Guarded Empathy

This was the first high school I've been to with escalators.  Also the first where 8 bullet-proof vest-wearing armed security guards questioned me on the other side of a metal scan and x-ray security check.  On the 4th floor was the actual school where I was going to sub for another cellist, a middle school in the same charter school network where I teach my 4th graders.  I got to seem them in four years, or at least where they will be.  Larger people, wearing similar uniforms, still being reprimanded by faculty.  "You can't be here without a pass, watch him and make sure he goes back to his room,"  "Well, you can't eat in here and you can't eat in the hallway.  I guess you should have had your lunch when it was scheduled."  There is still a tension between rules and disregard of rules.

Of the five cellists I was supposed to have in my class I saw three, one of which came in, then left to go to lunch but somehow missed it, then went to a homeroom classroom to eat her lunch telling me she wouldn't be in cello class.  Another came to the class 4 minutes before it ended, just enough time to run through their ensemble piece.  And the other, the shy, golden-hearted one, who came early and had an awkward private lesson with me for 45 minutes.  Thinking that at any moment the others might arrive, it was hard to dive into anything.  Also since she is not my students and my presence, maybe never to be seen again, was completely unsolicited by her.  I shared a perspective on vibrato with her, and shifting, and ensemble dynamics.

It is hard to have a situation that is so endemic that one can throw love and more love into it and not feel that anything comes out of it.  But then what is love?  Are we, am I, really putting it in?  I've never taught in quite this setting, and certainly not in the style expected of this institution which is so far from what I would like to share.  It's a difficult thing to balance, and something that I hope with start to make more sense.

And shortly after, rehearsing with a good friend for a chamber music concert reminded me of skills and feelings rarely practiced these days.  Flexing that muscle of what it means to really play with another person, to feel what they are feeling.  Music can teach us such empathy.  And what scary thing that might be at times.  In these schools, children feel like objects, I feel like an object, we are animated objects.  But in chamber music, empathy is essential.  How can I teach this?