complexity of science and the simplicity of love.

          We are the connectors. We are the high priests and priestesses of our generation. For some of our students, the school, our temple, is an oasis of order in an otherwise chaotic life. In it we dispense discipline without abuse, morality without superstition, and judgment without bias, by connecting them to concern, wisdom, and justice.

          We are the connectors. We connect our children not only to the other five billion currently early occupants, but to the millions who have lived before, some brave, some brilliant, some evil beyond words, some merely grandmas and grandpas, but all part of our human heritage.

          We are the connectors. Without us civilization ends. Without us, the computers will crash, the assembly lines will stop, the great stories will be forgotten, the flame will go out.

          We are the connectors. We are teachers. Welcome back.