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The film is set at the end of the term for an elementary school in Japan, and exiting first graders are preparing a special welcome song for the next class in their grade.

The delightful “Instruments,” from Ema Ryan Yamazaki, takes us inside a Tokyo school where second graders form a percussive orchestra, learning about blending their nervous internal rhythms into the stuff of communal performance.

But he only returned to school Jan. 27, even as other fifth graders were able to attend remotely.

My friend Jean De Longe, who teaches first graders at a Palisades school that burned down, told me one of her students, whose family lost their house, was especially upset about losing his stuffies.

If second graders can manage this lofty task, surely we grown-ups can too.