The Secret Song

An immersive view into the final chapter in Doug Goodkin’s fabled 45-year career teaching music to children in San Francisco. In what could have been a celebratory victory lap, the veteran teacher finds his efforts to instill a sense of belonging interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. When their classrooms are shuttered, Goodkin and his students must surmount new adversities and find a way to keep the music playing and the learning going. Goodkin’s time-tested methods are thrown into disarray as the pandemic forces schools into “distance” learning, and a music program that always prioritized singing and learning “through the ear, not through the eye” has to adapt to an online format.