I Teach To....

My brain is so full of my students at Harlem.  We had our best day yet and overall things are getting smoother.  But those successes only make me expect more.  Yesterday was swimming, today was quick sand.  It was a half day which is sort of a holiday, and we had to get everyone together for orchestra time (a first).  It will get smoother.  We'll get to know the challenges and the possibilities better and better.

I came home and put on Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 132.  It's hard to think of the most important thing right now, and sometimes the answer is not thinking.  Not to be without thinking, but that the answer isn't there.  I started to think about life as a performer and what that shares and life as a teacher and what that shares.  Why is it important that we have courtesy in our classroom?  Why is it important that there is respect?  Why is it important to listen?

Without these things we cannot share.  I can hear something in a quartet, I can allow the musicians who play it and Beethoven who composed it, to enter in to me and to change me and I carry those with me.  And with teaching it is the same, but for me perhaps the possibilities for traction are even higher.  When there is an exchange of ideas it is possible to learn and grow and pass things along to others.  And then we can become bigger.

There was a rally today for the teachers at the Success Academies and they were all wearing T-shirts that said, "I teach to end inequality."

This seems to be a very sincere goal of this school.  And I believe in its importance.  I think there is a large part of me that teaches for this reason, too.  But I wasn't one of the teachers wearing this shirt.

Why do I teach?

I really believe in the importance of what I'm doing.  It occupies a large part of me right now, larger than any orchestra audition has.  It sort of eats away at me to be better.  I want to open another space of listening, another space of sharing, another space of growing, so that we can all pass something along, to touch others, for years to come.