Yay Students!

Today I wanted to try a meditation practice with the kids.

"OK scholars, today we are going to start class with one minute of listening.  This is what musicians have to do really well, so we are going to practice this.  So for one minute we are going to be silent and just listen to the sounds around us.  Can you hear the highway noise, people talking down the hall?  See how much you can hear."

"So is this a game????"

"Um, sure, yeah, it's a game.  Definitely a game."

If every endeavor could just be viewed as a game.  Playing all these things that we do in life, things that are stressful or difficult.  It's just a game.  And they seemed to like this game.

There are so many intriguing challenges in teaching.  It's part puzzle, part intuitive guidance.  And what a pleasure to meet all these people.  Today after class, one of my student's mothers was a little late, unusual for her, and she said that she had family visiting from her country.  "Ah and where is that?"  "Senegal."  "And how often do they come?"  "Oh my brother comes for 10 days (?), but my mother, this is her first time.  I told her last night, 'You should go to bed,' and she just looked at me and said, 'No, no I can't, I'm just so happy to see you.'"  What an incredible reunion and wonderful to share in her joy of it.

And now I'm building a studio of adults which is really exciting.  A woman from India, a classically trained Indian vocalist, who works as a graphic artist.  Another who is a traveling nurse but studied cello for 4 years and after a year off is taking advantage of being in New York long enough to start lessons again.  Another who is a photographer and enjoys helping hoarders  de-clutter.  A woman from China, an architect who has lived here for 2 years, who caused me to bow to her humility as she entered my apartment and immediately took off her shoes, bowing as she did so.  And tonight a New York lawyer, who's family moved here from Russia in 1905 (so, a real New Yorker!), who had direct questions for everything we did, and is learning to play the cello at 71 for better aging.  It's a great group of people.  I'm so excited to be working with them.

And the same for my young ones in Harlem.  I look at them and see them growing.  Such wonderful people.

It is challenging to think of what a person needs, whether it's enforcing discipline or encouraging freedom, whether it is a specific technical challenge or a mental block.  There are so many ways to see and interact with another person.  So many resources to offer them and directions that can be taken.  And in the midst of it, despite these challenges and maybe because of them, I can feel my voice for teaching starting to grow again.

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?

Turning Inside Out

It doesn't matter that I don't like the teaching style at the school where I teach, or that I don't enjoy teaching in such a manner.  It doesn't matter that I feel bogged down in the nagging tone of voice that I feel I acquire while teaching there, or the fear that it is coming from within me and will haunt me forever.  It doesn't matter that I likely won't be teaching there, again, or that a part of me is looking forward to the end of the year.

What matters is the students that I'm teaching.  And for everything in my class and in our time together towards which I can be critical, the only answer is to find another way, or to keep looking for new ways.  Children really do learn what you give them and surround them with.  Somehow they are playing the cello.  But teaching them something more is what is needed.  There is no turning away from that.  There is more consideration needed–in our technique, in our words, in our actions.

Try Again

Yelling to get a child's attention equals I lost.  Teaching takes practice so tomorrow I'm going to try to turn awareness of others into a game.

New Students

This is an exciting time of beginning an adult cello studio.  There are several trials this week and this evening was the first lesson with one of them.  It is also inspiring to me to meet adults who are interested in learning something, and it is really fun to take them over hurdles they never imagined doing.  And adults are really cool in that they have already experienced a lot of life.  They have stories and complex emotions, and yet there is still so much more that cello can teach them.  It's a reminder that I too can learn these lessons from the cello as an adult.

I am really excited to meet each of these new people, and excited at the idea of having a group of adults all beginning at the same time, capable of having a group class together and sharing in that social aspect of learning and growth as well, supporting one another in this journey.  It is a really exciting thing to think of, going forward.

Day in Westport (remembering the board)

It has been a moving day.  From a sincere exchange on the bus with a former opera singer (about growing older, contending with one's body, finding a new career, and sharing the new found calm), to the tour I received of Westport Connecticut from a potential employer at the Suzuki School there (the beaches, the million dollars houses, the moss on the trees), to all the new students and their parents that I met (to the mother that sent me a heartfelt email about my lesson with her son), to the cab driver that shared his working day (after day after day) life with me after having been laid off from a payroll management job at a non-profit.  It has been a day with my cello, a trip up the coast to try on a new potential job.

I would like to take this position, if the numbers can work out.  There are so many possibilities here, in this life I'm living.  Driving through the New England rain with a committed Suzuki teacher was a centering 45 minutes for me.  Taking in hours of green and committed students was a different life than my current teaching situation.  I'm considering another position as well in the city (still uncertain if there is really an offer), and in two weeks doing an audition for Teaching Artist Apprenticeship not knowing if that is really something that I would be able to do given these other possibilities or the direction in which I want to go.  There are a lot of options.  The fire is starting.  But I have to be centered with what I want, what I envision.

Stepping Into Something New

Spring time seems to be the time that people become interested in cello lessons.  I have three trial lessons this week.  That's up from zero the past two months.  And there are some teaching prospects for the coming year as well.

I am wondering what my future will be for the school program where I am teaching.  It has been a challenging year, and yet so rewarding to see the work that has been done.  It is exciting to see students playing the cello, when 7 months ago they couldn't.

And yet, coming away from the belt test I am reminded of a teaching focus that I would like to strengthen in myself.  It is something that I think can be quite natural and yet it needs practice.  When I see my students struggle with finding good posture, or fluidity, or intonation, I remind myself of my own ability to see where I want to be, combined with my inability to be there.  Teaching and learning require the pointing out and the following, the realization and the actualization.  Neither is instantaneous.

I recorded my students for them to do their own self evaluations and for me to do them as well.  It's funny to frame something, to see it set apart of the the run-up of the day and the week.  Here is this perfect little person, full of many parts, from their family, from their family's past, from their school and peers.  Sometimes trying, sometimes distracted.  Seven perfect little people, doing things they once couldn't do.