Chinatown Lessons

I really want some cello students.  And so when a colleague of mine asked me to substitute teach for him this morning in Chinatown, it was a definite yes.

It took an hour to get there because on the weekends there are inevitably route changes to the subway.  I got off the bus and walked through a courthouse district, closed off to cars.  There were some Chinese people practicing Tai Chi in the shadows of the tall buildings and as I rounded the corner and stepped out of the restricted zone into Chinatown, I immediately saw the Florentine music school.  I walked in and got the receptionist's reluctant attention.  "You're early," she said.  I had figured 15 minutes was at the very least polite for a first time.  She escorted me to the room where I would be teaching, a tiny kitchen complete with refrigerator, washing machine, dish washer, microwave, sink, some folding tables, a drum kit, and a piano.

I squeezed in and tried to make sense of the space.  Where would I go?  Where would a student go?  It struck me there was no music stand, but it seemed silly to ask for one.  Where would it go?  This was a used room, an unnurtured space.  Strange to imagine a lesson happening.

But it did.  Three of them, in fact.  And it felt good to stretch those rusty muscles again, good to feel the things that I've been learning in the past few weeks come into use.  And over the course of the three hours that I was in that room, I was also the beneficiary of a college prep Algebra lesson being shouted in a Chinese accent at a class of students on the other side of the thin wall.  "18...  X....WHAT IS X???  YOU SEE Y????"

The teaching conditions were a little less than ideal, the pay a little less that than it should be, too.  And yet I would eagerly return.  It's pretty cool to change the character of such a tiny room, to leave it seeing it differently than it was when I entered.